Anyone Model Their Own Town?

Ginsaw,

An old friend has an HO layout that replicates an area between two towns on the Housatonic River in CT. He did a great job. When you look at the layout, you immediately say "I've seen this somewhere before..."

What was really impressive is that he took pictures from certain viewpoints and had them printed to use as backdrops, so when you look across a bridge to the next town, there's the church you always see when you drive over the bridge.

He modeled the towns in the 50's so there's a factory where the Home Depot sits now!

I'll try to find some pics, but it's been a while since I visited.

Ed

I have a layout section inspired by the junction of the narrow gauge Bridgton and Saco River and the standard gauge MEC Mountain Division in Hiram, Maine. The landscape includes a model of our home. Good fun!

Jan

I haven't done it yet, but someday I want to model Lehigh Gap, Pa. There was the 2 tracks of Lehigh Valley Railroad on one side of the Lehigh River, 2 of New Jersey Central on the other side, and overhead was a Lehigh & New England bridge.

I working on the town I grew up in. It's a "what if" because the tracks never went there. Over the hill 50 miles south is a Rio Grande main line. Over the one to the north a bit farther is the old UP mainline in Wyoming.
I'm modeling late Steam.

If I stayed in N scale I was going to model the N&W yards and Roanoke shops with all the turn of the last century buildings lining both sides of the yards .

Now I'd need the space the size of a football field

David

One day, under the influence of some intoxicant or other, some railroad modeling friends and I figured that if we created a Z scale outdoor railroad, we could get the entire L.I.R.R. mainline from Greenport to Riverhead on a right-of-way about 600 feet long.

I even went so far as to ask the railroad to send me pages out of the employee timetable that show every grade crossing, switch, siding and signal. To my surprise they actually sent the info. (This was way before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent hardening of railroad security.)

The plan was to use 2 x 12 planks set on top of a fence along one edge of my property, which is about 900 feet long. For some reason, we haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

From time to time all of us harbor delusions of granduer...

In one* of my past model railroad lives, I modeled my stomping grounds: A portion of the Frisco's Fort Smith Subdivision in HO scale.

I did the best I could in the space I had. Frisco friends that viewed it felt I did a good job caputuring the "essentails".

However, I was never satisfied with it, and that frustration eventually lead to abandoning the attempt of trying to replicate prototype scenes. I modified the layout and went with a proto-lanced approach using my own line I created. (The Kansas City & Gulf.) Better, but still not completely satisfying. Frankly, it is very difficult to bring the expanse of the Arkansas Ozarks (or Rockies, or Alleghenies, etc) into even a large room or basement.

I have concluded that you can never bring such vast "real world" settings inside ANY walled enviorn, especially expansive scenes. (Read "mountains" and "distance". Ain't gonna' happen.

I also have concluded that given the tight confines we typically have to work with, I have decided that (for me) urban settings offer the best ability to accomodate the compromises we must make in model railroading.

So yes, I've modeled familiar stomping grounds... but didn't feel it was truly sastisfying over the long haul.

For the past several years, my focus has been more of trying to caputure a "feel" of the theme I want to project... and try to use the shortcomings of model railroading to my advantage if possible.

Of course, your mileage may vary!

Andre

* Two layouts were actually devoted to the FS Sub. However, the first was built with more of enthusiasm than skill... do I don't really count it.

I haven't tried to build a model of the town where I grew up but my modules are populated with places that were in and around that town.







Pete

I'm planning on modeling the Oyster Bay branch of the Long Island Railroad. The branch runs right through the village I grew up in (Mineola). Because of the scale, I will of course have to make some concessions (as we all must), but I'm very excited. I'm in the process of getting the room ready for building the benchwork. I considered a lot of different railroads to model, but I didn't have to look beyond my own back yard...

Andy

I sort of did this when I had an N gauge layout about ten years ago.

I built a tiny subdivision with models of all the homes my father had rented or owned as I was growing up and after I went off the college, the houses my grandparents had owned, the houses I had rented or owned, the three houses my kids now own, along with a few landmarks from my youth - the elementary school I went to, the tiny grocery store where I bought comics, the five and dime i could walk to and buy toys and models, etc. I scratch built 42 buildings in all. The terrain and a big hill overlooked the subdivision are modeled after my Mom's hometown, where I spent each summer with my grandparents.

This shows about 1/3 of the subdivision and is the only picture I could find. The white house on the corner is the house my Mom grew up in and where I spent summers. The house across the street from it is where I live now.

Sorry the picture is so poor - it was taken by a .6M pixel digital camera that used floppy disks - that's how old it is. When I tore up my layout to build the O layout I kept all the houses. They are now on a shelf in the train room.

Adam Maitland did a fine job in Beetlejuice.

I'm just starting mine. The hard part is to be happy with it, I'm going to have to make everything. I'm starting with the downtown area which will be scale and include the most impressive buildings, some stand today, some don't. To make the layout work in the space I have, I need to sacrafice in some areas, but in the end it will be worth it, with each building on the layout acting as a reflection of history. Doing this is what makes me most passionate about this hobby. That and trains rule....

