Has anyone modeled a golf course in HO on their layout?
Think of the size issues. Maybe mini-golf? Windmills, friendly plaster whales, pirate ships, lighthouse, gee, a whole bunch of interesting things to model.
It’s in the plans and I have seen pics. What I intend to do is include a green and tee box and have the rest behind a hill and in the backdrop.
Since a single golf hole woudl be something like 400-500 yards (over 14 feet in HO scale!), most people wouldn’t think it was good use of layout space. As mentioned, just the tee box would work … or maybe just the green, with some traps and bunkers.
I have seen mini-golf courses on N Trak modules a couple of times … pretty cool.
Bruce Carpenter has some holes on his home layout and I know that Tom Danneman is going to put a few on his N scale MRL layout too.
As for me, I’ve thought about it but it doesn’t work for my future layout. Not phototypical.
Isn’t there a place somewhere on the NS where the tracks run right through the middle of a golf course? I seem to remember seeing a picture of that in one of their calendars…
dlm
I don’t know about the middle. The Buckeye Yard in Columbus Ohio. There’s a golf coarse at the corner of N.Wilson and Trabue. The coarse is bordered on the third side by a double NS track that conects with the yard. The line is only about 50 yards away from the 8th or 9th tee.
On the BNSF in LaCrosse, Wisconsin , the fairway of one hole is actually split by the tracks. Forest Hills country club. and wouldn’t you know it an NS freight is shown in this pix.
That’s amazing to me that there would be a grade crossing for golf carts. Can you imagine some guy who has belted a few too many during his round trying to beat a train in a golf cart? I’m surprised nobody demanded a tunnel or a bridge there.
I now have a favorite golf coarse. I think I need to play there.
There’s a coarse just outside of Helena, Montana where the double tracks of the MRL split the coarse as they start their ascend up the Mullan Pass. That is the coarse that Tom Danneman is modeling on his layout featured in July '07 on page 59.
I live in the La Crosse area. La Crosse has quite a bit of railroad activity. That golf course used to be the La Crosse Country Club, now it’s a public course. There is a place called Grandad’s bluff just above that area. I’m assume that is where the picture was taken from. Looking down at the tracks, it looks like a model train going through a scene.
And just to blatantly plug railpictures.net , guys it’s a great resource for prototype pictures, it has pull down menus to sort by railroad, state, type of loco. Really a nice site for those who have never visited it.
Jerry,
Yes railpictures.net is a very nice site if you are looking for a real good picture, but for me rrpicturearchieves.net has more photos of anything due to the fact that they don’t discriminate from the less than perfect picture like railpictures.net does. More photos means more choices and that helps when it comes to seeing a location or an engine when you are hundreds of miles away and you want to apply it to you modeling.
Just click on my link below my name and see a the bad photos that I’ve taken but heck they’re still of trains and they still can help someone see what those areas are like. railpictures.net didn’t want any of mine. (I don’t blame them, my camera at the time was not good.)
That’s got to be the cleanest stretch of track I’ve ever seen![8D]
Modeling even a short par-3 would require a lot of presscious real estate. Unless you’re talking about a pitch and putt course, the shortest hole you’ll find is going to be in the 120 yd range, which is about 4 1/2 ft in HO and would need to be about a foot wide to look right.
I have two ideas for including a golf course on my layout. One is to take panoramic pics of my home course and print them off and include it on the back drop. I might add a low relief structure for the clubhouse or a pic of a clubhouse and overlay that on the backdrop with the course behind it. I’ll probably put up a fence and a gate with a “MEMBERS ONLY” sign on it. In real life I play public courses so this is my chance to be a little snooty.
If I can squeeze it in. when I build my branch line, I might put in just the green of one hole with the tee for the next hole next to it. Even that little bit of golf course will take quite a bit of space and I’m not certain I want to do that yet. That decision is probably two years away.
A course near where I live requires the golfers to cross a public road to get to holes 13-17. The cart path has a stop sign with ample warning but you can’t idiot proof the thing. If somebody lacks the brains to stop and look, well let’s just say Darwinism works.
That has to be the coolest golf course I’ve ever seen. I wonder how many times a train has been hit by someone with a mean slice. [:D] And geez, the tracks run right next to the green…isn’t like it’s in a remote corner. It’s got to be an accident waiting to happen.
Well, green fees, 35 bucks. Being able to play golf and railfan at the same time, priceless. And I thought playing Andrews Air Force Base was cool, with the F-16s roaring overhead!
I wonder if anyone ever won that hole because the passing trains vibration rattled the ball in.
The CSX double track mainline runs through the Kent State University golf course. IIRC, its 8 holes on one side and the back 10 across the tracks.
Here’s the satellite view.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=41.152744,-81.305609&spn=0.007723,0.014462&t=k&z=16&om=1
I’ve played it once or twice. Kinda of distracting, if ya know what I mean.
Actually, there are two golf courses there, Raymond which is a full sized 18 hole course and Wilson Rd which is an adjacent 9 hole executive course. Both run by the city. Raymond used to be my home course. North of Trabue Rd, the tracks pass behind the 4th green, parallel the par-3 5th hole and pass behind the 6th tee box. The tracks don’t come close to the Wilson Rd course. In 1992, I was putting on the 5th green when G.H.W. Bush’s campaign train passed by.