(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] It wasn't so long ago
that trains were part of everyday life
in America and the developed world.
- [Voiceover] Here, there's something for every taste.
From Dad's favorite, the electric trains,
to the latest design in space rockets.
Still, even the comparatively old-fashioned train sets
have innovations that keep them abreast of the times.
For example, two trains on the same track,
yet individually controlled.
- [Voiceover] And then things changed.
We thought we had to say goodbye to childish things.
But no one knows why.
Of course, no one would call this a childish thing.
Maybe a little explaining is in order.
- I don't think the public understands the distinction
between model railroading and toy trains.
But I think they would enjoy both of them
if they did understand that distinction.
And I think the people who
use one or the other as a hobby
would also appreciate everybody
understanding the distinction.
It would actually make their hobby more fun.
- [Voiceover] This is scale-model railroading.
It's pretty serious business.
(folksy music)
This is scale-model railroading.
And so is this.
(train chugging)
This too.
This is not.
Neither is this.
Nor this.
Scale.
Not scale.
- The advantage of three railers,
particularly with younger children,
is that they're virtually indestructible toys.
And I say that knowing that
I have several locomotives that have survived
a four-foot drop off the table and still run.
- Notice the construction here.
Very solid metal. (metallic tapping)
That's not plastic.
So that's the way they used to build them.
I remember my Lionel set.
These,
you see a lot of sparks and stuff.
They had electrical pick up for that middle rail.
And,
my brother and I, we both had Lionel trains.
What we used to do is,
I'm ashamed to admit this,
but we used to run the trains into each other.
Stage these elaborate train wrecks.
- Model railroading isn't a toy, per se.
It's cute, I admit that it's cute, can be cute.
It's more that it is
somebody's interpretation of life.
In miniature.
Sometimes a good interpretation, sometimes not so good,
sometimes abstract art.
But it's somebody's interpretation.
And it moves and it runs.
And if it's done right, it can be a thing of beauty.
There is a lot of misperception about
model railroading out there. (laughs)
And bless their hearts, as they say in the south.
Usually they say that when they're
about to say something bad about somebody,
but bless their hearts.
That misperception is based upon a
misunderstanding of what model railroading is.
We look at model railroading,
and the NMRA is primarily what we call a scale
model railroading operation, which is what,
scale means the relationship between
the real thing and a model.
So if you have a 40-foot boxcar,
and you have a scale of one inch to the foot,
well that boxcar's gonna be so big.
That's scale-model railroading.
Toy trains, or tin plate,
which most the public thinks model railroading is, Lionel.
Normally not scaled.
In other words, that 40-foot boxcar may be
actually shorter or long, actually shorter.
Because it's a toy and they're trying to fit it
within a packaging unit.
Or they're trying to make it a certain way.
And they don't really care that
it's not absolutely to scale.
- [Voiceover] Okay.
But there's room for everyone in this hobby.
(laughing)
- Thank you.
- [Voiceover] Describing model railroading
and the people who do it can be contentious.
It's not hard to offend in a community
with such loyalties and passions.
But there is one thing all model railroaders can agree on,
model railroading is good for you.
- I lose myself in this hobby.
No matter what's going on in my life,
it's very relaxing just to sit out there
and work at the work bench.
- For a lot of people, it's a,
stress relief.
To some people, it would drive 'em nuts,
but to a certain group of people,
working with that train, working with your hands,
it's something that kinda calms you down.
- There are two things that are very important to me,
one is the ability to calm down,
chill out and soothe my head,
by watching a train go around.
I don't know why, some psychologist can explain that to me,
but all I know is if I do,
if I have a train on the track that I like
and it's running well, and it goes around and around
and around, I get calmer and calmer with each lap.
- A long time ago I had a psychiatrist come in here
and he explained to me how he himself
had built a model railroad, in part for his own use,
but it was a way him getting away from his day-to-day life.
- I think model railroading,
I think a lot of people could hide.
Here in the northeast, it's in the basement.
And I know a lot of...
Wives that probably wish their husbands
didn't spend quite so much time in their basement.
So I don't know if they're hiding from their lives or
hiding from the pressures of life.
They just go downstairs and play with their trains.
When I first roll into my train room and look around...
It's a feeling of calm,
until I notice a spider web
or a piece of dust.
And then I notice another one and then another one.
And then I realize how much work I have ahead of me.
And I tape a little paintbrush on my hand
and I start dusting.
It, I never thought dusting could be so relaxing,
but,
I would say that...
It could be a substitute for an anti-depression medication.
- The concentration that comes in working on
a model, doing the research,
adding small details parts to something,
is a little like yoga in its concentration.
I mean you cannot
worry about the world outside when
you're working with small tools and a magnifier,
trying to get something just right.
And with every small detail,
again, you're evoking something from that period.
It is, in some ways, I think, a protest
against the world as it is because you say
I'm going to be God for a while,
I'm gonna create a happy ending.
I'm gonna create characters.
It's a protest against the world as it is.
I don't accept the world as it is.
In some ways, with a model railroader,
you're creating a world.
For a little bit of time, there's power.
- The whole concept of
having a small empire that you're
in complete control of, I think, appeals to some.
- [Voiceover] Just drives you crazy
trying to keep the world in shape.
Come on up there, that's better.
- What isn't compelling about the idea
of creating a world the way you wanna see it?
The way that you wish the world was,
or the way it was at a time where
you thought it was just particularly great.
- To me, the act of creation that way is just,
is just great.
And model railroading is the venue,
it gives you something to aim for,
rather than just, I'm gonna build a dollhouse,
I'm gonna build a bicycle.
Now I'm gonna build a train, I'm gonna build a town,
I'm gonna build a city, I'm gonna build a layout.
