Texas T's Forays in 1:160: The Rest of the Layout Tours

Layout tours

My previous posts about the Fall layout tours were:

October 16th Visited A couple HO Railroads in Katy No pictures - just commentary

October 30th Saw 3 Nice HO Layouts in the Houston Area Yesterday Also no pics.

November 22d The Past Few Weekends I've Seen Some Great Layouts...Part I

I didn't get out to see as much as I wanted to but I did see some nice stuff. November 6 was about the last day I could really get out and see some TRAINS! Been so busy with life and holidays and whatnot that I have not had time until now to really put this post together.

So you can shoot me if you have to.

So...All Aboard!

First stop The HO Waterside Railway by Dennis Grigassy

Located in an air conditioned room in the rear of Dennis' garage. Hey! This is Houston you gotta have AC almost all year round. There's a price to pay for living in Paradise! The beginning of November and the temps were still somewhere in the 80's.

This is a bi-level, point to point modern railroad built for operations. Dennis has incorporated 1/2 dozen towns which have industries for switching. Tracklaying is complete and Dennis has plans to complete his scenery. He's even got an abandoned branch! There's an oval helix hidden (not really) in the garage. Most of his switches are manual with LED direction indicators. (I'll have to get him to show me that wiring trick one day). The ones out of reach are equipped with Tortoise switch machines.

The yard (Staging area) is equipped with a cassette type tray for building trains. Control is Easy DCC. Dennis uses RailOp to Generate Waybills.

Dennis was most helpful explaining how his layout was built. Even some of the pitfalls!

His co-engineer, David Ray (A well known O Scaler hereabouts) arranged meets for this amateur photog for which I am grateful. He even offered to stop the train so I could get the shot! But where's the fun in that!

Dennis even did a little demo for me on skewer uncoupling.

Photo 1 - Position your car.
Photo 2 - Insert the skewer
Photo 3 - Twist!
Photo 4 - Move the train away.

Wonder where he picked this car up?

Thanks Dennis! Can't wait to see how you've progressed next year!

12 photos of this layout on flickr.com

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My next stop was at the Fort Bend Model Railroad Club!

The club has it's own website: FortBend Model Railroad Club. Located on the grounds of the Rosenberg RR Museum.

This is a group with a sense of humor. You can tell from their website. And from some of their modeling.

They are active at the train shows in and around the Houston area. In fact, their next gig is at The Worlds Greatest Hobby show in Houston at the George R Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston on January 7 and 8. I plan to be there on one of the days. C'mon down and show 'em some support. The club shows a 26' X 20' layout depicting Fort Bend County in the 1950's. The setup includes several award winning modules depicting the Imperial Sugar refinery in Sugarland, Texas in 1951.

On the left a picture I shot of the refinery.

I believe I got a history lesson about Imperial Sugar that day from Russell Straw, one of the creators of the modules. They have quite a bit of the history of the area as it pertains to railroading, of course, on their website and a lot of photographs. The modules that comprise the layout are well put together and show specific areas in the county as they appeared in the steam to diesel transition era.

On the right is a shot of the Richmond, Texas module.

On the left how about a shot of America's favorite pastime.

On the right some of that fine EssPee Motive Power!

On the left it must be Party Time!

Want to add a little sugar to your layout?

The first club car of the FBMRC (Fort Bend Model Railroad Club), a reproduction of of a tank car actually used by the Imperial Sugar Company in the 1950s and 1960s. Produced in a special run by Micro-Trains Click here to purchase this model. This is the first time this authentic prototype design has been available in any model scale. It has been produced with the authorization and assistance of the Imperial Sugar Company, the oldest continuously operating company in Texas. The initial operation that became Imperial Sugar was founded in 1843, in what is now Sugar Land, Texas -- the home base of the FBMRC club.The picture below is of one of the actual production models. The cars come as a 2-pack, packaged together with a custom-printed wrapper and then shrink-wrapped to preserve the "factory air".

24 photos of this club's modules on Flickr.
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The last and final tour I managed to do this year was Rick Townsend's Santa Fe in the 1950's.

Rick has uploaded pictures of the layout on Yahoo! Photos

This L shaped 18 X 11 foot Railroad looks like a "built-in". It is built in such a way as to blend with the rest of the interior of the third floor room where it is located. Control is via dual Cabs. This is as good example of a "finished" layout as I've ever seen. If indeed a layout can ever be said to be "finished". Santa Fe in the 1950's is completely landscaped. At one end of the railroad is a good sized yard with a roundhouse and industries to be switched. The other end has a fully landscaped mountain with a town. He can run both around and point to point. Rick has put in a "Shell" refinery. I believe he said that it was a Shell because of the 2 large tanks he had acquired at one point.