NEW TRAIN LAYOUT UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
Photos: Jimmy Moore
Many of you may know that I have been a train nerd for years. I even worked with Lionel in the 1990’s to create a control and sound system called TrainMaster and RailSounds. It’s still in use today, bringing families around America together for fun!
While I was living in Northern California, I played happily with all my children on our amazingly great layout! Zeke would visit often to play with us on weekends and Amber came by to see the barn that I built for her at Amber’s Farm. Diecast metal animals were everywhere around the barn. She has it in her home now.
Now that I have settled with my soul-mate Daryl in the South of California where we see a lot of old friends, we are creating a new layout for all the kids young and old to meet and come together again! This time with lots of new grandchildren to play as well!
There will be a long highway built ‘round the edge to allow grandkids to play with their little diecast cars until they have learned how to carefully begin running the trains. The kid’s eyes are all at track level for the perfect perspective. Ain’t that great!!
The landforms are made from redwood slabs, many of which originated at Broken Arrow Ranch, home of Ben, my train partner for years. The rough edges of the slabs make for a beautiful natural terrain and are placed throughout the layout by my layout building friend, Jimmy. Jimmy and I talk for hours on end, planning where to get and place the redwood slabs we collect. Many of these slabs are from the original layout up north, which is no longer. Memories abound. The woodgrain holds them perfectly!
A lot of the mountains, made from redwood stumps left in the forest when trees fell or burned, have not yet been added to the west part of the layout. Ben and I found these on long jeep rides together in our redwood forest back in the day, searching for perfect stump mountains. Although some of the mountains have not yet been
placed, several of them are on the other side of the layout, not shown in today’s pictures.
Lake
Above: A lake is planned where the fish saved from the old layout up North will live. The lake will be up to 2.5 feet in depth, with an island (only seen in this picture) for fish to hide under …whenever predators are near. This is an important consideration because the layout is in open air with many birds above. In the picture here you can see the lake area, a rough rectangle in the center of the west end of the layout. The plywood in the center will be the water of the future lake. Depth varies from a few inches to 2.5 feet.
Both these images show the terrain on only one side of the layout, the west end. The entire layout is divided by a canyon only partially visible in the top picture. In a while, when the layout is solid on both sides of the canyon, construction will advance to the track laying stage. I hope by summer to be surrounded by kids (of all ages) playing with the great old and new electric trains we have collected over the years. We will be bringing you progress reports right here at TRACKSIDE VIEWPOINT in the near future. Stay tuned folks. Watch for Trains!
ny
be well