Rails & Trails: Layout Tour 2020

I organized a model railroad layout tour for Rod Peters and myself for August 28, 2020. We visited four layouts in the Menomonie and Eau Claire areas. I wanted to give us some inspiration to work on our model railroads. Even though I will be writing another book this winter, I want to do some significant work on my pike.

The first layout we visited with Jack Gutsch's HOn3 layout. This is Jack's FOURTEENTH layout and is awesome! Named the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad, it is a model of a railroad in the South Dakota Black Hills dedicated to hauling gold ore and processed gold. Scenes the layout depict actual scenes that existed on the railroad. Jack has spent a lot of time researching the railroad and collecting information and pictures. Jack and his wife had this new house built and it was finished just over two years ago and he has built all this in less than two years!

Here Jack explains to us the design of his layout:

Here are some scenes of various locations on his layout:

Next we visited Bill Edgar's N-Gauge layout. Bill was a co-founder of the N Scale Railroading magazine and former Graphics Artists for Model Railroader and then the N Scale Railroading magazine. After recently retiring from the job in Wenatchee, Washington, he and his wife moved back to Wisconsin and purchased a house. Although he has built large layouts in the past, he wanted an operational layout in the basement while still retaining the lounge area. With his computer skills, he drew the layout for the magazine.

He is designing this layout to sort of replicate the Wisconsin Valley. Right now he is concentrating on using Milwaukee Road trains but with his vast collection of rolling stock, he can change it to other railroads, such as Soo Line, C&NW, Great Northern, etc. etc.

Here is Bill (left) explaining the layout to Rod.

Next we went to Gregg Condon's home (yes, the Gregg of Gregg Shorthand books. If you are old enough to have had shorthand taught in your high school, it undoubtedly was a Gregg book). Gregg has his 7th and 8th layouts in his basement. The 7th layout is an HOn3 layout based on actual scenes on the Colorado & Southern. You will note from the following scenes that Gregg is an NMRA Master Modeler!! Gregg has 227 structures on his layout and only 16 are kits. The rest are all SCRATCH BUILT and many have interiors. This layout is 100% done.

Gregg (right) explains his layout and operation to Rod.
Note the great use of mirrors!!

More mirror.

Gregg's previous layout was the Mineral Point & Northern when he lived near Greenville, outside of Green Bay. Gregg grew up in Brodhead, Wisconsin on the Milwaukee Road (even rode the last passenger train on the line!) and loves to replicate that area. His second layout in this basement is the Janesville Division of the line and is again called the Mineral Point & Northern. With the speed that Gregg gets things done, this layout will probably be done this winter. Here's a few shots to show this layout's progress.

Our last stop was Pat Thoney's newly created On30 Quincy & Torch Lake Railroad. Pat had a massive HO Norfolk Southern Rat Hole Division layout with superb scenery when he journeyed to Upper Michigan and found the Quincy & Torch Lake Railroad near Hancock. He fell in love with the 6-mile copper mining railroad, started researching it, and along with some friends, journeys there a couple of times a year to volunteer on the restoration.

He reconfigured his basement and has replicated many of the locations on the railroad. His friend Al Peeso has customized the engines to exact replicas of the Q&TL engines. Even his track ballast is rock from the Quincy, which of course the real railroad used to ballast their track. Hopefully you can get a feel for the great work Pat has done in a short time.