Just saw this excellent movie for the first time in probably about 10 years. I love Gomez’s train layout. Does anybody remember that scene? The lionel trains at that time, I wasn’t aware they had such good sound or could smoke so well. I wish I could find a clip of it. He was running a NYC hudson, smoked like a beast, and pulled along 3 20th century limited cars (15" I think).
I found this official layout plan on a website dedicated to the Addams Family. It looks really cool. I’m thinking of making a layout like this, has anybody on here attempted this before? Its funny, in the movie it looks very large, yet they are using all O-27 track, thats good in a way because you can pack so much action into it. On mine however, I would like to modify it to fit O72 so I can run my favorite engines but I wonder how big the table would have to be then? I’m tired of doing simple loops around the donut table in HO or O gauge, I want train action, like the kind I remember growing up as a kid.
At the time the film first came out there was an article published about the layout in one of the film magazines. The special effects team wanted to stage several spectacular crashes, with the requisite explosions and fires. What they found out was that the standard Lionel cars were just too tough. The pyrotechnician would ignite the squibs but the cars would roll through with just a couple of smudges on the paint, and that was about it! The prop department ended up building models of the models, using balsa wood and soft lead sheet so that they could blow them apart more effectively.
The article does a very nice job covering the movie layout. It’s actually pretty sparse/bleak and nothing like the John Astin layout from the TV show. They airbrushed colored sawdust for the ground cover. Raul Julia’s ZW was not connected to the track and the trains used in the crash sequences were actually cable pulled by pulley wire /dumb bells. Layout was 8’x21’. There are some production stills in the article showing the massive pile of wrecked loco’s that never made it into the final cut of the film.
