MGM Studio backlot railroad

[leighant]

I drew up this track plan in response to a request on another forum. Thought trains.com trackplan enthusiasts might enjoy it. It is a SMALL plan, 12"x36" in N scale.

MGM Studio in Culver City had its own railroad, only several hundred feet long. Rail entry from the Pacific Electric Railroad line that ran down Santa Monica Boulevard.
Had a European railroad station with platforms and a station bldg facade, used in Greta Garbo B&W "Anna Karenina" 1935 (see
Hollywood Trains ed. by Suarez p.6-7. It also appeared in run-down shape in one scene of "That's Entertainment".

Had a small town station on a false-front small town square (just half a block outside the European station!) See Larry Jensen"s book The Movie Railroads p.156 for a view of the small town depot and the studio's frontier train. A length of track alongside a shallow studio tank called "New York Docks."



The original request was asking about a switching layout. But this is a layout for simulating train operations, even though trains can run only a couple hundred scale feet before coming to the end of the track. Because that is the way the movie studio railroad operated! There is room for two passenger cars on the station platform and the locomotive will foul the turnout-- but that's usually what happened. The train can start out of the station but can't got any farther. If you want to switch the cars to change the scene, you can probably only switch out one at a time due to shortness of tail track. If you had the loco pointed out of the terminal in one scene and want to show it coming in, there is no turntable on the lot. You have to send the loco off the lot to run over mainline rr tracks to a rr engine facility with which the studio has made a servicing arragement, then send it back to the studio turned the right direction. Either that or use a crane to pick it up and turn it. On the layout, probably run it off the lot, turn by hand and replace on track. Extremely inefficient, but the studio made ONLY the train movements needed to show in the shot. Much of tracks in pavement so same real estate can be used as streets.

I think you can see a studio railroad very similar to this at OLD TUCSON in Arizona. The western town has a station and only a few hundred feet of track running out into desert. Train can be set up to be shown coming into town, OR going out of town, but never through town. Some of the rr equipt at Old Tucson came from the MGM studio sale when the studio liquidated much of its heritage.

Would be lots of fun (ie challenging) building false front buildings where all the framing and supports show on the backside.
One special feature, a row of poles about 40' tall along edge of lot with catwalks on top. Lights can be mounted to toplight scenes and techs can get to lights to focus via catwalks. Same structure used to hang painted backdrops. False front building rarely go over 2 stories tall. Upper stories created on film by matte paintings superimposed in for long shot to establish scene. Then closeups are too close to see that only 1 or 2 stories are real. Similar thing is done now with computer painted backgrounds.

Kenneth L. Anthony