Since you brought up the topic, I think it'd be neat if you included your hometown in your signature so that we knew which town you are referring to.

Having said that, there aren't enough interesting things to model in the towns that I have lived in.

A bunch of guys and I modeled downtown Pawling in HO at the historical society. It portrays the day in 1948 when Thomas E. Dewey announced his candidacy for president of the U.S. from the platform of a NYC observation car. It is a working layout. I also made a track plan for an N scale garage-sized layout of Pawling and the surrounding area, but we moved into another house before I got it built. Now that I'm into hirail, not a chance.

Jay

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
I haven't tried to build a model of the town where I grew up but my modules are populated with places that were in and around that town.



Pete

Pete,

Really like the underpass. Very nicely done.

George

I am modeling parts of the Weirton, WV - Steubenville, OH area. Various parts of the area are described in intro to my PRR Panhandle Division.

George

Closest I've come to this would be changing a sound file on an MTH RK MP-54 commuter set. I got the PRR set, but changed it out with the Reading sound file. The Reading used to run the now-SEPTA tracks that run through my town, so now my MP-54 set's station announcement use my local town names. Not true to prototype (Reading blue commuter cars would be truly prototypical), but it' my fantasy, right?

When I was doing HO I built a model of my first house and models of the Seaboard Air Line depots in Portsmouth, Suffolk, and Franklin. The Portsmouth depot/office building would be HUGE in O scale, I think it was approx 12"x12"x24" in HO. There's a couple of businesses in Portsmouth like the old Tankar Gas Station and the Skippy Peanut Butter plant with it's distinctive silos painted like jars of creamy and chunky peanut butter that I would like to model in O, but so far haven't done them.

The Tankar Station would be easy (I've done it in HO) but finding the appropriate photos of the Skippy silos to make some decals has proven impossible.

I model the Seaboard, but in Portsmouth practically all of the freight traffic was handled by the Norfolk & Portsmouth Belt Line, so to model my hometown I'd have to model the NPBL with Seaboard, ACL, and a few other RRs as connecting points instead of the main RR.

There was a link someone posted on here a couple of years ago of a layout that look just like the town it was built after. I think it had to be torn down because they lost the rent of the building.

phillman, it's true I've never put the hometown in the signature line and I don't do tag lines, but I've said what town it is many, many times and some know it anyway. It's kinda like, it's not in the phonebook, but you can get it from directory assistance.

Speaking of which, the biggest problem I see conceptually with doing a hometown layout is, how to get the perimeters to work. For instance, the roads of my hometown on paper are this way - http://condrenrails.com/MRP/Memphis-Railroad-Maps.htm

What you've got are many lines coming in from all sides and all converging, crossing over each other and passing thru, and how on earth can that be modelled when a model railroad has to be a closed circuit.

You could have a very large circular or oval for the closed circuit with lines coming off curved switches I guess to get into the interior, kind of like reversing loops with yards and crossovers. But the river part with the lines coming in from the west would be almost impossible.

I've heard at the LHS that someone once built something like it in HO. But I never got to see it.

Otherwise, in O Gauge I think you have two practical options. One, is to do what I'm doing now. A few individual scenes that remind of something real. Or, there's the more "cheesy" way, which is just put down something like an MTH switch tower and pretend it's the Aulon Tower I know from having seen it so many times (in better days - it's a very old structure)- http://condrenrails.com/MRP/Me...ions/Aulon-Tower.htm

Anyhow, Farmer Bill, the Maitlands' town in Beatlejuice was partly what prompted me to start this topic. Rather imaginative of them to include that in the movie. But, obviously the Maitlands' neighborhood had no railroads.

Oh, Lee, what you built is outstanding and is exactly what I had in mind. Great work there!

The Rio Grande Railroad served my hometown. I have made a replica of my
father's hardware store and and also the train depot where my first girlfriend's
father worked for Railway Express. The Plasticville "Frosty Bar" is used to represent my first job at a burger joint. (pre-McDonald's)

as soon as I can find someone to build the east stroudsburg DL&W station from the switch tower all the way down to the end of the freight station. in real life it was 3000+ ft, this will be my starting point or middle of the layout.

A modular group in the Lancaster, PA area has a wonderful "HO" point-to-point layout of Strasburg starting at the Choo-Choo Barn, to the end if the RR line. It includes the PRR Museum, which has a roof that comes off to show the exhibits inside.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe Hohmann:
A modular group in the Lancaster, PA area has a wonderful "HO" point-to-point layout of Strasburg starting at the Choo-Choo Barn, to the end if the RR line. It includes the PRR Museum, which has a roof that comes off to show the exhibits inside.

Yes, I've seen it, usually on display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania during one of their "celebration" weekends. It is very nicely done and if I recall, includes the Caboose Motel.

