Greetings everyone. My Mississippi, Alabama and Gulf Railroad now has it’s own website. An earlier and much smaller incarnation of the layout was featured in the April 2005 Model Railroader. The new version is a 14 X 32 foot triple deck layout. The lower two levels are complete. The MA&G will be the subject of an upcoming Allen Keller production in his Great Model Railroads video series. To visit the website, go to
On it you will find a detailed description of the new MA&G as well as over 60 photos of the layout. I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think!
I scanned your April 05 article onto my computer to save and browse when the mood strikes sitting at a coffee shop, etc on my laptop (Armchairing at its finest). That was one fine layout. I also remember you mentioning in that article that you hoped for or were planning on a bigger layout.
Wow - your new layout is fantastic. That is some fine model railroading there.
Thanks for the inspiration, and for taking the time to create such a nice website to share it with others.
Very nice job.
Now THAT is what I call a portable layout!!! (refering to your notes about the building being portable!)
Thanks for the nice comments. You may have noticed there are no TRAINS in any of the photos! Yes, I actually DO own locomotives and rolling stock…too much, actually (if thats possible). I am currently woking on painting and decaling my MA&G motive power. A friend of mine is painting my brass 4-6-2 and 2-10-2 for me as well. When these are ready, I will create a folder just for motive power in the photo albums. I’ll also go back and re-shoot many of the town photos with trains in them. My other big project includes weathering over 500 pieces of rolling stock. I hope to have all of this done by Labor Day, but the new pictures should begin posting to the website within a few weeks.
For any first-time viewers, please take a minute and sign my guest book, or give comments here. The MA&G website again is:
wow . really really nice . i might have to buy the keller video when it comes out . i don’t have any of those yet but i’d love to see more of your railroad . thanks for sharing
That is a great layout and wonderful photos. You have the level of detail that I hope to have one day with my layout that I’m building now. I really liked the format of your website too. Did you hire a service to do it or do it yourself? If the latter, what software did you use?
Glad you enjoyed the layout. My layout building was built
commercially. I contracted with a local builder of portable
buildings and asked what was the largest building he could deliver
in one piece (vs split in half like a double wide trailer). He
quoted 14 X 32 and I went to work designing a track plan for that
footprint. When the track plan was finalized, I specified EXACTLY
where I wanted the door and window to be placed (my double track
helix fits in the corner between the two). The building arrived on
a flat bed as you described and was placed on concrete block
footings. If I should ever move (unlikely), I could pay to have the
building lifted and transported via another flatbed. After I
demolished my last layout and suffered the losses in dollars and
work hours, I vowed never to do that again. Hopefully this will
minimize that possibility…but if we built a new house with a
full bonus space above a three car garage…hmmmmm…
I did the website myself. It was VERY easy and FREE!!! My high-speed internet service is through Bellsouth. As a subscriber, I am given 10MB of home page space free of charge. Most internet providers give their customers some amount of free home page space, so it may be worth checking into if you’re interested. Belsouth’s is already formatted for you, so you simply choose a layout and then fill in the fields with text or photos in jpeg format. I have over 60 photos on the website and still have nearly 3 MB of space left!!!
Very nice work, Cliff, both the railroad and the presentation thereof. What impressed me most was your resistance to the temptation to clutter up your scenery. There’s just enough detail to create the atmosphere without making it look like a war zone. Very nicely done!