On Paul’s unopened set thread, we began to speak about layouts that were a sort of hobby shop featuring these sets and other items, like Angela Tratta Thomas that paladin mentioned. Anyone have any experiences or remember articles on more of these sort of basement museums?. I remember one in an Oct 01 MR that featured a Pullman vestibule as an entrance to the basement - tongue-and-groove sidings to the walls and the Colorado narrow gauge featured ran through dioramas - that made it seem as if you were looking at them through a station’s windows…
I always enjoy these unusual layouts. David Stewart"s Appalachion & Ohio in this months MR kind off fits this theme with the diorama style and the unusual giant tunnel for humans operaters. Really cool.
In the early 90’s there was a really neat layout in MR that had a room divider made to look like a smooth passenger car side with windows and curtains. There was also the cut down real front of a E unit. inside the cab was all the control systems. They were both painted black, red, yellow and grey for the KCS. The owner wanted to eventually set it up to control a train on the layout. Really Cool.
Mr. Patten, the one with the layout in the October 01 MR, was musing on creating a virtual steam cab - with Johnson bar, throttle, gauges and values and a camera in the nose of his locos so the operator could ‘drive’ the engine - wonder if he ever built it. I used to work for a university that used to house the AAR on its campus. The building I worked in housed a unit that built full-size engine simulators - this is the in late 1980s so they were rather elaborate for their time and computing power - and the relatively limited market… Whenever we had an alumni gathering, they all lined up to run the simulator.