The creation part of it is what's so cool about it.
- John Allen, who was a prolific modeler back in the
early days of model railroading.
He always had these little whims built into his scenes.
A stegosaurus pulling a boxcar?
Come on, who does that?
(laughing)
What other hobby do you know could do that and kind of say,
it's my world, so what? (laughing)
- I might go to, let's say I go to somebody's house,
and I look at their model railroad and
let's say it has a lot of toilet humor.
It might have, say,
a scene where there's a prostitute,
or things like that.
And you wonder what made him put that there
because this person that has
a prostitute and a John modeled on his layout...
It might be your pastor at your church,
and it kinda makes you wonder, like,
hmm, is he trying to live a secret life there?
Or something like that.
But I have noticed that.
You look at somebody's layout and you'll
have a scene on there that I'm like,
I wouldn't think of you
planning a scene like that in your head.
(stammering)
I did meet a priest that had a,
maybe not a priest, a pastor.
I don't know if there's a difference or not.
That had a dirty scene on his layout,
I was very surprised.
- It's just a toy that we have fun with
and it gives me pleasure
and I get to,
create, I get to create stuff.
Just like a painter would take a blank canvas,
I take a car out of a box, it's unpainted.
Put it together the way I want it put together.
And I get to paint it the way I want it
and I get to weather it the way I want it.
When I'm happy with it, then I...
(laughs)
Really, I put it back in a box again,
and store it until the next time I wanna look at it.
It seems kinda silly, but that's my deal.
- A lot of us see,
incorrectly, I'm sure,
we see model railroading as an art form.
And I think it really is.
In other words,
If you paint a backdrop, that's art.
If you paint a locomotive,
or weather it to make it look old and used, that's art.
If you put a building so that it looks
right in a scene, that's art.
If you arrange several buildings into a bigger scene,
that's art.
So when you start getting into art,
you can offend sensibilities pretty quickly.
And so I think the line is right there at some point.
But I think if you've
got everybody in a mellow mood and discuss it,
I think we could probably come
to some kind of understanding.
- [Voiceover] Okay.
So why should we care about model railroading?
(train humming)
- What model railroading, like any other
creative pursuit...
Is the participant gets actively engaged in it.
Model railroading, in the end is going to
train your brain by requiring you to do
lots of different things to be multimodal.
I honestly think that the combination of
thinking about engineering, about fine-motor control,
about the kind of problem solving that
operations involves.
Or even designing a layout and figuring out
how you're gonna fit stuff in.
All that kind of flexibility that's required to do it,
I think tends to keep people's brains pretty sharp.
I think the worst thing for brains is sort of
the degree to which we end up
doing the same thing over and over again.
The ways in which
we end up becoming passive not active.
Obviously you could do that as a model railroader,
but if you're gonna take it really seriously,
you've gotta be active and you've gotta really
be working in many different modes at once.
(jaunty music)
- I retired about,
oh, 10 years ago.
And I began kinda searching around for
a hobby or something and it was a natural progression
to get back into model railroading.
- The most important thing is to have a hobby.
I see too many people whose
entire lives are their jobs.
And if your job's really rewarding,
let's say maybe you're a trial lawyer
or a doctor.
And your life is important to a lot
of people and all that, great.
But most lawyers and doctors I know are retiring.
And one of,
our kid's pediatrician, in fact,
called me up and he says "Okay.
"It was my turn to take care of the kids,
"now it's your turn to come help me with model railroading."
And I think that's very smart of him because
what are you gonna do with your time?
You don't want to idle.
And there's too many people that
just retire and literally die.
And I think it's almost out of boredom,
I don't know what the physiology is,
but they just stagnate because they got nothing to do.
(slow instrumental music)
- I think anything in which you have a passion
not only can keep you young,
it can keep you alive and keep you going.
And I think model railroading has that potential.
So does golf.
So does...
I had a very good friend who
came down from the state of Oregon
to a great organization in California.
There was no commitment, but it was sorta of okay,
you know, when the current Executive Director retires,
you'll become Executive Director.
Well that didn't happen and he was very disappointed.
And all he could do was look forward to his retirement.
He retired.
He was gonna write a book.
He was gonna lecture.
He moved out to Rossmoor Leisure World
and he was dead in three years.
He didn't have anything to do.
He didn't have anything to keep him going.
So, model railroading,
can keep you alive.
But so can a lot of other things.
You gotta have a passion.
- When I retired from the state of California,
where I worked for 40 years,
there were a couple of people in my office
who didn't retire and they could've.
I'd asked them, "Why aren't you gonna retire?"
And they said,"I'm scared to retire,
"because I don't have anything to do."
And I thought my God, that's tragic.
They were so lucky,
happy, for me.
Because they said, "You're so lucky,
"you have something to do, you have a hobby."
Oh my gosh, it isn't like I'm the only one with a hobby.
One thing that we're looking at is trying
to reach out to people who are near retirement.
The kids have grown up.
They have maybe a little more income that they can keep now,
instead of paying for the kids' expenses.
And they wanna do something meaningful.
Well, this is a meaningful hobby,
it's a constructive hobby.
- One of the things that I think distinguishes,
not just model railroaders, of course, but,
model railroaders among others is that
they've never given up playing.
That the play part of their life
is maybe more important than
the work part of their life.
Which I think is actually a healthy thing.
- Everybody comes to the hobby with their own
viewpoint, with their own motivation of why they
play with trains or
operate trains.
I mean, you don't wanna say they're playing with trains,
because that would be too childlike,
so they say they operate the trains.
But it's still definitely a form of play.