George

I have not, but my neighbor who is into N scale has and that is quite an
Accomplishment given the fact that most of the town of Saucier burnt in the early
1900's.
He had to go by photos and what "ole timers" could provide.

Me? I just don't have that much interest, even though the town was built by my namesake.

Rufus
(aka Bernard)

I have not attempted to do a whole town, but I converted an MTH drive in into a Chip's restaurant similar to the one that is about 15 miles from here in Merrill WI. This chain has been a regional favorite for over 40 years. The owners were so flattered by my efforts, that they printed the picture, framed it and hung it in their restaurant.

quote:

I have not attempted to do a whole town, but I converted an MTH drive in into a Chip's restaurant similar to the one that is about 15 miles from here in Merrill WI. This chain has been a regional favorite for over 40 years. The owners were so flattered by my efforts, that they printed the picture, framed it and hung it in their restaurant.

Wow, fantastic!

There's a local BBQ chain here that goes way back. I wouldn't mind re-creating one of their places. Maybe with a chimney with BBQ scented smoke fluid and a fan driven smoke unit?? Who knows.

No question about it, many a good idea has come from posts that appear on this forum...

I am sort of modeling my home town.

In the Silver Meteor topic on last 2-3 pages I have been posting my representation of the Trenton PRR station, only 8 car platforms on mainline, Fair, Morris and Monmouth Junction interlockings including eventually Custom Signals PRR signals. My modeling will include a shortened Delaware River bridge.

I have tracked the station and most of all three interlockings and have ballasted much. If interested pictures are posted on Silver Meteor topic, mostly on pages 4 and 5.

mikeg

quote:

Originally posted by Ginsaw:

quote:

I have not attempted to do a whole town, but I converted an MTH drive in into a Chip's restaurant similar to the one that is about 15 miles from here in Merrill WI. This chain has been a regional favorite for over 40 years. The owners were so flattered by my efforts, that they printed the picture, framed it and hung it in their restaurant.

Wow, fantastic!

There's a local BBQ chain here that goes way back. I wouldn't mind re-creating one of their places. Maybe with a chimney with BBQ scented smoke fluid and a fan driven smoke unit?? Who knows.

No question about it, many a good idea has come from posts that appear on this forum...

I like the barbeque smoke idea. Ted's Hots pictured above was based on their original stand in Buffalo:



I had contacted to company to verify the sign colors in the black and white photo and they told me to send pics when finished. It was worth three T shirts.

The model features charcoal grill with a glowing coals. Ted's Hots are grilled not boiled or broiled.



Those would be your regulars and foot longs.

Pete

Here is the town of Sasquatch where I'm from. BF

I thought I had lost these,but here's photos of the Skippy Plant and Tankar Station that were here in Portsmouth:





I know I've shown them before, I was hoping by now one of the makers would put out a kit of the Tankar business.

Bob, the Tankar looks like the kind of scratch build you could really sink your teeth into...your basic Hooker tank car would be a good start..

To have the kind of local flavor I would most enjoy will require some animated signs that aren't likely ever to be produced. They'd have to be customized. I brought that idea up in another thread and it looks at present like Miller is the only possible source. I may be giving him a call.

Oh, for those gas prices! 31.9/gal!!! That Tankar station would be neat.

It is certainly hard to model much of any home town in O Scale.

However I have been able to loosly model my hi-rail layout on my home town of Lowell, MA.

I've captured several of the old industries on Tanner Street including the Max Levine scrap yard and the Mahoney coal and oil company.

I've also modeled Lowell tower, the NYNH&H/PC interchange, the Lowell Sun Building (Shortened to 6 stories) and the Bleachery yard and car shop, expanded to include an engine service area.

I only have scenery on a portion of the layout but plan to include Billerica station, Lowell station (modern),and several other local industries.

Dick P

Vicksburg, Michigan had an unusual intersection and interchange of tracks of the GT-GTW and GR&I-PRR-PC-CR*. The hard part would be to create the curve of the Grand Trunk Western tracks with the crossing of the PRR-PC tracks through that curve. There would have to be reverse loops at each end of the tracks. The spur to the paper mill is something that must be included.

To make the O Gauge track dimensions realistic would require a space at least 40' x 40', preferrably 60' x 60'.

Vicksburg would have to be modeled the way it appeared between 1905-1940 or 1940-1976 when the railroads were a greater influence on commerce and travel.

Andrew

quote:

Originally posted by milnyc:
I have not attempted to do a whole town, but I converted an MTH drive in into a Chip's restaurant similar to the one that is about 15 miles from here in Merrill WI. This chain has been a regional favorite for over 40 years. The owners were so flattered by my efforts, that they printed the picture, framed it and hung it in their restaurant.

Why that design closely reaembles one chain down south called

Whattaburger !

Rufus

Ok, now you've done it. I may have to go get a Whataburger (one "t") for supper. Problem is, they're on the
other side of town.

But, modeling your own town, at least in spots here and there, is certainly something we all do. Actually, it would take
a lot of discipline to NOT model your daily experiences and/or your past.