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 isnt 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 members 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 hasnt even started yet.
When it does get under way, it will stay blissfully unfinished like most all other ongoing layout designs.
Nothings 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 years 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 clubs 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. Were not specific, were 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 thats it. Some are so into just the trains, Bolin half-jokes that theyd be happy simply running track on plain plywood.
I started with building models, building dioramas, Bease said. This is just a working diorama. Its just bigger. Im 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.
Youve probably seen the club members around town. They have portable module layouts theyve 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 theres 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. Its 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 its 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 someones got an idea and everybody likes it, they vote it in and they do it.
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.
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.
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.
Lancaster Area or Roadside America if that is still open...
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)
Can’t recall. I was driving around after making some sales calls and ran into that amazing place...
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.....
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.
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
I don’t have any room anymore, so I went to ‘V Scale’ (computer train simulators).
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.
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.
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...
ferroequinology - study of the iron horse..
He said the store is in an old factory..
If I had a place to put one, I’d love spending my retirement days building a layout.
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