- I think when people say we're not playing,
they're really, I understand why they'd say that,
they feel a little defensive because
in common usage, play is a bad thing,
it's something only kids do.
I think
those of us who have looked at it,
whether through the fields of education,
developmental psychology, probably have
a different meaning of the word play.
So when a model railroader says he's not playing,
I respect that what he's really saying is,
"I take this seriously,
"I'm doing some really serious, interesting things."
I would argue that play is much more complicated.
Rembrandt and Da Vinci played.
Einstein said, "Play is the highest form of research."
So, in a sense,
you can be really serious, working really hard,
making really good stuff and also be playing.
And I think that's what model railroaders are doing.
- There's a difference between playing with toys
and scale-model railroading, for sure.
Or scale-model airplanes or scale-model boats.
But there's real joy and it's not profit oriented,
it's not work oriented, it's leisure time oriented.
And I think the minute you say
leisure time, in some way you're saying play.
- I think you have to have a little bit of a kid inside you.
I really do.
And a little kid gets to play.
The adult gets to learn new stuff.
And that's one of the things that's great about this hobby.
And I don't we should ever be afraid of being kids
and playing.
That's a real good part of this hobby.
- [Voiceover] Not all model railroaders would agree.
At least, not openly.
Because model railroading is serious business.
- There are a lot of
little niches in this hobby.
You'll find people who are attracted to
full-size railroads in their current form.
You'll find people who are attracted to
full-size railroads in the past.
Modelling a certain period of the past.
Modelling the present.
You'll find people whose specialty is scenery.
You'll find people who are in love with freight cars.
People who love passenger trains.
People who love building track work.
People who adore the electronics.
And the electronics have come a long way
in the hobby over the past couple of years.
I would say my specific niche,
if I had any, is probably freight cars.
My interest in full-size railroads,
although I have some things that are present day,
probably ended,
somewhere in the late 1950s,
specifically for the Santa Fe Railway.
So I don't do a lot of what they call railfanning,
which is going out along the tracks
and taking photographs of
current prototype locomotives.
I'm not interested, that's not the period I model,
so most of my modelling comes from research.
Books, old photographs and things like that.
- Model railroading is a niche hobby.
Within that niche hobby there is
an infinite amount of niches.
You can break down on
ideas of scale,
of era.
Whether you like passenger trains or
freight trains.
Which particular railroad line you like the best.
How much you're gonna be concerned about
getting the details absolutely right,
the fidelity to prototype,
it's often described as.
Your personal tolerance for how much whimsy
you're gonna have on your layout, in your models.
- You have people who do scenery.
You have people who love doing buildings.
So you have artists, you have architects,
you have
people who love to
play conductor.
- There's a whole side of the hobby about operations.
So instead of just running the trains around the layout,
you start running them the way the railroad ran them.
Which means that
there were rules that you had to comply with.
There were train orders that were issued
that governed the movement of trains.
You had to wait while the conductor
walked back from uncoupling the car
before you could move the locomotive.
So there's a whole set of,
aspect, to the hobby, if you will,
that's focused on operations.
And there's some people who just love to do that,
and that's all they ever wanna do.
- I enjoy operation.
I'm one of these guys that goes to these
half day or day-long operating sessions.
With the cards and the routing
and the dispatchers, I love that stuff.
- There's a lot of people that'll build
switching layouts.
Which are generally small
shelf-type layouts that
become puzzles.
And you try to get,
you try to create
what actually happens in the real world.
You try to solve the problem of getting
cars from one place to another
in the least amount of time.
- I like trains that are weathered.
And that means trains that,
rolling stock and locomotives,
that look as if they've been through the elements.
They have dust on them,
they're not perfectly washed
and gorgeous.
They don't look like they come right out of the box.
I like to add a certain level of detail.
- Extreme weathering is cars have been out there
for years, on the rails.
Rusted,
beat up, faded.
And then a lot of us have taken it
to that level, you weather the cars,
to make it look exactly like the prototype.
- There's a whole tribe, I like to call them tribes,
of model railroaders that do subways.
And mass-transit type things.
- Most of the thing for me, is making accurate models.
Whether I get to actually run the trains or not, eh.
I do once in a while, a couple times a year.
- I'm fascinated by the
passenger train industry.
And of course, that's why we,
the Coachyard specializes in nothing but passenger trains,
famous passenger trains of the United States.
That's my fascination.
It was an era of travel that was
a very unique, very stylish,
very elegant.
You had the various first class versus tourist class,
but yet the dining experience was fantastic.
The lounge experience.
It was just a great way of travelling.
It was a much slower pace than how we travel today.
- [Voiceover] The comfort has increased.
They're trying the Pullman appeal.
- [Voiceover] Many model railroaders remember the old days.
Even if they didn't actually experience them.
History is such a big part of the hobby.
- My grandfather,
whom I never met,
because he died when I was six months old.
He worked on the railroad.
So I grew up
and have grown up with this image,
this sort of lore...
- Actually it has got all Pullman fittings,
but it was actually built in Canada.
- There was an old Pullman car parked in
that area where the tracks were.
And I just would have all of these
images of being in the Pullman car, riding the train,
through the night somewhere to some distant place.
A couple of times we met some people
who I believe lived in the car at the time.
And they took me and my brother through
and they showed us how everything worked.
They pulled down the fold-out beds
and they showed where the...
How the sinks all worked.
And then they showed where you sat.
And it was just, for a kid who was,
maybe, seven, eight or nine years old,
it was just fascinating.
- I got into railroading,
I think,
because of my brother.
My brother always loved trains.
He was in the Navy.
And this is in the late 50s.
He came home on a 30-day leave.
And he brought home a number of HO gauge brass locomotives
that the Japanese had begun manufacturing.
