I am brand new to this forum and hope this post is appropriate. My wife and I are on an extended road trip across the US (Well from San Francisco to Cass, WV) and when traveling East on I-90 through South Dakota we came across a place called "1880 Town.’ Presumably, all the buildings and rail cars were transported to this site from various locations throughout SD. They advertise that everything is from circa 1880-1920, although I am not able to substantiate this.
Anyway, I thought some of the pictures my wife and I took might be of interest to someone modeling a layout from this time period. I have uploaded the photos to photobucket and have included a link with this post. Since we are traveling a lot I do not always have access to the net but will do my best to answer any questions…it just might take me a day or two.
Thank You so much!! I have been looking for some pics of buildings and such from the 1880’s as I am wanting to build a layout set in that era and I scratch build my own structures. Thanks again. Mike
Last time I was in SD was on my way to Seattle in 1985. We did the Mt. Rushmore, Sturgis and Wall Drug thing. I don’t recall 1880 Town but that was a long time ago.
I like the Civil War era stuff as well as the Wild Wild West type trains. ‘IF’ and/or When I get better and put my road back, I would like to imagineer a tourist excursion thing to run 4-4-0’s next to FM TrainMasters and F7’s. I just have a problem finding out just how the exteriors of those old era cars were done. No color pix exist and my trips to Greenfield Village/Henry Ford Museum when I lived in Detroit, all portray the old stuff with Garish and Outlandish paint, or so weathered and beat up that they looked like refugees from the woodpile.
But I’m veering OT here, and 1860/1880 color schemes is another topic altogether.
I hope that you and your wife have a most enjoyable trip and enjoy the vista’s and byways of this great land of ours.
Thanks for all the nice comments. You are very welcome.
We plan on riding a Shay Locomotive at the Cass Scenic Railroad in Cass, WV in the next week or so. I’m currently modeling a freelance logging railroad in West Virginia and hope to get a lot of nice ideas for my layout.
The buildings look 1880, but the stock cars appear to be more 1920 (steel underframes, cast truck sides). The NP car looks to be the prototype for the Central Valley stock car.
Thanks for making the link clickable…how did you do this? I tried and just couldn’t figure out a way.
And Dave, thanks for the input on the stock car. I think you are right on and I’ve just put this car on my wish list at Walthers. I’ll place the order when returning from our trip and have a nice momento of our time in South Dakota.
I’m really enjoying your forum and have learned a lot about this fun hobby.
you put [ u r l ] before the link and [ / u r l ] after the link . leave out the spaces which i put in so the forum software doesn’t try to turn my text into a link