Hi Guys (and Gals!)
It really takes me back to find things like this! Again and again, our layouts have promulgated new lives for themselves and quite frequently find their way into Museums. It's partly because Dunham Studios has always built exhibits with an eye to "movability". That's a hold-over from my Broadway career, where every show had to be built to travel, if only from the Scene Shop to the theater. Either way, for a national tour or a trip over to New York City, the show had to break down into "invisible" sections and then go back together like magic in a matter of hours.
It was a simple thing to translate that technique into a model railroad vernacular and as a result anything we build be it the 7000 square foot "Cincinnati In Motion" exhibit in the Cincinnati Union Terminal, the famous Station at Citigroup Center or our next private client's layout, they all break down invisibly to travel--with you when you move or to a Museum or to another owner. The fact that we build with plywood and Styrofoam guarantees that the life of one of our layouts has no real end point.
I do need to correct a couple of facts about this layout. The artwork was indeed created by two scenic artists, but what you see here is the work of Rand Angelicola, my Broadway Design Assistant of many years and now a much sought after Scenic Artist on so many hit movies I can't begin to name them all--"A League of Their Own", "The Color Purple", "Noah" and dozens of others. Randy is especially close to my heart because twenty-five years after he proposed to my daughter Pamela she actually accepted him in 2010. So this is really a family affair! Randy has created many backdrops for me both on Broadway and for many Dunham Studios Train Exhibits as well. Now in this age of "Large Format" ink jet printing, Dunham Studios can share Randy's work in an almost "Mix and Match" fashion. I'm attaching a recent 2014 backdrop I designed featuring many of the same Randy images you see here in in a 25 foot long Lionel-themed backdrop.
Randy did the original artwork in 1991 and it's as fresh now as it was then!
Following that idea to its logical conclusion, Angela Trotta Thomas has now collaborated with us at Dunham Studios on a very special 4 X 8 foot layout featuring a special Angela Trotta Thomas painting that we have turned into 3D! We did it using a pair of 3D Printers and then painting the 3D prints just like Angela's artwork. What a great experience it was! And you can have one of the limited edition of twenty-five only! See our full page ad in the next OGR!