The Navy would
shell Korea.
(intense music)
- [Voiceover] Spring is a bloody time in Korea.
- And the battleships and the large cruisers
would come back to port.
And they literally would shove the brass gun shell casings
over the side in the harbor.
And the Japanese sent out their pearl divers.
And they dove down and retrieved the brass gun shell casings
and took them back and melted the brass down
and made them into things that they
could sell back to the sailors.
Brass models of ships,
and brass models of trains.
So my brother came home with a whole bunch
of these beautiful brass models.
Which, at the time, were the latest and best
that was available in HO scale railroading.
And we decided to build a layout.
- I have been a model railroader
since I was a small child.
Starting with a wind-up train,
and then a first simple electric train,
which I still have,
at home, and it's still operable.
And then I went to finer and finer scales,
finer level of details
in my trains.
And now I am what I'd call a scale-model railroader.
I come by this honestly, my grandfather was,
worked for 56 years for the Santa Fe Railway.
And his father before him
and even I worked for the railroad
in the 1960s, out of Chicago,
working my way through college.
So I did a little railroading myself.
And it's just always been a part of my life,
and my family's life, as I say, for a couple of generations.
So I guess there was no way for me
to really escape from trains.
Had I live, grown up, somewhere else
other than Chicago,
the railroad capital of the nation.
Let's say had I grown up in Boston, or Nantucket,
I'd probably be modelling ships.
But I model trains.
I picked 1954.
The railroads were all at their heights.
There were many different railroads.
There's something going by right now,
in the background.
And that is music to my ears.
- You've gotta have that drive in you,
that bug that keeps saying, "A train!
"I hear a whistle, I hear one, where is it?
"I gotta go see it."
- The Strasburg's coming in. (train bell tolling)
The locomotive will cut off
and move ahead to a switch
and then back down the track
and couple up on the other end of the train
for the trip to Paradise.
It's a four and a half mile run,
it's called the Railroad to Paradise,
or you can call it the... (train whistle blowing)
You can call it the P and B for Paradise and Back.
- [Voiceover] It goes to Paradise?
- There's a little town in Pennsylvania
called Paradise, Pennsylvania and that's where it goes.
Paradise, Pennsylvania is usually joined with
two other towns, or sometimes three other towns,
to make a sexual joke.
There's a town called Virginville,
there's a town called Blue Ball
and there's a town called Intercourse.
So if you do from Virginville to Blue Ball
to Intercourse to Paradise,
it makes a certain kind of warped sense.
- Well it's hard not to be interested
when a steam engine goes by.
I mean those things are alive.
They pant and they moan and they whistle
and they chug and they chuff and they creak.
And you just can't ignore a steam engine when it goes by.
And I think Americans in general,
because we're a product of history,
we weren't born here, except for Native Americans,
we all showed up from somewhere.
And so we have a sense of where we were before
and we have a destiny.
And that's Europe, that's Africa,
that's China and that's Japan,
and that's everywhere.
That's the beauty of America.
(train whistle blowing)
(awe-inspiring music)
- [Voiceover] For most people,
trains tap into something deep.
- I think if you scratch a lot of model railroaders,
what you will find, right under the surface,
is, in many cases, we're trying to re-create
a special time and place in our own lives.
- I was born and raised in the Kensington
section of north Philadelphia.
And I was within walking distance, north of me,
of the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran,
the passengers ran from Washington DC to New York
and all the western freight trains.
And if I would go the other direction from my home,
I was close, within walking distance,
of the Reading Railroad, which was a big coal hauler.
They brought the anthracite coal from the coal fields
in Pennsylvania down to the Delaware River,
where they were loaded onto steamers
and plied up and down the eastern seaboard,
the Gulf Coast and even South America.
- I grew up in northern New Jersey,
in a town called Phillipsburg.
Phillipsburg was a big railroad town.
In its heyday, I think there was like,
five or six railroads that all converged
into that town.
It's actually right across the river,
the Delaware River, from Pennsylvania.
So we're really close to the border.
Bethlehem Steel was close by.
And Phillipsburg was a big industrial town as well, so,
hence the railroads.
- Well Sacramento, of course, is the launchpad
for the Transcontinental Railroad
from the West to the East.
But even before that,
before the Central Pacific Railroad got started here,
pretty much right where we're standing,
the Sacramento Valley Railroad
got its start here as well.
Just a few years before the Central Pacific started.
- Railroading is what linked the country,
the golden spike at Promontory Summit.
That magic hasn't gone away,
it is still pretty cool to see
a mile-long train zipping along at 60 miles an hour.
Less cool at 10 miles an hour over the road
that you're trying to get across,
but, it's pretty neat.
- Now, when I grew up,
back in the late 50s and the early 60s,
we didn't have the security we have today.
So I used to get on my bicycle
and I would ride down to the local yard,
which was probably about 10 miles from my house,
and you could just walk into the yard.
Watch the engineers switch the cars.
Go to the engine terminal, watch them on the turntable.
Always fascinated with this.
- I actually grew up along the lines,
a main line for Conrail.
That was the first step that brought me into the Conrail.
But it wasn't until much later,
like around the mid-90s, early 2000s,
that it really took off.
In fact, there's actually a funny story.
When I was younger,
my parents were restaurant owners,
but two blocks behind the restaurants,
is the main line, is the same main line,
from where my parent's,
you could see from my parents' apartment.
So I was about, maybe five or six.
I kinda snuck out and the weather was nice, it was warm,
because I kinda snuck out and went down a couple blocks,
just plopped myself on the park bench
to wait for the trains to come by.
Of course, when my dad found me,
it wasn't the greatest thing in the world.
