Artzberger-Rodig Articles

Back in the day I was the Secretary for years (around 25) for the M.L.E.S. and wrote the newsletter that was claimed the best in the industry by some. One of the things I wanted it to do was teach the members of our club that they could do a lot of things themselves. Tom Artzberger was a friend that got me into live steam. I was an HO modeler and he a O scale modeler. We met in a round robin group. We hit it off and I join the M.L.E.S. club that he was a member of and started building what I called U-scale. Everything else in the hobby has a letter why not 1 1/2 inch scale. You build them / You ride'em, You break'em / U fix them! Anyway I worked in Tom's shop quit a bit over years more and more as time went on. Became an employee when he started building stuff for sale and it became a business, the Pike Lake & Eastern Hartford Shops. You could say we became very close friends.

So we were always looking for ways to improve our club and I wrote the newsletter and convinced Tom to start doing some "Engineering" for the newsletter. He is a Mechanical Engineer and I had a degree in Accounting. Tom at the time had Pro E programs on his computer and did the drawings. I went back to tech school and learned Pro E as well. So I created L.S.M.R.E. (Large Scale Model Railway Engineering). In the shop we would talk about what to do for the club and improve it and the newsletter. Tom and I would pick a topics, and I said "How about we create a series." We would publish projects in steps each mouth for the newsletter and then at the end I would compile them into booklets.

So to answer your question, I would say go ahead and publish the articles if you'd like and give the club M.L.E.S. credit and Tom Artzberger. We did it to help grow the hobby.

Ken R.

Former Secretary, Milwaukee Light Engineering Society Ltd.

Former Secretary, International Brotherhood of Live Steamers, Midwest Division

• Volume I Diesel (PDF)
  • See also Diesel locomotive design calculations
• Volume II Steam (PDF)
  • See also Steam locomotive design calculations
• Volume III General (PDF)
• Volume IV Car Parts (PDF)

• Volume V Flat Cars (PDF)
  • Flat plans (PDF)
  • Flat plans - large (PDF)
  • Flat plans - small (PDF)

• Volume VI Gondola Parts (PDF)
  • Gondola plans (PDF)

• Volume VII Hopper (PDF)
  • Hopper plans (PDF)
  • Hopper photo (JPG)

Rodig Equipment

Ken Rodig worte, May 2024:

Find enclosed some pic's of my train from just a year ago. I built everything in it from scratch using our club plans as we called them, except the caboose which was a Mountain car company kit and the brown Round top box car another kit.

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