So my much anticipated copy of Model Railroad Planning 2018 finally arrived in the mail a few days ago; and I got to say its been a great read. However one of the commentary boxes labled “Learning Points” on p.17 in the article about Doug Tagsold’s layout caught my eye: “Colorado remains a modeling magnet.”
Glancing at this article was not the first time I have wondered; why? How does one state in the union draw such a fascinaiton by model railroaders?
For some context, I do get the appeal of a lot of the classic Colorado scenes. My first trip to the state was in 2011, when my Dad and I worked our way down from our home in Utah to the Four Corner’s region up into Durango. We rode the Durango and Silverton and it was one of the most spectacular train journey’s I have ever had the privledge to take. I’d love to go back to experience Durango again, along with the C&T, Royal Gorge, and the Museum in Golden. I am fully aware of the allure the region has since I have experienced it myself.
But… to say my best train experiences have been exclusive to Colorado and the range of the DRGW would be false. The west desert of my homestate Utah, the high mountain ranges and logging lines of California, the Pacific Coast were commuter trains from San Diego speed past beaches and coastal communities, the climb through the Columbia Gorge, the busy commuter traffic coming in and out of New York City, the pastoral emptiness of the Great Plains, plus my international experiences in Las Pampas of northwest Argentina watching beat up EMD’s crawl along battered branch lines. All of them are great locations that scream to be modeled, unique locals just as iconic as what I saw in Colorado… Which brings me back to the question, why do so many pick Colorado when a plethora of equally enticing stuff exists?
Its not like Colorado was the only place that had narrow gauge mining railroads. Or mountain vistas. Or ramshack
I guess we’d have to ask all those who apparently can’t get enough of the western terrain and steam experience. They see something, that is certain. Maybe it’s the novel terrain…novel as compared to the bald prairie on which they live, or the treed hills that surround them in the Appalachians’ various ranges. Maybe the pines smell different in the drier air? Is there something a bit more intimate about a narrow gauge excursion? Maybe the terrain’s structure, strata, coloration and the sky take on a more appealing look to them.
If you think that there’s a lot of Colorado now, you wouldn’t have cared for the situation 30-40 years ago. Colorado (especially narrow gauge) was even more common in the commercial press.
There are probably a few reasons that combined. The Colorado narrow gauge ran longer than nearly anywhere else, so the equipment was better-documented and thus easier to research and build for the model manufacturers. For the same reason, modelers (pre-Internet) could find more books on the Colorado NG lines to inspire and guide. The vertical scenery offered options that were welcome to many modelers in limited space. And a few very talented modelers and photographers chose Colorado and then created attractive magazine articles.
All that taken together mutually reinforced Colorado, in my opinion.
I always wonder why there is so little interest in railroading in other countries on this forum. If you like to study operations, I don’t think it gets more interesting than the Indian railroads. If your interest is engineering, feats, Europe and South America come to mind, especially when it comes to mountain railroading. I could go on and on, however, the reality of it is, there are only so many hours in the day, so at some point, you choose and move forward. If people had the time to study other parts of the world, they may change what they model.
Even in modeling, Mountain railroading offers more challenges than running a line across the prairies. The Rockies are the best eye candy in North America for me, so that is the backdrop for my MRR.[C):-)]
Personally, I’m blaming John Denver and that **** song. Wyoming is every bit as high and every bit as beautiful, but that other square state gets all the publicity. But that’s okay . . .
I guess John “Denver” sounded better than Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. But I never figured out how his “West Virginia” song fit into all the Rocky Mountain stuff.
I moved to Colorado after vacationing for many years exploring the old narrow gauge right-of-way. Was modeling the DSP&P in Sn3 at the time. Even bought land up in Southpark just outside of Fairplay. Few places capture the battle between man and the elements like the old Colorado lines. Small steam engines and steep mountain grades.
Interestingly, after moving here, my modeling interests in Colorado narrow gauge waned. Maybe too much of a good thing, or why model whats just outside. Switched interests to the Southern Pacific in the LA area.
I’m in the process of buying a farm in North Carolina and will be leaving Colorado soon. Lol, probably go back to modeling Colorado narrow gauge again as soon as I start missing the Rockies.
Colorado??? What is this “Colorado” ??? I prefer California’s scenic mountainous rural country… (ya know the part they want to make “New California” the 51st state?)
While there are plenty of other great prototypes, it was in Colorado where the narrowgauge persisted along woth some very fine standard gauge mountain railroading. It was in Colorado where my own interest in narrowgauge started after visiting the Silverton Branch briefy in 1967. If all that other great railroading had still been around and operating, it would have spead the narriwgauge fever much more widely…’
BUT it wasn’t.
As for foreign RR modeling, I don’t do much of that yet, but my interest is there having traveled some when I was younger.
