Posted on 09/01/2016 2:42:24 PM PDT by SandRat
Attention to detail brings SIERRA VISTA — The precise attention to detail surrounding the room isn’t by accident when you walk into the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club. All the track, the buildings, the lights and every other scale model carefully in place are there for a reason.
The neighborhoods designed from the 1940s and 50s. The personnel responding to a building on fire. The construction worker welding away.
Each layout “tells little stories,” said club member Jason Bease.
The club has been going strong in Sierra Vista for more than 30 years, most of which have been in its current location at 680 Fort Avenue. The building looks deceptively small from the outside, and going inside takes visitors into a meticulous world of each club member’s imaginative designs.
In the main showroom, the HO scale track goes everywhere including, in some places, through the walls into the neighboring room, which is for maintenance and building. Another room is freshly painted and barren, acting as a blank canvas for a new N scale layout that hasn’t even started yet.
When it does get under way, it will stay blissfully unfinished like most all other ongoing layout designs.
“Nothing’s ever done,” club president Daniel Bolin smiled.
The timeless hobby still has a vibrant home in culture, and well beyond just the U.S. Last year’s National Model Railroad Association annual convention in Portland, Ore., drew 1,500 members from 47 states plus Canada, Australia, the U.K., New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil and Argentina.
There are close to 20 members in the local club from all over Cochise County. Each member has his or her own key to the club’s building with 24-hour access. Anyone who has an itch to run trains or update a design even at 3 a.m. can show up and get to it.
Ideas for layouts are literally limitless.
“If anybody has an old steam engine and are into steam, they can run it here. If you like modern railroading, you can run it here,” said Robby Craig of Sierra Vista, a club member since 2006. “We’re not specific, we’re not prototypical, but we are detailed.”
Members’ interests vary as much as the layouts. Some are into just building scenery and not trains. Others like to operate the trains and that’s it. Some are so into just the trains, Bolin half-jokes that they’d be happy simply running track on plain plywood.
“I started with building models, building dioramas,” Bease said. “This is just a working diorama. It’s just bigger. I’m more of a builder than I am a runner.”
Cochise and Western Model Railroad Club Secretary Robby Craig works on a model train as he attaches trucks to a box car Thursday at the club.
You’ve probably seen the club members around town. They have portable module layouts they’ve taken to display at the Boys & Girls Club, the Cowboy Poets Festival, and at the Mall around Christmas. Cub Scout groups visit the club, and there’s even a railroading merit badge available for Scouts.
The club hosts open houses throughout the year to let the public come in and view the layouts, which includes an outdoor G scale (the big one) model. The next open house is scheduled for Nov. 5-6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It’s free, but donations are always welcome to help sustain the club.
And if any group wants to see inside the club at any other time, members are willing to open it up.
The club layouts are the work of more than 50 people over several years and generations. Some of the structures are 25 years old, and designers are always tweaking, whether it’s adding a ranch here, a change in tunnel portals there or constantly bouncing from layout to layout.
Club members who have an idea for a layout design pitch it to the club. Everybody gets a vote, and the majority decides.
“Everything that gets changed in here gets approved,” Craig said. “If someone’s got an idea and everybody likes it, they vote it in and they do it.”
yeah, well, kinda hard to see photos when they’re buried behind a paywall...
Went to an amazing model railroad somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania in 1998.
Way Kewel...
The local scale model RR crowd has some nice layouts for the space they’re in.
Most members don’t have the room to build big so they bring their trains and run on club nights.
I used to visit but it’s been a couple of years.
I’ve been a model railroader for 30 years. The best thing about it is I do what I want, when I want, how I want. I don’t have to answer to anybody and I don’t have to make anyone other than myself happy.
There’s something so amazing about a model RR. As men we’re drawn to it like gnats at a light.
I wished I had the space to put even a small layout.
They’re old but here is some of what the local club has:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85_WYWnQUMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTobWJlKlQ
ferroequinology , Ping !
How long have you been single?
Greatest hobby in the world.
It’s one of my top choices if I had the space and money.
I’ve been into this for ages. Kind of miss it, not the right time in my life for it. Used to be a narrow gauge fanatic.
Back in the late 50’s in the middle of downtown Washington DC, 6 blocks or so from the White House there was a tiny shop hidden behind a parking garage devoted only to HO gauge trains.
About 12 ft wide and 6 or 7 feet deep. Customer aisle across the room, shallow counter and a wall of shelves just wide enough to show all the locomotives and cars. Most were unfinished white metal imported from Europe, with exquiste detailing. A model railroader’s paradise.
Used to stop in on my trips to Corr’s for model car and airplane kits and supplies. Owner was always gracious to me though I clearly couldn’t afford any of the engines. On hearing that I detailed my plastic cars with wiring, fab’d A-Arms and working steering using a jeweller’s tap and die set a gift from a Swiss watchmaker, he offered me a discount on miniature tools he stocked.
A rare gem of a very special shop. Amazing things.
I gather your not married. LOL
In my late 40’s it became apparent how deficient scale model railroading is in representing the real-world. I watch real trains almost daily near a depot. I decided to see what kind of room I would need to model the depot and 1/8 mile on either side in HO. 15 feet! IMO HO scale has the most robust representation in miniature railroading accouterments.
These days I aspire to scratch build the local depot.
The world’s biggest in Hamburg, Germany.
Miniature Wonderland - model train heaven.
http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/exhibit/video/5-minutes-wunderland/
I spent 10 hours in there one day and 11 hours another, and I still don’t think I saw it all. And it is still expanding.
Don’t forget time. LOL. Time, space, and money. Come to think of it, almost every hobby has the same constraints.
My old Jeeps, motorcycle and blazer collection suffer from all three very badly.
Parts are just murder these days.
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