My railroad room proper has just the usual backdrop, but the stairway leading to the room has my NMRA certificates, a color print of an SP Steam GS Daylight, a a print of a T-1 Reading engine on a stone arch viaduct, a picture of my Dad at work standing on the back platform of a B&O caboose at the C&O coal docks in Toledo Ohio. On the door into the room is a tackboard my wife made with railroad themed fabric, and inside the train room is a Large NYC oval herald.
Most importantly is a letter from my grand daughter about the help that FEMA would give me after the great flood, including loans for the railroad and some house trailers for temp shelter of the residents. What happend really was a water leak upstairs, alot of which came through the ceiling of the railroad room and flooded a section of my HO railroad. Thank's to real insurance it was mostly covered. I am with some of the above people who do not want the real world stuf distracting from the HO world.
I also have a Lionel sized bridge built of orange crate wood, painted black, with rivets painted on with white paint spots that my grandfather built for my father back in the 1930s or so, as well as a station that he built. I LOVE the bridge on the wall and I may put that to go into the trainroom on the wall. I could bill it as the worlds largest bridge or something.
Paul
Dayton and Mad River Railroad
Santa Fe system map:
And a Santa Fe phone directory to go with the old rotary phone:
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website
Richard,
Great Idea for a thread!
Dan,
Love the Rio Grande FT advertisement
A real interesting mix of stuff anf styles, from nothing up to very professional looking. My tastes tend to be eclectic. Except for aircraft, I confine my lovable clutter to right at the entrance.
There's some RR sounvenirs/kitsch
Reminding visitors I'm dedicated to my hobby and it's future.
I've got a copy of a John Coker print that has served as a book cover and illustration several places, but is also part of the scene on the layout itself. I know john a little, having run intgo him selling prints, etc of his art at the National Narrow Gauge Convention some years back. But I've also run into him on the job...engineer on steam trains. He worked for the D&S, then moved over to the C&TS. It's been a few years and he may have retired from that, but I certain he's still doing art. Highly recommended if you like the narrowgauge like we do.
A friend visited Cuba some years back and ended up staying in a guesthouse run by a retired doctor who worked under Che Guevara when he was health minister after the revolution. She saw this and just had to have it, knowing I'd get a kick out of it, so she struck some kind of bargain...lasts longer than a cigar is all I can say BTW, I think that's American Flyer equipment (ironically enough ) at a Young Pioneer facility in Havana, because of the size, but maybe it's Lionel, because it looks like 3-rail track in the foreground. Or maybe they mixed both gauges?
Careening around the historical landscape, I also have a "Free Silver" button. Google it, as it's too hard to explain it all. But my RR is based in part on the assumption history went the other way and the gov't kept buying silver, ie. the free silver folks won, supporting a prosperous local economy that needs good RR service.
Here are some Silverton RR waybills from the 1890s I collected.
Finally, a copy of the menu from the Silverton Northern RRs Animas Forks.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I don't have any photos but I am going to put up a few partition walls as part of a current layout expansion and I have several large railroad prints as well as a NYC route map. which will go on the portions of the walls that won't have layout shelves attached. Railroad calendars are always good too.
I don't have any really good photos of the caboose but this will give you an idea of what I am working towards. The caboose is full size for a NYC wood 34' taken from drawings (9' ceiling). I plan to cover the surface with 4" grooved pine and extend the roof overhang out 18-24". I have a set of original hand cut NYC number stencils that I purchased a few years ago that I plan to use to paint the numbers with. The door is to the master bedroom bathroom (very convenient!). This was an addition I added to my home 8 years ago just before I retired.
-Bob
Life is what happens while you are making other plans!
I have the bridge my Dad scratchbuilt for our Lionel layout ca 1949. He bent sheet metal to make "structural steel angles" and soldered it together. Slightloy beat-up because I "bombed" it with bricks. Mounted on wall above layout and background.
Over "my version of Galveston" on my layout, I have a 1947 Missouri Pacific travel and tourism promotion blurb, with a prototype picture of one of the scenes I am modeling.
Over a dozen photos of prototype scenes and operations that match modeled scenes- cotton in boxcars, tilting boxcars to unload grain, export grain elevator, banana import dock, Texas Chief at Santa Fe Galveston station, cargo docks, shrimpboat harbor...
I also honor my dad by displaying a photo he took in 1932 with his Brownie when "Old Ironsides" visited the Port of Houston. Fits the port theme of my layout.