At least it was fun to be able to kinda
run away for a little bit,
to be in my own little world.
- [Voiceover] All of us are born into a world of rules.
It takes most of us a long time to learn
how to live in the world of grown-up rules.
That's what childhood is all about.
- [Voiceover] Washing up of the more conventional kind.
A chore that comes 'round about once a week.
Obviously excellent training for future husbands.
- [Voiceover] Then one day, when we're grown up,
the rules we follow are our own.
(jaunty music)
For some, the rules are pretty intense.
- Some people want every
specific
detail down to the last
bolt and rivet.
Those purists are very often called
rivet counters.
- My primary focus is really a lot,
the super detailing,
the rivet counting. (laughs)
- I'm one of what the people call
a prototype guy, I'm the guy that counts rivets.
I know that a specific boxcar has a specific door with
a certain amount of ribs,
certain amount of ribs,
and certain amount of ribs, separated by a rivet panel.
I know this.
Yeah, prototype modelers, what you call us dorks.
It's, I don't know, some people,
it bears with it a kind of respect to some.
And,
an eye roll from others that we're worried
about silly things that don't really matter.
And if you put it into perspective,
none of this stuff matters.
- Over the years I've become
more and more,
I suppose obsessive is the only word for it,
in getting a finer level of detail.
One of the things is,
I like taking photographs at close quarters,
of models.
And so I like photo-realism, if you will.
I like getting in close with a camera.
And so I think,
it's not true with every model railroader,
but there's a certain group of us,
who really could use a little more prozac in our diets.
Because we are obsessive-compulsive about
a certain level of detail.
That would be me on some days.
Not everything,
but with specific models, absolutely.
- I would say every hobby gets a different portion,
share of obsessives who become obsessive about that hobby.
And so we certainly have ours,
but I don't believe that you have to be
an obsessive to be good at it,
or to be interested in it.
- [Voiceover] One Mecca for obsessive model railroaders
and rail fans alike,
is the the Tehachapi Loop.
(energetic music)
The Tehachapi Loop, connecting southern California
with the San Joaquin Valley,
is a helix, or spiral,
on the Union Pacific Line through Tehachapi Pass.
The Southern Pacific Railroad built the loop
in the 1870s to allow trains to climb and descend
in less space than would be needed without the helix.
The Tehachapi Loop is represented
on layouts around the world.
It's a real unique section of
rail that's out there and we were able to
put it in here in N scale.
This is a pretty close representation of
what the Tehachapi Loop looks like.
And it's awfully cool to see a train
snake over itself on that.
- [Voiceover] There may be no more famous depiction
than that on the La Mesa Club layout in San Diego.
- [Bill] We find ourselves at
the Tehachapi Pass area. (serene music)
- [Voiceover] Cablevision by Elders.
- With me I have two distinguished guests.
Here we have John Rotsart,
who is the Director Executive,
or the Executive Director,
however you wanna look at it,
of the Model Railroad Museum.
- [Voiceover] The famous San Diego Model Railroad Museum
can trace its origins to the early 60s,
when a bunch of young guys who loved trains
decided to start a club.
We had some issues on,
just growing up.
And not
creating mayhem.
Because the
city of La Mesa
had an abandoned firehouse building
in downtown.
Nebo Hall, on Nebo Drive.
And we requested
the city to give
the firehouse
to us
as a model railroad area.
So we were basically street legal
to that extent.
By the late 1961.
- [Voiceover] Eventually, the La Mesa Club,
learned to play by the rules.
(slow instrumental music)
With a half century of history,
they can do whatever they want.
There are a million ways to be a model railroader today.
You don't even have to declare your loyalties.
Though many do.
- There are some people who,
like the kid we all knew in school
who memorized every
statistic of every baseball player out there.
And there were some who only dealt with a single team.
I'm interested in the Santa Fe Railway,
and in a certain part of the Santa Fe Railway in 1954.
So you might say I'm only interested in those,
to use the comparison, I'm only,
used to the home games the Chicago
White Sox played in July
of 1954.
So that's how specific I've gotten.
And that means I only have to have a certain focus
and I only have to have a certain amount of knowledge.
I can't identify half the locomotives,
most of the locomotives that are running
out there on the tracks today.
In 2013.
I don't know what they are, I don't care.
I have some passing interest in it,
but I'm interested in what ran in 1954.
And that's the extent of my knowledge and all I need to know
and all that really interests me.
I've narrowed my focus and my knowledge in that respect too.
Which is great, because my little brain
has only enough room.
- The funny thing about prototype modelers
is that we're just like football fans.
If you're a prototype guy,
you like your Burlington Northern.
Or I like my Burlington, the 1971, that's what I do.
And anything in 1972,
I don't do it because it
didn't happen with this stuff,
it's too new.
Anything before that, yeah, it could be.
But the stuff after it,
1975 Burlington Northern?
Nah.
It doesn't work with this.
But it's like a football fan in that
a Kansas City Chiefs fan is never,
on his worst possible day,
gonna be wearing a Raiders shirt.
Or he's never gonna be wearing a Cleveland Browns shirt.
He may wash his car with the Cleveland Browns shirt,
but he's not gonna wear it.
And the same thing with train guys,
is they're loyal to their railroad.
I probably wouldn't be wearing a New York Central shirt,
ever.
I would wear a Burlington Northern shirt,
I might wear a Great Northern shirt.
SPNS shirt, maybe.
- I want my stuff to run and look very realistic.
But I also want it to run in a realistic setting.
So I've done my homework
and I know what this railroad
that I'm modelling looked like.
I grew up in one of the towns that I'm modelling.
