Today was the first day at the Golden State Model Railroad Museum, in Richmond.  Established in 1933, the Museum went through several locations before ending up here, as a part of a regional park.  There are three layouts here – O scale, HO and N gauge, as well as the standard gauge layout of the late TV host, Tom Snyder. 

Our work today consisted of shooting the N gauge layout and the Snyder layout.  The N gauge is the most complete of the three layouts.  There was plenty of train action, with trains moving through Donner Pass, around Tehachapi Loop, and through the Elvis Wye.  We spent considerable time on that layout, and then moved on to Tom Snyder’s layout. 

This display was in Tom’s house, and has a lot of the prewar standard gauge features such as the Hellgate Bridge, the powerhouse, the passenger station and the four stall roundhouse.  It will soon be housed in a special area of the museum, after the completion of some remodeling.

Today we worked the HO and O scale sides of the club.  Both of these layouts are pretty big.  As usual, there was a lot of running the trains, backing, rerunning, backing, and rerunning.  Our stand ups were all good, short and to the point.  So hopefully, I won’t have a great deal of verbiage to transcribe once I get the footage.  One of the areas on the HO side was the Oakland Mole, or ferry terminal.  The thing was scratch built and looked very authentic. 

 

 

 The O gauge side, in particular, had a real warren of below level passages and walkways.  Once could get very lost in that one!  But the trains ran well, and there were some beautiful scenes of California on these layouts.  We finished and will celebrate the completion of another segment later tonight.  Tomorrow we are off to the Los Angeles area.

Today we visited FairPlex, which is the home of the Los Angeles County Fair.  The grounds host the fair, as well as many special events throughout the year.  We started with a standup at the display of the Southern California Chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society.  Our host was Loren Martens, who did an exemplary job on camera.  The group has a display on the FairPlex grounds.  The initial stop was the restored Arcadia, CA station, complete, with railroad artifacts, an office in the turret, and of course, a gift shop.

The group has a variety of railroad equipment, including a Big Boy from the Union Pacific, several remaining three cylinder steam locos, as well as a Climax, a narrow gauge locomotive, as a couple of representative cars. 

Also on display is an EMD DDA40X, which was the largest diesel ever built, coming at around coming at around 6,500 horsepower, provided by two V16 diesels.  It is also the longest single diesel ever built.  We have seen several of these, one, for parts, in the middle of South Dakota.. 

From there we headed across the parking lot to the FairPlex Garden Railroad.  This is a fairly large public display, open all year round, but of course, all the time for the two week LA County Fair in September.  It has been through several iterations, even though the operation has stayed in the same spot for better than 70 years.  This operation was started in 1935, as a demonstration for the LA County Water District to demonstrate the Puddingstone Dam.  A local shop teacher kept it going, and you’ll just have to tune into the segment to find out the rest of the story. 

Rick Bremer, Assistant Volunteer Coordinator, was our host, and he and a small crew of volunteers ran trains, talked on camera, and generally helped us out with our shooting.  Things went very smoothly with the friendly bunch, and we had a delightful time.  So running around the ponds, past representations of California, we had the Southern Pacific Daylight, a Western Pacific headed Zephyr, and the Union Pacific headed freight.

California would not be complete without logging and mining representation, so of course, there were narrow gauge mountain operations.  These were complete with abandoned lines and wooden trestles.

The trains ran well, the layout had ponds with flowing water, and while it looks like there is a great deal of shrubbery, there are only three types of plants; junipers, dwarf Alberta spruce, and boxwood.   As I said, the group ran a mixture of freight and passenger, and we really got some nice material.

I made my cameo appearance, as a volunteer track cleaner, but we shall have to see if I make the final cut, or simply fade onto the cutting room floor.

Nothing to do now, but pack up, ship stuff home, and go home ourselves.  The next shoot is in May, in the Midwest.  Stay tuned.