Along the Rhein when I was about 18.
Switching at the north end of the Gotthard Tunnel
A bridge crew on the Nicaraguan narrowgauge in 1984.
Sorry for the pic quality, but when you’e working with a 110 camera…
I am sure that a big part of the facination with Colorado is the mountains.
Some modelers seem to feel that they are required to add a mountain to their layout or it isn’t a layout.
Me? I model Chicago where it really counts. Totally flat layout, large downtown passenger station, turntable and roundhouse. Steam and diesel in transition. Bridges all over the place, bascule and lift. Lots of Class 1 railroads.
I can tell you why based on my experience having lived in or visited 45 of the 50 states. In Colorado’s case I’ve driven through it a number of times and was struck by the majesty and beauty of the Rocky Mountain vistas. IMO, anyone who has to ask the question “why”, I would wonder if they have been there to experience it for themselves.
I’ve lived in and traveled around the northeast quite a bit in the last 20 years, all over Pennsylvania, the Berkshires, the Adirondacks etc. “Pretty and scenic” sure, but no comparison to the Rockies - no comparison at all.
I’ve spent time up in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and of course raised in California so the mountains are very grand IMO a greater order of magnitude to the relatively worn down and much geologically older appalachian reagion.
Maybe the old saying is true for many: “to know me is to love me”. To know in a personal experiencial way.
When I spent 6 weeks trapsing all over Montana and Wyoming climbing up and down the mountain sides with a rock hammer, 10% hydrochloric acid and notebook and we came away from there with a T-shirt with a logo saying: “It isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here”. The west is something you have t
Well, I’ve been to Colorado, and it was interesting. Stood on a mountain top at 12,000 ft.
But I will take the lush green of Appalachia any day. A drive down Skyline Drive, standing at the banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah in Harpers Ferry, these are views I love.
As for modeling, I’ve always been more interested in the action of a busy Class I (or two, or three) than in a sleepy narrow gauge line.
Guess I’m not “typical”, like not being interested in the “trains of my youth”…
Why other people model what they model, I have no clue.
Other countries? They have trains? Seriously, I know there are some great trains elsewhere, but I am very happy to be provincial…
I model places close to where I have lived my whole life, but I model them in a time before my lifetime…
We had narrow gauge - the East Broad Top.
We had 1900 vintage steam still pulling wooden coaches until 1953 - The Ma & Pa (ran right past the 1901 house I live in). You can still ride one of those coaches behind steam an hour up the road at Strasburg.
Modeling western scenery does nothing for me, sorry.
But I have all those John Denver records, about Colorado and West Virginia…
I only saw the Ma & Pa cross York Rd once, in Towson, a nothern suburb of Baltimore. No idea if it was steam or diesel. I think I remember seeing steam in Pennsylvania. Too bad for me. I did have a dream, where I was in downtown Baltimore and there were 0-6-0 switchers everywhere. For a couple weeks it seemed real, but there was really no place I traveled as a child where I could have seen that, had it existed in my lifetime.
I loved the million dollar highway that I toured years ago in Colorado. There are numerous abandoned mines you see on the way from Denver to the ski resorts. But, like Sheldon, that is not what I remember as a kid, on family trips to my grandparents near Johnstown PA. Modeling the places I don’t remember as a kid, have no interest for me.
What some guy writes in a modeling magazine doesn’t have to have any relationship of what we model. He is getting paid by the word or the page. It has to sound reasonable to get by the editor. It doesn’t even rise to the level of fake news. It’s just creative journalism.
If you are involved in other hobbies and subscribe to other magazines, people spin all kinds of facts about what is good, popular, effective, great. That sounds perfectly reasonable when you are new to the hobby. Once you have opinions, base on real experience. You realize they are just filling up space in the magazine.
PS to Sheldon, we went to Beartooth Pass in WY. There was a road stop park with a sign on top of the hill at 11,500’ My wife assured me it said “There is no oxygen up here”
It’s quite obvious that Western railroading is popular–look at the sales figures.
Kinda weird, really. The West is “wide open spaces”. Something model railroaders rarely experience when they build layouts.
I actually can’t think of a location in the US that DOESN’T have something I could happily model. I’ll even throw in the Big Island. And Alaska, of course.
Foreign railroading has some nice things going for it, too, if you get into it. The French, Germans and Brits all had some neat steam, I’ll tell ya. And that’s just Europe.
If I was a bazillionaire, I don’t know where I’d stop. Maybe Conrail. And CSX and NS DOES leave me cold. But not the places where the tracks run–I’d just pick an earlier period.
Yeah, Colorado is indeed railroad-cool. But so is everywhere else.
Especially Lyle WA, on the north bank of the Columbia.
