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Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
HO scale I modeled 1994 just before UP took over operations on the SP View attachment 52855View attachment 52856
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Nice, do you have a HO train board? My dad had HO trains as long back as I can remember. He had a 4x8 train board that he’d get out of storage around Thanksgiving and setup and kept it setup until after Christmas. Each year something new got added. This was is the house I was born in until age 10. The train board was too big to get out of the basement moving to the new house. Fast forward to around 1990 when all 7 kids had moved out. Dad built a 15 by 10 train board in the basement and built a line that went out into the family room along the walls around and behind his bar and back. It was a 160ft loop. After he passed us kids each took a bunch of his engines and cars in memory. This below are far less than 1/7th of what he had. Been just outside of Baltimore, everything was in B&O livery. I built a N gauge board. I’ll post more on that later.

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Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
I have some of these, used them for model trains.
Cheers
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Session 5 said:
You still have them Mitch? I like HO, a fella I know had a huge track setup in his basement, he had everything switches, whistles blowing , bridges the works. He was into trains as heavy as I am into planes. HO trains are cool!
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You guys should try to get to Hamburg, Germany and check out Minitur Wunderland. It's a giant two story HO layout in a warehouse building. The layout goes through different parts of the world, and the the cities are well thought out and very clever. There is the Reeperbahn, Area 51, Rock Concerts, and many other things going on. It even has a working airport.

I spent five hours there, and felt I needed another five hours to really get a better look at everything.

Homepage


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Don O said:
Yep. The little dioramas are priceless In those pics My dad had one with a couple in the back seat of a convertible on a hilltop under a tree.

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Where my amps now reside in the garage was where I had the layout, it was 20’ long by 10’ wide, on 2’ wide shelf’s , the section against the garage wall was the staging area, I had run dbl track mains with a 32” minimum radius, the outside side bench had a 2’ tall dbl backdrop, this was the windmill farm just outside of Palm Springs,
Parallel to I-10 the inside of the back drop was a local switching lead wit buildings to represent loads. At one corner I had put a through girder bridge to cross the creek off of San Timetetao canyon road, I never finished all the scenes on it, and it got dismantled.
Cheers
 
SG John said:
You guys should try to get to Hamburg, Germany and check out Minitur Wunderland. It's a giant two story HO layout in a warehouse building. The layout goes through different parts of the world, and the the cities are well thought out and very clever. There is the Reeperbahn, Area 51, Rock Concerts, and many other things going on. It even has a working airport.

I spent five hours there, and felt I needed another five hours to really get a better look at everything.

Homepage


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The one that I am very fond of is the La Mesa club in San Diego.
They have modeled the Tehachapi loop that the Santa Fe and SP shared, and it is very large and the trains run point to point, with very realistic scenery.
Cheers
 
Don O said:
Nice, do you have a HO train board? My dad had HO trains as long back as I can remember. He had a 4x8 train board that he’d get out of storage around Thanksgiving and setup and kept it setup until after Christmas. Each year something new got added. This was is the house I was born in until age 10. The train board was too big to get out of the basement moving to the new house. Fast forward to around 1990 when all 7 kids had moved out. Dad built a 15 by 10 train board in the basement and built a line that went out into the family room along the walls around and behind his bar and back. It was a 160ft loop. After he passed us kids each took a bunch of his engines and cars in memory. This below are far less than 1/7th of what he had. Been just outside of Baltimore, everything was in B&O livery. I built a N gauge board. I’ll post more on that later.

View attachment 52862View attachment 52863
Click to expand...
Your dad had some serious money tied up in the hobby, brass is not cheap, all of mine are plastic, that I hacked up to more closely resemble the photo of whatever unit I was building, the Cotton Belt unit was from a picture of the real locomotive in a Diesel Era magazine.
I was building all these models when I had quit playing guitar in 93.
Cheers
 
Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
Where my amps now reside in the garage was where I had the layout, it was 20’ long by 10’ wide, on 2’ wide shelf’s , the section against the garage wall was the staging area, I had run dbl track mains with a 32” minimum radius, the outside side bench had a 2’ tall dbl backdrop, this was the windmill farm just outside of Palm Springs,
Parallel to I-10 the inside of the back drop was a local switching lead wit buildings to represent loads. At one corner I had put a through girder bridge to cross the creek off of San Timetetao canyon road, I never finished all the scenes on it, and it got dismantled.
Cheers
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Any pics?
 
Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
Your dad had some serious money tied up in the hobby, brass is not cheap, all of mine are plastic, that I hacked up to more closely resemble the photo of whatever unit I was building, the Cotton Belt unit was from a picture of the real locomotive in a Diesel Era magazine.
I was building all these models when I had quit playing guitar in 93.
Cheers
Click to expand...

