Randy Hees mentioned the model railroad in the thread on the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada. Rather than steal that thread, I thought I would start a new one.

The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson, Indiana has an N-gauge model railroad layout which depicts the town of North Judson as it appears in 1952. The layout is non-operating, although the signals do light up. The four railroads that ran through town at that time (Erie; C&O; Pennsy; NYC) are all shown, and the scene is "somewhat compressed" although most of the major items are included. The layout was made by one of our members (Jon Oram), with some very minor help from others, and it sits in one portion of our World War Two Pullman Troop Sleeper. I wonder what other museums have model railroads (as opposed to just railroad models), what they depict, what gauge, and whether they are operating or not.

Thanks.

Les

We have a scale "O" gauge trolley layout based on the Chevy Chase trolley line in the late 1920s. Visitors turn a K-controller handle to start the car on its route. A second hands-on exhibit allows visitors to generate power for a house and a shopping center in the backdrop. The streetscape contains many scale models and figures, including a dead skunk in the middle of the road.

Wesley

The North Carolina Transportation Museum has an N gauge model railroad of the former repair facility of Spencer as well as the yard in the days of steam and early diesel era. It is very well done in my opinion.

I am not against a models as part of a museum, just questioning how and why they are used... In the case of the Nevada State Railroad Museum the models are displacing "real" railroad equipment. On the other hand the new model layout is much better at telling the story of Nevada Railroad history than the previous one.

I have seen the trolley models at the National Trolley Museum... It adds to the interpretive efforts as does the theater showing Harold Lloyd's Speedy... I took my nieces to visit last winter... They loved it. All in all the new campus is a marked improvement... One of my "tricks" is to take a non railfan and or child when I visit a railroad museum, to see if it can hold their interest.

One big issue in railroad preservation is how we show off the stuff we have preserved... In many cases we are better at collecting and in some cases preserving that we are at explaining... Both the Nevada State Railroad Museum and the National Trolley Museum are making efforts to be museums... both are to be applauded...

Standard commercial model railroad products show up fairly frequently in the exhibits of railroad industry suppliers for trade shows. One example I recall is EMD's "O" scale cutaway model of one of their "standard" diesel shop designs, which used commercial model locomotives. This shop was complete on three sides, the fourth was a basement to roof cutaway that showed the service platforms, the oil storage tanks and washrooms in the basement, the machine shop with benches and machine tools, and the filter and gasket bins on the servicing platforms. The locomotives in the shop were 1950s "O" gauge commercial models, probably General Scale Models (predecessor to All-Nation). I hoped that shop model would end up in a museum, it was unique and a beautiful piece of work, but like most other displays at EMD it probably ended up in the trash when they were done with it.

One interesting adaptation of "N" scale to consider would be a steam locomotive servicing facility with the appropriate buildings and servicing spots to identify the various maintenance operations, perhaps with a push button light panel so visitors can locate the described operations on the diorama.

Steve Cryan (the marine artist) has built some interesting model railroad layouts in "HO" and "O" scales for museums. He incorporates miniature cameras in the locomotives and cabooses to display on large LED televisions on the wall in back of the layout. The last time I visited a museum that had one of his layouts (non-railroad museum) the room was standing-room only, filled with visitors and children, all gazing alternately at the televisions and at the model trains running around the layout. It may not be "historic" but it certainly provides an interesting attraction. There were probably as many visitors in that room (about four dozen) as were wandering around all the rest of the museum at the time.

PC

Well done model railroad exhibits can greatly enhance museums by showing people what areas looked like at certain points in history. This is most valuable when the area and its railroads have changed beyond recognition. It is really helpful if a few old landmarks remain in the modern world, so visitors know "where they are" on the model.

When I say "well done", I mean true museum quality, with fine craftsmanship, minimal selective compression, excellent structures and scenery. The rolling stock must be appropriate to the location and time being portrayed.

It is helpful if operation is restricted to one or two through trains running on the mainline. This is not a model railroad in the traditional sense, but a live diorama. Everything must be built for reliability- solder the switch points if need be.

The biggest problem I have seen, is that the best modellers seem to have the least time, and most such displays end up being built by mediocre modellers and often with substandard materials. Operation becomes unreliable, derailments abound, and they are often shut off with derailed cars strewn about.

Well done, it's a valuable addition to a museum. Poorly done, it's a waste of space.

The other end of the spectrum is a "toy train layout" in a kids' play area... while it should be sturdy and reliable, realism is unimportant as long as it keeps the kids and their parents happy.

My two cents worth, anyway...

