Over on the "Layout Building Forum", I posted a reply to Andrew B. who is starting to build a replica of the D-148 layout from 1955. I have built a replica of the D-165 from !956 and I thought I'd share some photos of my layout here. The layout was built using techniques and materials as close as possible to those originally used by Lionel. The grass is 919, the mountain is fish-glue hardened felt painted with casein theater paints mixed with fish glue etc. Even the exposed wiring is cloth covered just like the original. Unfortunately, the layout track plan and placement of the accessories are not correct to the production D-165 layouts produced. My layout was built by reference to the 1956 Dealer Display Catalog and, at the time I built it, I did not have access to the instructions or photos of a production display. This is a rare case of Lionel making the production layout very different from the catalog illustration. Lionel used a heavily modified D-148 from 1955 for the Display Catalog illustration of the D-165, and the actual layout produced varied from that considerably. Also, note that the D-165 used only accessories available in 1955. This was typical in that the layouts for a given catalog year were actually designed late in the fall of the previous year, and so were usually one year behind in using accessories. The 2254W Congo set and 2253W GG-1 set are modern Postwar Celebration Series stand-ins, but the 2257WS 665 freight set is my original train from December, 1956 bought by my Dad when I was only two months old - he started me early!
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