I did not grow up in most of the towns
that I'm modelling so I went back to Indiana
and Illinois and I went to the libraries
and I went to the Historical Societies
and I knocked on doors.
And I met a lot of big German shepherds
when people didn't want me there.
It's all part of the fun.
- Because I model a certain period,
and in a certain area,
I will try to evoke that area as much as possible.
With the vegetation, the color of the earth,
what crops may be grown in the nearby fields,
all that sort of thing.
It's all part of the research and all part of the fun.
- [Voiceover] Photographer Steve Crist
is a well-known rail fan, and researcher.
Crist is as committed to preserving railroading's past
as he is to documenting its present.
And he's sometimes surprised by what he finds
in the images he scans for historical archives.
- I recognized it as being from the
1989 celebration of Union Station.
And I recognized it because I'm in the photo,
right there.
This is also under consideration for our book.
Fortunately we have the original negative
also from that same collection.
- [Voiceover] Like Steve Crist,
Jack Burgess, a retired civil engineer for the city
of Newark California, is a committed researcher.
But unlike Crist, he works in three dimensions.
Everything on his layout,
even down to the paint and wiring,
accurately represents the Yosemite Valley Railway,
as it was in August, 1939.
- 25 years ago I had a couple,
a brother and a sister, visit me,
that lived upstairs in this building in 1939.
Their father was a section foreman.
There was no agent at the time,
normally an agent would live up there.
And they told me what was in here and so forth,
and told me about the buildings along here.
They also told me that they had a radio,
they remembered having a radio.
And I had thought about,
when I was gonna detail this building,
putting the radio in there.
But I thought man,
you're in the middle of this steep canyon,
it's probably a 2,000 foot deep canyon.
Very steep walls.
The road goes back and forth back and forth,
climbing all the way down, even today,
and then climbs up the other side.
And so I didn't put it in there.
But then later they told me that they did have it.
And then many years later,
I come across another photo.
And this photo, which was taken about 1942,
I got a print of the original negative,
which was only about the size of an index card,
scanned it, blew it up.
But look real carefully.
Here you can see their radio antenna.
So they were absolutely correct.
If I was modelling 1942,
I would also add these.
These are service stars.
And that would show that whoever lived,
was living here at that time,
had two boys
serving in the armed services overseas during World War II.
- I want my trains to sound realistic,
I want them to run realistically.
I want them to be a simulator of what
really happened at some point in time.
Some people define the time as August 1939,
one of my friends has got it that narrowly defined.
One of them is actually modelling a day
that he has a lot of records for.
Some people model a year,
I'm modelling the fall of 1954.
Others model, let's say 1955.
Others model the 1950s, or the 1970s.
You can be picky about that or
you can ignore it completely.
- I model,
what's typically southern California
into Phoenix, Arizona area.
So you've got the desert.
And it's Union Pacific,
it's a former Southern Pacific Railroad line.
Now taken over by Union Pacific
and that's what I have, strictly modern.
It's really modern, so whatever's new,
I'm trying to get for my layout.
- I've been, in the past 20 or so years,
I've narrowed my focus down to modelling
the Burlington Northern Railroad
in Western Oregon
in 1971.
- I'm working on Cajon Pass during World War II,
which is kind of an unusual area for most model railroaders.
Cajon Pass is the, one of three gateways,
into the Los Angeles basin in southern California.
It's located just northwest of San Bernardino.
Two railroads come through the pass,
Santa Fe and Union Pacific come through.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe today.
Southern Pacific is nearby at Colton,
and Pacific Electric ran through that area as well.
- There's guys like Jack Burgess who model
the Yosemite Valley in September of 1939.
And he doesn't add anything unless
he can find a picture of it.
- You might say, well that is crazy and over the top.
But one of the great things about
narrowing into a specific period
and specific railroad is you don't
have to buy everything that's out there.
So it really focuses your hobby
and focuses your collection
on things that are appropriate for your period
and for your railroad.
I run a branch line railroading.
This is a smaller scale railroading with,
based mainly on freight and what you might call
mixed trains, trains that knit small communities
in America together once upon a time,
before the interstates.
And so,
it's a very specific sort of thing,
but it really makes for, to me,
more interesting modelling because
I can say no to a lot of things.
Being able to say no to a lot of what
is out there is a very good thing.
- This is,
maybe typical of model railroader.
Some will say not.
We have traveled around the world
and visited many model railroaders homes
and some have much more than this.
And, of course, some have a lot less.
So this is typical of a model railroad collection, I think.
- I have a lot of equipment that I've
collected over the years.
I also have a lot of kits that need to be built.
So there's more than a lifetime worth,
and I obviously don't have a lifetime left.
But there's plenty to keep me busy.
(mumbles)
But to me,
it's sort of like the journey is
more important than the destination.
The doing of it, the creating of it,
the modelling of it is more important
than finishing it, getting it done, if you will.
And just enjoying the journey.
Is kinda what it's all about for me.
- [Voiceover] Creatives, control freaks,
and obsessive world historians,
you are not alone.
Of course, some of you would like to be.
- Some of us are joiners
and some of us are not joiners.
- I don't even know an N-scale guy,
I don't have any friends that are N-scale guys,
not because I don't like them,
we just don't have anything in common.
It's like five or six different factions
and we're not rivals in any way,
we don't dislike each other, but,
we just probably wouldn't hang out
with each other because
he's a Lionel guy,
he's an N-scale guy and I'm an HO guy.
And even some of the HO guys...
Kinda fit themselves in a little box and don't come out.
Or I'm a prototype guy so I don't even
talk to those ready-to-run guys.
We're all the same guy.
- There are two different kind of model railroaders.
There's the people that get involved in the
NMRA and they join these clubs
and they get together, the camaraderie.
