The Route of the Broadway LION is the work of Br. Elias Thienpont, a monk of Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota. It is recommended that monks have hobbies, most are not as elaborate as this. And while hobbies are ok, spending large sums of money on them is not. Thus the Route of the Broadway LION  is a study of frugal railroad building.
 The room in which the railroad is built is a 24’ x 27’ former classroom on the third floor of our library building. The space is available, since we closed our schools in the early 1970s. The lumber all comes from buildings that we have torn down over the years. Our carpentry shop being well up to the task of re-fabricating used lumber. Wire, nails, Celotex, foam boards, fiberglass boards, and a whole host of other materials are all previously used.
 But “building on the cheap” does not just include the reuse of materials, it is also evident in the paucity of building and modeling skills used by the builder, and the slap-dash make-do methods of construction. The NMRA, the FRA, Model Railroader and any other purveyor of building codes would be somewhat dismayed at my construction methods. However with sharing my results with other modelers, they are nonetheless impressed with the end result, and encourage me by reminding me that I only have to please myself.  
 So let me give hope in turn all the other modelers who only want to see the trains run as quickly and as inexpensively as possible.

Br. Elias Thienpont, osb
railroad mogul.

418 Third Avenue West
Richardton ND 59652

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