Steve Hunter

I would like to add to the discussion that the "waste of effort" is not confined to poorly constructed model scenes, that also applies to some of the finest model railroad construction when it gets power sawed up into chunks and sent to the dump by the relatives after the modeler passes away. Over the years I have seen an impressive array of model railroad scenes end up in the trash because they were constructed in a way that made it impossible to salvage the scene or "module" and preserve it. This has reached a point now where it has been a discussion topic among some folks in the NMRA locally and even nationally. There have been suggestions of "module" size recommendations so some historically accurate scenes can be planned to be removable and salvageable from the layouts built by better modelers.

PC

Add to the "model" list the operable diorama of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, showing a "selective compression" of two street scenes, a carbarn, and the Visitors Center in O scale. There's also a model layout at the B&O Museum, and of course there's the famed giant O-scale layout at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, recently brought up to modern standards/appearance by BNSF money.

The important distinction of such a model is that it should fulfill an interpretive mission. There has always been, in model railroading, the "rifts" between the following:
*Operating guys, who try to mimic actual railroad operations and schedules;
*Miniaturists, who, in the most exaggerated example, recreate exactly Englewood Station between 3 and 4 PM CST on October 18, 1952" down to the PRR train being 14 minutes late;
*Fantasists, those creating their own miniature universes;
*Collectors, those wrapped around the models or "anything Great Northern/etc."

(Note: Toy Train collectors--Lionel, American Flyer, etc.--are an alternate universe.)

There is certainly room to accommodate the first two categories in a museum. There's not really any room for the latter two.

One of the more interesting examples out there is a Strasburg Railroad modular model RR club, which has built a condensed version of the Strasburg RR with everything from the terminal and museum across the street to the picnic grove and junction. This club shows up at RR Museum of Pa. events and train shows now and then. Another group have replicated much of the Western Maryland Railway.

An excellent example of history through model railroading is the layout of the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers. http://www.psmre.org/exhibit.htm



The layout features recognizable scenes from the Tacoma area, including Tacoma Union Station, which is adjacent to the building the layout is located in. That structure is one of the focal points of the layout.

Many scenes along the layout include historical photos showing the area being model, and local visitors can easily recognize specific scenes and locations. The scenes are somewhat compressed of course, since the layout isn't in an abandoned airplane hangar, but it a large layout, and many of the key structures are full size, or close to it.

The rolling stock on the layout is historically accurate to the time period being modeled with engines and cars that are prototypical whenever possible.

So, does the layout "preserve history"? Not in the traditional sense. There's no full size rolling stock, no steam locos being restored or cars being rebuilt. But it does preserve the history of Tacoma. It shows what the town was like in that era, and how important the railroads were to the town. (Unlike many towns, railroads still are important to Tacoma, the Port of Tacoma is a large container port.)

I guess the question of whether or not the model railroad would make a good display in a historical museum has already been answered for us though. No, it's not in a railroad museum. It is located in the Washington State History Museum, where it is an important, and very popular part of the museum's displays.

http://www.wshs.org/wshm/model-railroad.aspx

There are plenty of other model railroads in museums of course.

One of my favorites is in Pittsburgh, PA at the Carnegie Science Museum.

http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/ex ... -railroad/

The trains are tinplate Lionel (gasp!) for operating reliability, and due to tradition, but the layout itself is a wonderful scale model with hundreds of custom built structures and scenes replicating local history.

Anybody know the particulars of the incredible HO model of Cincinnatti - yeah, the whole city as it was in about 1940 - in the history museum in Union Station? I found it very impressive both as an interpretive tool and as a model.

dave

We are in the very throws of cutting up a masterpiece of model railroading here in Cheyenne, sadly it too was a layout that wasnt designed to be removed from its 65 x 12 trailer home, but save it we will and hopefully it will be reopened in time for depot days in May 2012. We are just hugely grateful that the owner Harry Brunk, realised he could no longer look after the layout and its home and generously donated it to the museum along with its handbuilt locomotives and stock before it was too late.
Pictures can be seen here......

http://car57.zenfolio.com/p540335402

Mike Pannell
Cheyenne

Remove the trailer from around it. Drive the frame and model into the freight house and jack it off the frame and roll it away.

Beautiful condensed version of Clear Creek County.

dave

What's rather ironic about the Clear Creek Layout is that I seem to recall reading in one of the many installments about the layout in Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette that he said he had built it in a trailer so that it could be moved if the need ever arose. So he thought he had planned for the future...

Ah yes, the trailer was moveable and has moved.....600 miles to Cheyenne from his home, however the layout was firmly nailed screwed and glued into its home and actually was holding the entire trailer together !

Mike Pannell
Cheyenne