And then there's the lone wolves,
and a lot of them are, what I call, the lone wolf.
There's a lot of people that are,
I'm not gonna use the term nobodies,
because everybody is somebody,
but they're individuals.
And they have, I know people right here in Pasadena,
they've got beautiful layouts
that no one even knows about.
They don't open up to the public, it's just for them,
and their own personal enjoyment.
- I'm a real lone wolf kinda guy.
I'm not part of a club.
I don't have a group of friends who I
operate with and that sort of stuff.
I just enjoy doing it myself.
It forces you to get out of that comfort zone
and meet some other people
and talk to some other people.
Have some people do some articles
and that sort of stuff.
And now it's to the point where
the social aspect of the hobby
is really enjoyable to me.
And that's something, 12 years ago,
I would have never thought.
- I've tried to do this all by myself
and not tell anybody.
So I said, this time I'm going to,
find some good modelers and have them advise me.
That's when I discovered that there were
about five or six that live very, very close to here.
And they could not have been nicer.
- Being part of a club,
you have many, many members with many skills.
If you have a problem, you can consult with them.
- I went to get a drink of water,
and I left the bell on.
Nobody could figure out how to turn the bell off.
So it was driving everybody crazy,
just sitting there going ding ding ding ding.
(laughing)
- I mean, you can easily get lost as a little,
individual island if you're a modeler all by yourself.
Being in a club,
you have access to people who have
kind of specialized sometimes, in a particular skill.
So we have, in our club,
a guy who's very, very knowledgeable about DCCs,
or a DCC guru.
We have somebody who's really good at wiring.
So any kind of problem you have,
you can go to, somebody in the club
will have a good answer for it.
- But generally speaking,
you have groups focused around railroading.
You have groups focused around specific
aspects of model railroading.
And you have groups focused around
the history of the railroads.
- [Voiceover] Some clubs have permanent layouts.
Others have portable, or modular, layouts.
- [Voiceover] A modular layout is
a series of four-foot tables
that are stretched around a room
with curves and everything that you can imagine
and with some accessories on the top.
(upbeat music)
- Some groups seek to model
a certain area as a group.
Let's say the southwest,
the midwest.
And so they try to maintain a kind of consistency
in what they model.
Here, it was working on Apache Canyon.
I belong to a group called
Southern California.
It's a southern California group
and most of our topography is
the same.
That is it models central or southern California.
And so there's a kind of consistency
from one module to another.
That bothers some people, other people it doesn't.
We wanna give free rein to people
in modelling what they want.
I mean, we don't want necessarily
abrupt changes from urban to rural
right next to each other, that sort of thing.
We don't want a farm right next to
oh, let's say a steel mill,
that kind of thing.
So we avoid that sort of thing
and within our own group,
we vet our choices.
We'll say to each other,
"Look, what we really need is,
"a 90 degree curve.
"And we wanna keep it within this
same geographical location.
And so we talk to each other and make sure
we're communicating with each other.
As opposed to merely building anything we want.
That's within our own group.
I think of our layout in particular
as kind of a Whitman's Sampler of layouts,
because we don't have such a
tight tolerance in terms of what
the modules can portray.
So you can go from one four foot or six foot section
to the next and kind of be in
a different kind of layout.
So if you don't like the layout that you're on right now,
just wait a few moments and you might,
things might improve.
- One of the things that's interesting to me
is to see that, in model railroading,
people still have a sense of community
at a time when,
as Robert Putnam pointed out in Bowling Alone,
people are more and more of their
personal time is spent privately,
is spent in small...
Or spent in
pursuit, isolated pursuits.
This is a hobby that tends to
bring people together in the community.
Many of us, through the hobby,
end up meeting people who we would not meet
through our work life or through our social lives.
So, in effect, I end up having contact
with a much broader spectrum of people
than I would through my work.
Form some fairly deep and long-lasting
connections with people.
So because I belong to a club that meets every week,
there really is a whole community of people
with shared interests, that I'm part of.
My sense is that I talk to a lot
of my colleagues and friends,
they don't have communities like that in their lives,
they don't have those kinds of connections
to some ongoing community of interests,
outside of their work.
- [Voiceover] So what is the future of model railroading?
(quizzical music)
- This is going to sound callous,
but I'm not sure I care.
It's a hobby.
And it's not something for everybody.
It's not like a religious cause
that we're trying to convert people
to become model railroaders.
- There's a lot of doomsday predictions
that it's going to end.
And with the higher amount of prices and everything,
I think yeah, it does look a little grim.
It's hard for someone like me to tell
a 14-year-old kid, "Hey!
"Why don't you go out and buy that locomotive."
And the locomotive's 300 bucks.
That's a hard pill to swallow.
I know when I was 14,
you couldn't get me to buy a $300 locomotive.
I know of a million things I could've bought then
for 300 bucks, and it wasn't trains.
- It's kind of expensive, it can be.
I spend,
I think I spend maybe about $2,000 a year on trains.
Two to three thousand a year on trains.
Three on the high side.
- Everybody's been predicting the end of the hobby
for years now and I just see
more and more stuff coming out,
so somebody's buying it.
- I'm not so sure that it's as dire as all that.
I do think
there are, we have a couple of junior members in our club,
for instance, that do have a huge interest in trains.
And are the standard-bearers for the next generation.
It may not be as big as it is right now,
but there are certainly a lot of interesting
new technical aspects
that make it less of an old fashioned,
sort of fuddy duddy hobby that you may think it might be.
- [Voiceover] A tyke trying his hands
with David's electric trains.
Next year, the Eisenhowers will spend
Christmas day in the White House.