The brass engine and caboose were presents I bought him when I moved to CA and got a real job. I also bought him an engine that had a video camera in the front of it and transmitted the video down the track in black and white. Somewhere I have a video of his board from that engine, very grainy and lot of break ups. If I can find it I’ll post it. It’s an interesting perspective and shows a lot of details he put into the scenery.

His cool ones were the 4-8-8-4 Big Boys, one pictured on the top shelf. He had a few of those. I saw one of those in the Sacramento RR museum.
 
Don O said:
The brass engine and caboose were presents I bought him when I moved to CA and got a real job. I also bought him an engine that had a video camera in the front of it and transmitted the video down the track in black and white. Somewhere I have a video of his board from that engine, very grainy and lot of break ups. If I can find it I’ll post it. It’s an interesting perspective and shows a lot of details he put into the scenery.

His cool ones were the 4-8-8-4 Big Boys, one pictured on the top shelf. He had a few of those. I saw one of those in the Sacramento RR museum.
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I have been to that same museum!
We built a Mimi’s Cafe up thereby the prison , and one Sunday it rained us out and I took the opportunity to go there, unbelievable how large they are when you stand right next to one, my favorite was the SP’s cab forward.
Cheers
 
My Great Uncle had a huge train board took up most the basement with "tunnels" and landscapes and things going around the walls He was also a certified Lionel Repair tech and people would send him engines to fix from all over the country

We have this just a few miles from the house and I have taken the grandson several times to see the HO trains and the BIG trains
train1.jpg
train3.jpg
www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com

The Robert W. Willaford Railroad Museum | Trains | Plant City, FL, USA

The Robert W. Willaford Railroad Museum offers a very sizable collection of railroad memorabilia including a restored 1963 Seaboard Air Line Caboose, 1943 Whitcomb Locomotive, 24 hour/7 days a week live train cams and a model railroad based upon 1960's Plant City Florida.
www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com

they have a great model train layout that recreates the town the museum is in, in 1960



4 miles the OTHER direction we have THIS which we are going to tomorrow :)
www.floridaairmuseum.org

Homepage

As Florida’s “Official Aviation Museum and Education Center,” the Florida Air Museum features a dynamic display of unique designs...
www.floridaairmuseum.org www.floridaairmuseum.org

of course 40 minutes East we have ORLANDO --- and 30 Min. West we have Busch Gardens ........and Clearwater beach ..........and......

Hey Its Florida --- ya'll enjoy that snow now ya hear.
 
Mitch Pearrow SJMP said:
I still have quite a bit of them, but I also sold quite a few of them, used the money to fund some of my music gear, I strives to build them as realistic as possible, on the Cotton Belt unit if you zoom in at the fuel gauge, you can see my attempt to make a fresh fuel spill.
Cheers
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Awesome, trains !..being first generation in 5 to not work fr PRR. My train stuff is patiently waiting on retirement. The ever since a kid, wanted to model the Enola PA, freight yard, (hump yard they call it.) pre diesel there was a round house turn the engines around.

Have quite a few kits of box cars that built at younger age & did a scene for my Dad of workers at a train wreck fixing the tracks. I can see this being GAS city soon..lol
 
HAHA you guys are going to make me take pics of the MESS my truck is as I had to pile all my tools inside in the dark the other night so I could finally leave my job 2 hours after I had hoped to be finished.

HERE THEY ARE as of this afternoon as I was spending 6 hours reclaiming brick.
Truck Tools 1.jpg

Truck Tools 3.jpg

And today's project.

Bricks 1.jpg
 
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eSGEe said:
My Great Uncle had a huge train board took up most the basement with "tunnels" and landscapes and things going around the walls He was also a certified Lionel Repair tech and people would send him engines to fix from all over the country

We have this just a few miles from the house and I have taken the grandson several times to see the HO trains and the BIG trains
View attachment 52884
View attachment 52885
www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com

The Robert W. Willaford Railroad Museum | Trains | Plant City, FL, USA

The Robert W. Willaford Railroad Museum offers a very sizable collection of railroad memorabilia including a restored 1963 Seaboard Air Line Caboose, 1943 Whitcomb Locomotive, 24 hour/7 days a week live train cams and a model railroad based upon 1960's Plant City Florida.
www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com

they have a great model train layout that recreates the town the museum is in, in 1960



4 miles the OTHER direction we have THIS which we are going to tomorrow :)
www.floridaairmuseum.org

Homepage

As Florida’s “Official Aviation Museum and Education Center,” the Florida Air Museum features a dynamic display of unique designs...
www.floridaairmuseum.org www.floridaairmuseum.org

of course 40 minutes East we have ORLANDO --- and 30 Min. West we have Busch Gardens ........and Clearwater beach ..........and......

Hey Its Florida --- ya'll enjoy that snow now ya hear.
Click to expand...



Hey Its Florida --- ya'll enjoy that snow now ya hear.

OK Thankyou Adrian..
 
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