I used to have old ads, maps, pics, etc. displayed with my earlier layout, but now I've gone to NO decorations, just the layout and backdrop. These days I much prefer to have people "enter my little world" without the real world distractions-more like a museum diorama. I figure for all of the hard work and attention to aesthetics I go through to try and get the layout looking good I only want guests to pay attention to and immerse themselves in the layout itself.
Jim
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
I've got several decorations, but the ones that mean the most are my K4 print, my insulators, a railroad material exhibit I have on loan to my model RR club (prr oil can, prr gator wrench, two spikes, and two prr schedules), and such.
But the one that means the most is a framed one I created. Its a technical drawing of a K4, a photo of Horseshoe curve, and all the ticket stubs of every train trip I've ever taken with my dad. I've got about 7 EBT(East Broad Top RR) tickets, a Durango and Silverton ticket, a chama one, Colorado RR museum one,etc. Its really special to me, because of the memories.
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
I have some similar items to GGOOLER - vintage railroad magazine ads that I bought on eBay then mounted in inexpensive frames from Walmart. Sometimes I mount them on a photo mat border. Here are a few examples:
I like these old ads because they are colorful, eye-catching, and a bit nostalgic. For the most part, they're hand-drawn illustrations (except the SCL Bicentennial one, of course), which adds a little extra "artistic visual appeal."
Dan Stokes
My other car is a tunnel motor
Besides the "normal" RR photos I have a chart diagram from a school showing what things can be overlooked on a steam engine, a really neat mirror with steamer on it, old yearly calendar made of metal, lanterns and a headlamp from a DM&IR Mikado. Outside are signs, a cleanout rack, and various track and tie handling equipment. These will be joined by switch lanterns wired for pathway lights and hopefully a 1:1 track next to my layout building. Eventually I will have a Passenger shed over a portion of the building made to look like a passenger car that is next to my depot building. Boy that stuff all takes time and our summers are all too short up here in Minnesota. I'll have to try and post some pix in the future.
God's Best & Happy Rails to You!
Bing (RIPRR The Route of the Buzzards)
The future: Dead Rail Society
heres the start of my collection, actually a good friend that just retired fromnthe railroad gave me these pictures.
but hey, not just trains
cars too.
later
g
FB page of my layout *new*
https://www.facebook.com/ghglines
.
thread to my layout
http://www.warcrc.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10505
pics
http://s237.photobucket.com/user/rockcrawling/library/#/user/rockcrawling/library/ho%20scale%20trains?sort=3&page=1&_suid=1388183416990004180295067414064
LION has no pictures to show ewe, cause him buildded nothing of the sort yet. But him is going to enlarge pictures of Brooklyn and da Bronx to illustrate the stations that I have modeled. Then when I show people around the can see the place that I am modling.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
A Christmas present:
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
RideOnRoad This may have been covered before, but I am interested to see photos of any train-theme decorations you have incorporated into your train rooms.
This may have been covered before, but I am interested to see photos of any train-theme decorations you have incorporated into your train rooms.
RideOnRoad,
Of course I enjoy being surrounded with everything to do with my railway, including C&O artifacts from the 1940's to make it all feel right (Read real) to me.
But I also find it very enjoyable to be surrounded by artwork, so the first picture looking West in my basement shows what I have combined. Some 1940's C&O Employee Time Tables, Train Order Forms, etc I collected over the years hang down from the ceiling. Artwork by Hopper, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Georgia O'Keefe (her sister was married to Robert R. Young who was chairman of the C&O from 1942 to about 1952) frame the town of Dimmock.
The next shot shows large rectangular pieces of canvas running behind Thurmond. My intent here is not to make a continous backdrop, but to give a feeling of being in a gallery. I will eventually paint West Virginia Mountains on them to frame my miniature C&O (just hazy blue sky for now).
This last shot looks across the New River from Sewell towards Thurmond, W. Va.
Being surrounded by things I love (not just my trains) does wonders to recharge my batteries.
Joel
Modeling the C&O New River Subdivision circa 1949 for the fun of it!
I'm actually in the process of removing many of the photos, maps, lanterns, porcelain signs and knick-knacks from my walls. At first I was building the "Railroad Atmosphere" and I was comfortable with that but...
As I post more photos on-line I find them to be more of a distraction. I had a seven-foot long station sign along one wall and the more I saw it in photos the more I wanted to take it down... that was the first to go.
Happy Modeling! Ed
I have 2 Prime digital beacons up in the corners of my train room. The lower profile(silver looking base) beacon is off a GP10 #1410. The black base beacon is off an unknown GE C30-7. Mikie
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
Richard