- [Voiceover] Technology has received a lot of blame
for breaking down society and making people
islands unto themselves.
We probably won't give up our smartphones
and tablets anytime soon.
- [Voiceover] Down here are the function controls.
- [Voiceover] But we can adapt them
to our own created worlds.
- [Voiceover] I can turn the headlight on the front him
off, and then I can turn it back on again.
- We're now starting seeing things
where more and more interface between
mobile devices, smart phones and computers,
and I think that's gonna help it
with a generation that grows up with those.
- I think the future's bright.
We are getting more and more into the technology
of the area in which I live,
Silicon Valley.
And so we have now a digital world in model railroading,
basically in our control systems,
which is extremely interesting.
We've integrated computers into it.
We now have, you can take your iPhone,
and run your train using your iPhone,
for example, or Android.
- One of our junior members a few months ago
had a tablet out and was putting together
trains in the yard like a pro with his tablet.
- The first computer game was invented
at the MIT Model Railroad Club.
MIT has a model railroad club,
and in 1961, while they were playing
with some surplus electronic equipment
that they'd scavenged,
they created the first computer game,
video game, called Space Wars.
- I do know that the kids who are interested
in model railroads, and there are some,
are very quick to adopt all the new technology around it.
I know there has been,
have been a couple of products
that were train simulators.
I don't know how well they've done.
I think one of the challenges is,
kids don't have the same exposure
to railroads that they used to.
So while they may be interested in
a car racing simulation, a racing game,
they're less likely to be drawn to a train simulator.
And the other thing is that
one of the things that tend to be about conflict,
whether it's athletic competition or combat.
No one's yet come up with a train game
that sort of has that piece of it,
which I think is big part of kids' play.
It's not the only part of kids' play,
but it's a big part.
- One of the things I think we're gonna
do more and more are simulations.
There's a company in,
I believe they're based in Australia,
called Trains, T R A I N Z.
And they have a simulation software
and you can get into their library
and you can actually build
a mythical railroad.
You can have like a grid and you can reach in
and pull up some of the grid to make mountains.
You can grab a bridge outta the library
and install it and grab a steam engine or diesel,
put it on the tracks.
And you can run the train,
you can be in the cab of the locomotive,
you can be flying along beside it in a helicopter,
you can be standing up on a mountain looking at it.
Even if you don't wanna do that
as a full-time simulation thing
like a pilot would do, have a flight simulator,
you can use it to test run your model railroad.
- The really cool things you can do with
technology, for example, using your cell phone
to control a train from another place.
I've actually heard a story where
this one guy has a layout where the dispatcher
is in Alabama, but the layout is
somewhere in Northern New England.
Like Maine or something.
- What we'll do is, we'll log on,
and I'll mark up to run engine 70,
and Perry will mark up to run engine 55.
And somebody else in Pittsburgh will
mark up for another engine.
And we'll have maybe a dozen guys,
all of us online, networking,
running a railroad.
Now is that model railroading or not?
Well,
you're using your hands to build these things.
So I would say, in a way, it is model railroading.
But I don't think
the hands-on type model railroading is gonna go away.
(jaunty music)
- Model railroading, supposedly,
is a kind of old-fashioned hobby, it's not.
- Some of us lament about the fact
that it's not taken seriously.
- The cliche, I guess you could say,
is that model railroaders are usually white, old men.
- Today I was talking to a gentleman
who was showing a module,
and I asked if he'd built it.
He said no, my husband built it.
And I thought that was great because
that's not something you would've heard five years ago.
Granted, they're both still white males, but,
it's still an improvement.
- When you think of model trains,
we all have this vision.
And you know everyone does, it's not a secret,
we have this vision,
it's this older white guy with glasses
and his train hat in his basement.
Little weirdo doing the trains.
And that's what's portrayed in the media,
that's what portrayed in the movies
and TV shows.
= I think what a lot of people think about model railroading
is that it's only about the trains.
In some ways,
I think the trains are no more or less
than a delivery system for emotions.
For me,
it's a feeling.
A time when I was a young boy
and everything was possible.
I model a time in post World War II America,
when we were the greatest power on Earth at that time.
When nobody bought a car that
wasn't made by General Motors.
When trains were made by General Motors as well
and the American Locomotive Company
in Schenectady, New York, ALCO.
A time when my grandfather, a railroader,
a person to whom I was very close,
was still in the prime of his life.
What I'm evoking through my trains,
is a kind of feeling.
And a kind of emotion
and a time of my life that I loved very much.
And I think at the heart of every model railroader,
you will find something like that.
It's more than just the trains, believe me.
- Model railroading is really more than just trains.
- You know, you just have to open up.
And be aware that there's a lot of new stuff around you.
- Find your passion,
and just follow that passion,
whatever it is that really interests you.
- Model railroaders, by and large, are a bunch of nerds.
We're a bunch of geek type of guys,
but no more so than the computer guys.
We just like making stuff and watching trains
roll around a layout and,
again, being able to create stuff with your hands.
- Us geeks, we're not afraid to just
go have fun doing this stuff.
- A dork's a dork.
I mean, we all have interests
and we're all a little that way.
I pity the guy that isn't.
Doesn't have interests that would push him
over into the semi-dork category, you know?
I'm a dork.
- You're kinda born with it. (chuckles)
- As I say, it's never too late to have a happy childhood.
(chuckles)
- That's how warped model railroading is,
we're okay folks, really.
- [Voiceover] Whatever the future of model railroading,
it may not be the world as you want it to be,
but that's okay, you can make your own.
(awe-inspiring music)
(slow instrumental music)
(robust music)
(train whistle blowing)
(conductor murmuring)
(train horn wailing)
Be yourself.
Do your thing.