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A Modest Model Railroad
Endymion53 writes "The TMRC at MIT may be the best known model railroad layout because of its role in the formation of hacking culture, but railroad uber-enthusiast Jack Burgess has built himself a pretty enviable layout, that does its best to capture the look and route of an old rail line that went to Yosemite National park, called the Yosemite Valley railroad. I was tempted to make some crass remarks about having too much time on one's hands, but frankly, the whole thing looks just awesome. He's been working on this thing since 1981."
This reminds me a lot of the beautiful Gorre & Daphetid Railroad by the late John Allen. Hands down the most amazing layout I've ever seen, there used to be a book in print called "Model Railroading with John Allen". He revolutionized the hobby because he was a professional photographer and spent incredible time on the photos he would send in to magazines etc.
It's been awhile since I was a subscriber to Model Railroader (50 bucks a year for a student is steep), but in the early nineties it seemed like the convergence of computers and model railroading was finally beginning to happen so that people who weren't in MIT and were still interested in controlling trains with computers could begin to tinker.
Course, the ultimate limitation on model railroading seems to always be space, so I'm hoping that when I have some space in the future I'll be able to get a layout going again, and even have fun working on the computer aspect.
$45 per U Colocation Special
I know most of you are too lazy to look at the photos.. but please look. That setup is amazing.
>I've always presumed such layouts are not attempts to faithfully duplicate the layout of the rail line
True. A 40 mile run in N-scale would be 1/4 mile of track. Most people don't have that much space. Nor do they want to spend the hour or so that it would take a train to travel that distance. Modelers use "selective compression" to show only the most interesting parts of the line, and a "fast clock" (typically 10x normal time) to get a full day's railroading done in an hour or two.
Call me a karma whore, but I forgot to include the Detroit Model Railroad club info.
Detroit Model Railroad Club. . . . . . . Scale: O
104 N. Saginaw
Holly, MI 48442-1405
248/634-5811
The Detroit Model Railroad Club was founded in January, 1935 as an off-shoot of The Detroit Society of Model Engineers. The Detroit Union Railroad is the basis for our freelance theme with connections with the various railroads which served the Detroit area in 1957. The narrow gage will depict eastern type narrow gage. We have 35 active members and a number of associate members. Calling the old Holly theater our home, we feel that being in an old theater creates a unique atmosphere for model railroading. Being the largest model railroad in the State of Michigan brings people in from many areas.
Meetings: Tuesday nights from 7PM to 10PM to work on the layout and have Open Houses for the public on certain weekends. We have about 40 active and 60 associate members and new members are welcome.
Here a list of model railroad clubs in Michigan.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Looks like he has sbc hosting,
Additional Data Transfer (Billed Automatically) $ 0.10 / MB / month
(the plans look like they start with 7-10GB/mo)
That can't be good if he goes over. That price is a total ripoff imho.
I have meet Jack Burgess when I was researching the Yosemite Valley Railroad to build by own version under Microsoft train simulator. Jack has so much data that he has collected on this railroad, I could believe he is probablly the worlds most knowlegable person on its history. He has also produced a book that is scheduled to be published soon that covers the history of the YVRR along with modeling tips.
Jack Burgess is considered to be one of the all-time greats. His layout and the quality of his modeling are as good as any found anywhere. If you are involved in the hobby in any way you have most likely heard of him. It's a multi-faceted hobby; some like the modeling, some like the history, some like 'operations' which involves a small group of operators who try to run the layout like a real railroad, and some like the electronics. You can even write your own Java apps to control the layout - http://jmri.sourceforge.net/ - some guys are doing it with Linux. For more examples of some outstanding layouts search on George Sellios or Howard Zane.
If you are in the USA, the national organization is
the National Model Railroad Association. You can find everything you might want to know at the site.
I've always presumed such layouts are not attempts to faithfully duplicate the layout of the rail line but to represent the scenery through which a traveler would pass. That is, there's no attempt to duplicate or scale "Then this spur goes east for 24 miles before it turns north for three more..." just do something like "and after we pass through the pine forest here near the bedroom door, we hit the town of Pidegeonville, which I placed next to the window..."
