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model railroading to life Local club going strong with a world of train layouts inside its door
Sierra Vista Herald ^ | Steve Stockmar

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.”


TOPICS: Hobbies
KEYWORDS: modeltrain; rr
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To: headstamp 2

I am. That’s the point......it’s the only part of my life where I am the undisputed, unchallenged master of the situation. Also, it keeps me off the streets and my wife knows where to find me.


21 posted on 09/01/2016 3:38:21 PM PDT by wny
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To: Covenantor

At that time J.L.Hudosn store in downtown Detroit used tohae a H.O. at Christams tim,e runing around three Store windows; of course it and the etire store are entirely gone now.


22 posted on 09/01/2016 3:39:10 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty - Honor - Country! What else needs said?)
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To: Auslander154

Yes! Even that one does not come close to real-world scale.

Let’s say we want to model the Norfolk Southern Chicago Line from Toledo to Chicago in HO scale. We’d need a space about 2-1/2 miles long and 1/2 mile wide. Would love to see it happen, but it would take a lot of time and expense. Who knows? Give it a decade and someone might be able to 3D print it in a week.

From a philosophical standpoint, I wonder what makes us wonder so much over miniature worlds. As a child I relished Gumby and Pokey’s world where they could live in miniature places.


23 posted on 09/01/2016 3:39:31 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew (Diversity is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sharing the same jail cell.)
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To: Vendome

Lancaster Area or Roadside America if that is still open...


24 posted on 09/01/2016 3:41:49 PM PDT by Geoffrey
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To: wny

Its a great hobby. I knew a guy that had them running all through his house up on the walls.

I used to love the HO Aurora Thunderjet cars in my youth but never kept up with them.

You could actually take them apart and fix them and hop them up.

Life goes on I guess. Your wife is a keeper. (grin)


25 posted on 09/01/2016 3:44:28 PM PDT by headstamp 2 (Fear is the mind killer.)
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To: SandRat
The Detroit History Museum has a model train exhibition in the basement. Not sure where it is from. I think admission is free at least one Sunday a month.


26 posted on 09/01/2016 3:51:25 PM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: Geoffrey

Can’t recall. I was driving around after making some sales calls and ran into that amazing place...


27 posted on 09/01/2016 3:55:10 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway - "Enjoy Yourself" ala Louis Prima)
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To: Larry Lucido
Knowing Detroit Politics I doubt it, I doubt it even still exist other tan as a destroyed building.
28 posted on 09/01/2016 3:57:11 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty - Honor - Country! What else needs said?)
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To: Vendome

Maybe Roadside America - gigantic model layout from way back in the 50’s - or the Strasburg Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad Museum right outside of Lancaster - good stuff.....


29 posted on 09/01/2016 4:13:19 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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To: SandRat

The major department stores in DC all had wonderful Christmas scene displays, trains running around the sets with automaton Wise Men nodding around the creches, elves, snowmen, Santas and what not. Week before Christmas after pop finished work and dinner the family would walk from one store to the next to view the brightly lit window displays. Some darn cold windy nights but worth the effort.


30 posted on 09/01/2016 4:19:33 PM PDT by Covenantor (Men are ruled...by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern. " Chesterton)
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To: Covenantor
At least something like I use to experience as a kid, still exists some where to be shared.
31 posted on 09/01/2016 4:32:54 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty - Honor - Country! What else needs said?)
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To: Fester Chugabrew

I agree. Model RR is the greatest hobby in the world. I love HO scale and got a track and cars from a neighbor’s garage sale when I was in grade school. The best set I have seen is located at the San Diego Balboa park and has a model of the famous Tehachapi pass.
http://www.sdmrm.org/#/the-tehachapi-pass/4533421367


32 posted on 09/01/2016 5:01:20 PM PDT by Falconspeed ("Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94))
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To: Falconspeed

I don’t have any room anymore, so I went to ‘V Scale’ (computer train simulators).


33 posted on 09/01/2016 5:18:05 PM PDT by Riley (The Fourth Estate is the Fifth Column.)
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To: SandRat

I spent a decade building/tweaking a 4x8 HO set & “village” for under the Christmas tree. A work of art and labor of love... until there were no kids in the house. I ended up selling it to a nice couple that had a few young children. I hope they still enjoy it.

The local hobby shop is full of RC cars, planes and choppers now. It makes me feel sad to visit there these days.


34 posted on 09/01/2016 5:18:13 PM PDT by MarineBrat (Better dead than red!)
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To: MarineBrat
8[

ME TOO,

35 posted on 09/01/2016 5:27:47 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty - Honor - Country! What else needs said?)
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To: Falconspeed

My son is a member there, and runs most Saturdays. I love the toy train room at Christmas.
We have a small model based on the Cajon Pass terrain at home. My daughter is doing all the landscaping.


36 posted on 09/01/2016 5:41:26 PM PDT by Excellence (Marine mom since April 11, 2014)
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To: SandRat
Model railroading is fun... we have an 'N' Scale layout in a shed, based mostly on the New Haven (with a twist, the NH bought the O&W and the Erie) and is going strong today...

New Haven, Amtrak and a few shortlines - and in our world, Connecticut is very business friendly..

I think I saw an article on that club in Model railroader...

37 posted on 09/01/2016 5:44:37 PM PDT by ConservaTeen (Islam is Not the Religion of Peace, but The RELIGION of PEDOPHILIA...)
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To: moose07

ferroequinology - study of the iron horse..


38 posted on 09/01/2016 5:47:07 PM PDT by ConservaTeen (Islam is Not the Religion of Peace, but The RELIGION of PEDOPHILIA...)
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To: Fester Chugabrew
My dad used to go to a hobby shop (in Manchester Connecticut) that had the Horseshoe Curve on it's HO club layout. My dad next time we are in New England he'll take us to it, if it still in business.

He said the store is in an old factory..

39 posted on 09/01/2016 5:51:35 PM PDT by ConservaTeen (Islam is Not the Religion of Peace, but The RELIGION of PEDOPHILIA...)
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To: SandRat

If I had a place to put one, I’d love spending my retirement days building a layout.


40 posted on 09/01/2016 6:21:11 PM PDT by Some Fat Guy in L.A. (Still bitterly clinging to rational thought despite it's unfashionability)
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