When was the last time that MR ran an article on the overall MR&T? I know that many smaller articles and the new scenery how to column have been based on it but I’d love to see an article with where they are now. I may be wrong but the last major article I recall reading was just after they office moved and the layout was rebuilt. Of course I took a break from the hobby for few years shortly after that so I may have missed something.
They show the whole thing on the last DVD they put out (#4 I think). You follow a train over the whole thing.
Last full coverage of the MR&T in the magazine was in the December 1989 issue, starting on page 88. There have been 4 subsequent major articles dealing with portions of the layout and a number of lesser snippets. Of course, the same straightaway shows up regularly on the MR video run-bys when showing off new locomotives on their webpage.
Based on video of the layout in the recent DPB, there appears to have been a lot of renovations to the MR&T over the past 17 years and it honestly looks far less complete now than it did years ago. I suspect any full layout tour will remain well in the future, until more of the scenery reaches a level of finality.
CNJ831 (bigtime MR&T fan)
Have they ever done an open house or is it employee’s only?
Guy
Well, years ago, before they moved, I visited their offices for a tour. This was back in the late 80’s. One time, I was given a tour by Russ Larson!
Anyway, I got to see the offices, a project railroad that was being built in MR at the time, and I got to run a train over the MR&T. I was 18 or 19 at the time.
Rob
I was to the Kalmbach offices for a tour once a few years back, and it was pretty neat to see the place in person then, including the MR&T. But I too would like to see a full-coverage article on the layout, not just the articles on a specific project on the it, as I can tell there have been a lot of updates even since I was there. It’d be nice if they put it in the magazine too, so one doesn’t have to pay for a whole DPB DVD in order to see the latest version of the MR&T.
Noah
of all of the fictional shortlines featured in model railroader over past few decades my favorite has always been the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy Railroad. followed by that are the Virginian & Ohio, Cat Mountain & Santa Fe, and Ohio Southern
Although not strictly a layout tour, the MR&T was fairly well covered in one of the early Tracks Ahead offerings addressing, as I recall, operations on the layout. Likewise, in the early days of this forum there was a link to perhaps a dozen or so stills giving you an area by area pseudo tour of the layout. Unfortunately, that unique feature seemed to last only a few months before disappearing from the MR site.
Perhaps also of interest to MR&T enthusiasts is that the heavily industrialized and impressive portion of the layout written about in “A Corner Full Of Industry” (MR June '97), called Kelly’s Island, apparently has never appeared specifically on any video/DVD showing the MR&T that I’m acquainted with. The same is essentially true with regard to the oldest existing portion of the layout (which was a part of the original MR&T, before the re-build) - the section carrying the home territory of the Troy Northern. This large, L-shaped, stand-alone portion of the layout includes the Troy and East Troy locations. However, one can get a vague glimpse of the roundhouse area of Troy in the open scenes of the DPB #2 or #3, bonus feature.
CNJ831
Hey, I caught this MR&T SD-unit taking advantage of trackage rights over the Hudson Highlands Railroad toward sundown one day last autumn, brought to a stop by its derailment just outside Putney, NY. The unit was still in the 1980’s color scheme. Gonna hafta send the bill for cleaning up their mess to Terry!
CNJ831
I agree. A magazine update would be nice, especially with all of the teaser shots we’ve been getting in MR over the past couple of years. CNJ831, that’s a cool picture, do you have a larger version to post. That whitefaced 1980’s scheme is my favorite free lanced scheme.
Eric
Eric, I think if you just click on the current smaller image, you’ll get a large one to display. Doing so on my machine results in a picture larger than the screen size will easly accommodate.
CNJ831