You are correct. There are actual scale model railroads (there's a museum in Chicago with a real scale model railroad of the Chicago area, for example - it's really impressive!), but they're rare. Most model railroaders attempt to model the "spirit" of a railroad, along with maybe some of its individually distinctive features, but they'll drastically shorten the "dead" areas of a railroad and/or combine the less distinctive features. The point is to capture the highlights of a railroad. Of course, many people don't bother modeling real railroads because they don't want to burden themselves with questions of accuracy - they just build whatever they think looks nice.
Same is actually true for the trains themselves. There's a segment of model railroaders who are derisively called "rivet counters" by the rest - these are people who are absolute sticklers for train model accuracy down to the last rivet. Most model railroaders, though, will accept some inaccuracies in their trains, and one of the main areas of inaccuracies is in the consists. Like layouts themselves, this is to save space - in HO scale, a typical passenger train made up of three or four locomotives and 17 or 18 85' cars could be 21-22 feet long! Most model railroaders do not run accurate trains; they run representations of them, featuring one or at the most two of every type of car in a passenger train, or simply shortened freight trains (many of which are just long and monotonous in real life anyway, IMO).
Of course, choosing a smaller scale will let you model more in the same space, but sometimes in less detail. In the US, HO scale is most popular because it still generally offers the best balance between detail level and space savings (vs. the original O scale). In Japan, N scale is the most popular because of the small size of many dwellings there - and I also think because Japanese model railroading is more fixed-consist passenger-oriented (vs. mixed freight here), so to model a train that looks remotely realistic you have to run fairly long trains. N scale has also improved dramatically in detail level over the past 20 or so years, so I expect if this hobby survives there will be a gradual increase in the popularity of N scale in this country, leading to somewhat more realistically-sized layouts.
It's a hobby still in slow decline in the US, though, going hand in hand with the decline of passenger trains in general (and the rise of other pastimes such as video and computer games - kids who in generations past would grow up with train sets are now growing up with PlayStations instead). Which is a shame - many of these layouts really are true historical documents, in the same way any museum diorama is. And they're fun, too!
http://www.maerklin.com/
The above system in Hamburg looks like the Maerklin trains. They have a digital control system where by you don't have to have any blocks to control your trains. You put out full voltage onto the rails at all times and then the engines know what direction they should go and how fast to go. It is a much better system and more realistically approximates the way real trains work.
I believe that you can even control the switches with this system.
In reading through the MIT page, I was excited because I had thought that they were implementing a similar system, however, it would appear that they are just creating a new implementation of the only multiple circuit system.
kiwi
The Musuem you speak of is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Easily the most enjoyable musuem I've ever been in, the model railroad is much more then the Chicago area. The actual city is only one small part of it, it is actually a scale model of the entire route from Chicago to Seattle. There is a site for it here: http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/great_train_stor y/index.html
The musuem also has a complete locomotive on display. If your ever in the area it's definitly worth seeing.
Since this may be the first exposure many /.ers have to some serious model railroading, I thought I'd broaden the perspective a little bit from the old standby HO (though not to at all belittle the beautiful work of Jack Burgess).
Some stuff I've been drooling over lately:
West-Side Locomotive Works
garden railroading images like this one
and of course my favorite model train company, Lehmann Gross Bahn
Enjoy, and add your own links!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Wholesome tourist attraction for kids and adults - you'll love it. Usual disclaimer applies.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Model railroading is as addictive as free beer. A Slashdotter would understand it, if exposed to it. Just plain fun. I remember the days of the eighties where a PC could be used to control the switches and stuff through the printer port. Some folks are into history, some into accurate modeling (including weathering, some into track layout and fabrication and of course scenery construction. It's all fun, you can pick and choose what you want to do and there's no criticism, really. But Google for "garden railways" and you will find the outside, huge layouts. Like I say, fun.