Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

I have quite a collection of HO/HOn3 model locomotives, including many of the better brass imports from the 1960's through the 1990's. Reason being I was associated with a couple of rather nice model railroad layouts at various times in the past, and always thought someday I'd get a place to have my own layout, or again associate with others building a joint one. Hasn't happened, and the place I live now just doesn't have the necessary room, so my only options would be to build a dedicated outbuilding which would be expensive and intrusive on the yard, or go to a large scale outdoor model railroad, which is what I'm in the process of doing.

Based on the request of a member here, I went looking for some old photos of my locomotive collections and found a few for him, but also ran across some old photos of the last layout that I was a member of ... the Slim Princess Model Railroad Club, here in Bishop California.

Now these photos are none too good, as they are digital pictures of old photo prints, taken hand held with questionable light while still in the plastic sleeves of an album, so please excuse poor quality and ghost reflections. But I think they'll prove adequate to give an idea of what a good deal I had going there.

Layout was in a half sunken room that was originally an orchid greenhouse, so a lot of restructure work happened before model railroad building got under way. This all came to an end about two decades ago, when the folks that owned the place had to move closer to their medical providers and sold their house. But it was great for the decade or so that it lasted, and we had the layout in the high 90's % completed, and had been up and running for quite a few years.

Here's a few photos:

Waterfront scene and our burlap banner:


Main yards and industrial sidings:


Roundhouse, turntable and servicing facilities:


Part of the yard and siding control panel ... one of three such to control the whole operation:


The outskirts of town, and starting the grade up into the mountains:


Mainline control panel:


Mineral loading facility:


Lakeside mainlines with just a glimpse of the narrow gauge yards in the foreground:


Sawmill and hill town where the narrow gauge joins the mainline for some dual gauge trackage:


Mountain mining town served by HOn3 narrow gauge off a standard gauge spur, while the mine itself has HOn2 1/2 trackage:


Good length fruit block of reefers, downgrade through the oilfields:


Oil refinery:


Open pit mine with the bottom out, and some narrow gauge staging tracks visible:


Narrow gauge control panel, mostly washed out by flash ... I still have this for some odd reason:


Track Plan:


Well, lots more photos available, including some of the original building of the layout, but this ought to be plenty too many for now!

Sure do wish I still had this wonderful alternate reality available to me today!!!

Just want to say that your club layout is first class, well thought out unlike our club's "bowl of spaghetti ", and well executed - very nice!

Your club had a quite detailed and functional layout. Understandable but a shame it had to be dismantled. I always feel like the amount of work and ,well...art, that goes into these should be preserved.
I'm eager to see your garden railroad empire grow. I'm impressed of you folks that hand lay your rail...It is a tedious looking job, and it takes long enough just laying out flex track. And hand built turnouts? Puh-lease, I would go mad. The poor coroner would have to scrape my tiny brain off the shop ceiling.

I was referring to your new backyard railroad, Daniel...I thought I read a post you made saying you were building turnouts? Maybe I was mistaken, some folks around here say, "that boy's touched in tha' haid."

My mama always said "when life gives you a sloped and tree filled plot of dirt- put a garden railway in it."

No wait...my mama always said "Ben, you're an idiot." I don't know who said that other nonsense.