Railroads or their predecessors have been around for hundreds of years. Click on the train picture for fun facts for kids about railroads.

This is quite spectacular! It shows you what you can do if you are really dedicated to Model Railroading.

Twin brothers in Germany, Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, began work on the ‘Miniature Wunderland’ in 2000.  This train set covers 12,380 square feet and models multiple  geographic regions including America, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the Austrian Alps.  The American landscape includes models of the Rocky Mountains, the Everglades, the Grand Canyon and even Mount Rushmore.  Talk about a world tour on a table top.  The Swiss area has a mini-Matterhorn and the Scandinavian area includes a 4 foot long passenger ship floating in a “fjord.”

The entire layout is expected to be completed in 2014 and will include models of areas in France, Italy and the UK.

There are more than 700 trains with 10,000 carriages and wagons.  The longest train is 46 ft long.  The scenery includes 900 signals, 2,800 buildings and 4,000 cars.  It even has over 160,000 individually designed figures.

There are over 250,000 lights in the system and the whole layout is tied to a control system that mimics night and day.

As you might imagine the entire system is controlled from a massive high tech nerve center which reminds ones of a real life railroad control room but this controls more things than just the railroad.

In the advent of spring this year, the MyHobbyFun.net staff wants you to get out your RC planes, heli’s, boats, cars and trucks as soon as possible. With the addition of a weather tracker/forecasting box in the sidebar of the blog you can monitor and prepare for the best days of sun. We’ve all spent the last few months cooped up with no place to run our new toys we got at the iHobby Expo show last year without many days warm and welcoming enough to go out and RC til our fingers hurt. But I’m ready and riled up to get back out there.

It’s spring-time once again and this means one thing…science fair projects! I remember doing science fair projects as a kid and trying to think of the best science project ever. I wanted something creative, fun and challenging, but ended up growing a few brown withered plants and buried my average grade in the backyard with my project. But now with the vast and endless resources online you don’t have to settle for a project that’s been done a billion times before.

Science is a subject that you can apply to almost anything, especially model hobbies. Comparatively, model airplanes, trains and cars are just smaller versions of their real life counterparts. You can learn the physics of flight and lift using a model airplane, propulsion and circuitry with model trains and much more.

Here’s your chance to find the cool, fun project you’ve been looking for! These links will give you a heads up on your competition and are easy ways to combine a love for model hobbies and science!

Science Project Help

http://www.cool-science-projects.com/Science-Fair-Project-Ideas.htm

Kids to Adults Science Projects

http://scienceclub.org/kidproj1.html

Hobbies and Science

http://www.hobbyscience.com/

Toy Robotics

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/category.asp?c=33&bhcd2=1270660897

Robot Kits for Kids

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/robot_kits_for_kids

Science Projects – Model Airplane and the Mechanics of Flight

http://www.scienceproject.com/projects/intro/elementary/EX022.asp

Physics and Rockets

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXXEG1&P=Y

For Teachers – Teaching with Robots

http://www.botmag.com/articles/01-18-06_Teaching_With_Robots.shtml

Beginners Guide to Rocketry

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/rocket/bgmr.html

All About The Science of Rockets

http://www.apogeerockets.com/index.asp

Rocket links

http://home.swbell.net/sbaughmn/links.html

Magnetic Levitation Train Video

http://www.flixxy.com/magnetic-levitation-model-train.htm

Hovercraft Models

http://www.hovercraftmodels.com/

RC Boat Science Project

http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/engineering/rc-boat-science-fair-projects.html

RC Truck Science Project

http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/science-fair-projects-truck-lab.html

Pictures from the Boys Life Magazine, Boy Scouts of America

Pinewood Derby

Well, its pinewood derby season, so we thought it might be useful to give you a list of links you might find interesting when you build your pinewood derby cars.  Remember be safe when working with tools.

• Try this cool tool from the Boy Scouts of America, a Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby Design tool.  This tool will actually print out a scaled plan for you to work from.
  http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/Youth/PineDesign.aspx
• Find some design help here! http://www.pinewoodpro.com/pinewood-derby-howto-design.htm
• Where do you put those weights, ckeck out this link for more information. http://www.pinewoodprofessor.com/weight.html
• 5 Keys to Pinewood Derby Performance. http://www.maximum-velocity.com/fivekeys.htm
• How about a little hard core help, find it here! http://pinewoodfreak.com/
• General Information at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_derby