What stories does your layout have to tell?

Great minds think alike!

 

In our October issue, you'll see a layout photo story by forum member Steve Phetterplace, and my column in that issue is devoted to just the topic you're suggesting.

Okay, here is mine, and the story is: a bunch of kids in the mid-fifties, staring in the window of the local hobby store and the toy trains and wishing.  That's me there on the left, looking and wishing, and farther to the left, the store/hobby that would eventually capture my heart . . . . . 

Hopefully my boy hood dreams while I was growing up here in the Ozarks. When we were all little boys, we just KNEW we would have the world's greatest layout someday.......Or was I the only one that thought that ????

 

My layout is subject to an injunction not to reveal ANYTHING without my permission.

I have the same scene on my layout Lee except I'm looking in the window of a MTH store (no train wars over this guys). Like Allan said, great minds think alike! Andy J.

My layout tells many stories:
You have way too many freight cars
You need to finish wiring here,here, and, here!
I cannot hide these boxes any longer.
When are going to stop running trains and finish my scenery?
Not another engine? How are we going to fit that one on the layout?
When are you going to clean my track?
Oh by the way I think the cat left a surprise over here!

My layout is geological proof that glaciers are made of plywood!

 

Rusty

That the layout builder/developer is slower than cold molasses! [plywood glacier, I reckon so---good one!].

One of many stories around town, this one starts with a "Hello..."

 

...another one includes just having a quiet smoke...

Frank

If you can find the cover story in the Feb. 2011 issue of OGR you will read all about the reason for my layout. It's about a fictional little boy growing up in a railroad town and how the end of steam changed his life. At the beginning of the piece I explained that it was a work of fiction but lots of folks wrote me and wanted to know if it was me I was writing about. Don

 

We are a division of the New York Central Railroad serving where I live, where I go and what I love!

Don:  You'll find--when the Oct. issue comes out--that your layout adventure and a couple of others are mentioned in my column.

Thanks Allan

Don

I like to name various structures on the layout for family and friends

For example

 

Dad - BERKS Interlocking Tower

Sister - Carols's farm Mart

Cousin - Arnie's Welding

 

 

 

That I need to get off my duff and put the tops on my benchwork....

 

Gilly, will you come over here and do the same for my layout? WOW, looks fantastic, what a great idea. Don

Tempting Don, very tempting. Of course you know I work very s-l-o-w-l-y and need frequent golf breaks. It could take some time......

The story behind my photo vignette is noodles of steel.  The NWP track is being rebuilt using concrete crossties and rails longer than five football fields.  When welded together the clickety-clack of a rail car is gone. The rails are manufactured in Colorado and shipped to Northern California  on a special train featuring 30 rail cars stretching almost a half mile.

 

Rusty, if you ever get a hot minute to take some pictures of the new equipment, I'd love to see them. I was shooting video and taking pictures of the rebuild tell me moved. I'd like to see some shots of our old hometown RR running again. Never thought it would happen. Don

Right now my layout doesn't tell much but of blue foam!  But as it gets finished it will tell the story of an up north Michigan Fishing town.  Located in the Northern Lower Peninsula, just south of Traverse City.  A small town in the 50's that has a few small factories that service the automotive industry.  It is also a hot vacation spot in the summer, and has several passenger trains stoping by every day during the weekends and a small 1 coach or combine car commuter train that brings the workers to the factories during the week.  

 

Steam is still king but a few diesel locomotives are seen, threatening the small 2 locomotive railroad that owns the tracks and switches the cars in and out of the industries.   

 

Things are quiet at the sawmill.  All the guys got paid yesterday, so of course they all went to town last night and got loaded and now are laying around in a heap while two dedicated teetotalers saw away on a log, whistling away as they go, never seeming to make much progress on the log.  The blacksmith is off fishing and the guys in the office are goofing off too.  Golfing or some such nonsense.  What away to run an operation.  Frankly, I'm appalled. 

Mo & Jo are almost done loading a car, and an Alco is head-in ready for a pickup.  Not much action at the station either, but one guy is humping a bag of something to somewhere.  Now this guy works hard.  He also takes great pride in his landscaping, as you can see, the yard & grounds around the station have been watered and fertilized and groomed to the point that they are now the texture of a well maintained golf green.  I don't know how he does it, especially with all the traffic on those 2 mainlines.  He's going to organize that steel in the corner of the yard and has called for a crane to help move it around. 

It's obvious a heavy hand is going to have to come into this situation and get this railroad working, acting and most of all, looking like a real railroad again.  That's my job.  I'll get these bums back to work if it's the last thing I do...

Gilly, Sorry, our Milwaukee Road's work policy is "lock'm in the room tell the work is done". Don

One of my stories is based on the MTH UP Weed Sprayer. The crew says "Looks like a bunch of rail fans up ahead. They better watch out or they're gonna get a little wet...." The figures represent my two sons and my father-in-law. The link below shows the scene between 0:57 and 1:25.

Terry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qC6FweCi1U

and now this...

This was the bosses kid's idea.  Take a perfectly respectable GP9, repaint it like some kind of hippie, racy, kind of cool, offbeat, but grows on you quickly scheme, and go after the car & boat hauling business in the area.  Well, I hate to admit it, but it actually was a good idea.  There's more dough in this line of work than the old school logging & lumber by far.  That's dried up like burnt sawdust.  If you do it right, of course.  Yeah well, Junior has this Geep souped up and it has it's quirks.  Long end is forward & you can't adjust the sound rpms, not that you would want to anyway.  It does burnouts on steel wheels.  'Ready to rumble on the Custom Geep Nine' works pretty well for a yard sendoff, when I can get a yard sendoff.  They keep telling me my crewtalk message is garbled.  Garble this, you knucklehead...

I've run this engine before and after doing just a few switching moves in the yard, I was engulfed in a haze of what I can best describe as an acrid, but invitingly intoxicating, mixture of burnt rubber, pullmor motor exhaust & nitrous oxide.  For a short time there, I thought I was in Heaven...

"I've run this engine before and after doing just a few switching moves in the yard, I was engulfed in a haze of what I can best describe as an acrid, but invitingly intoxicating, mixture of burnt rubber, pullmor motor exhaust & nitrous oxide.  For a short time there, I thought I was in Heaven..."

Love this story William 1! Reminds me of the '60s.

Terry

 

Somewhere in Big Sky Country, the Milwaukee Road's new GP9 poses under the catenary for the company photog. It's 1954. Who knew that in 20 years the overhead wire would be gone? Or that another decade would see the CMStP&P join the ranks of "Fallen Flags"?