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.”
Strasburg!!!
Thnx
Bravo. Your son will learn from the professionals at the Balboa RR set in San Diego. Yes, the Christmas displays are heartwarming and landscaping takes special skills. Bravissimo.
Model railroading seems to be big in S. Arizona.
Three spots in Tucson, only 70 miles from Sierra Vista -
http://www.gpdtoytrainmuseum.com/openhousepictures.htm
http://www.sasme.org/photo-gallery/
And one is outdoor size if you want to get out of the AC...:^)
http://tucsongrs.org/TGRSDisplays/toc.shtml
Strasburg used to have a genuine railroad line you could ride, chuffing along behind a real old-time steam locomotive for about eight miles through beautiful Amish country in central Penna - was last there about twenty years ago - hope its still in operation.....
Love it
The Strasburg railway is still there and along side is the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum. Both are worth the trip.
Tour Atlanta’s Great Model Railroads
This tour is six weekends long consisting of the layouts of the Piedmont Division of the National Model Railroad Association members.
All the layouts are worth seeing, many are extraordinary. These model railroaders open up their homes to complete strangers every year. We are always amazed. Even if we see some of the same layouts year after year, it never gets old. Some of the landscaping and buildings are museum quality presentations.
Still there and it is amazing! http://roadsideamericainc.com/
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