Model Railroading > The End after 15 Years?

For the past 15 years or so, a couple of fishing buddies from the Spokane region of Eastern Washington have been setting up one of two modular layouts at various train shows and swap meets around the Pacific Northwest. Dave, a retired Spokane County Sheriff, and Chet a retired electrician built this custom layout with plenty of animations specifically for display at train shows. Unlike many modular layouts assembled by clubs which feature a mishmash of scenes and track conforming to NMRA standards, this modular layout was designed to be cohesive and not symmetrical in the track configuration. This will be a walk around tour of the layout in a clockwise manner. This ship in the first photo as a animated exhaust (water vapor).

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/14 08:31 by funnelfan.

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I took these photos were taken with my new Samsung S4 cell phone, so they aren't up to the usual high quality, but still ok. There are many many animated lights and scenes on the layout, something Chet's electrical background made possible. The layout is run via a Digitrax DCC system (...with all the typical problems I've heard and personally experienced at many many other Digitrax layouts).

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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The layout has several sidings to park and run trains from during the course of the day of a show.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Dave's long career as a sheriff comes through in the multiple accident scenes.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Nice!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

As age and the cost of gas have overwhelm the enthusiasm of showing the layout off, this past weekend was the last anticipated display of this layout. The customized layout also comes with a custom trailer. Dave and Chet hope to sell the layout, but if no sale price is agreed upon, they will dismantle the display layout. Dave and Chet also have an additional display layout, which they will show at the Spokane Train Show this next winter.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Nice looking portable layout. The positive thing about this vs. a home layout, is this could be taken over by a club and continued to be displayed. The down side is the cost put into it may make it cost prohibitive for a club to take over. It would be a shame to see it dismantled and possibly disposed of. Hopefully the portable nature of it will make it a good candidate for re-use.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

The people in the area seem to be an insurance company nightmare!

That's a nice layout, those guys did some great work. Hopefully it will find a good home.

Nathan

That is a nice layout, I'm betting the odds of it being saved are proportionate to what the cost to build it was and how much of a return on investment both men want out of it.

I can say that it looks like it would be worth quite a bit, the scenery is nice track looks good, sounds as if the wiring should be top notch, and if it's been all over for 15 years I would hazard to say construction was pretty darn good as well.

Now is there someone looking for a somewhat completed layout? Lets face it I would assume if you have a basement or garage you could have it set up and running within a day or two. Not something most of us can claim to have accomplished even with the all might carpet / floor routes.

Kris

Were all of the buildings removed when taken down?