Railway Historical
and Modeling Society
Layout Photos
Layout Photos
Warbonnets speeding across Illinois
No doubt about it, this is one of my favorite photos from the layout. I took the picture of the loco racing across the layout at speed 20 while running along the layout with my iphone. I discovered that it didn't matter if the train was going forwards or backwards, the image was the same. We don't run trains this fast on the layout, but if you spend any time on the transcontinental part of the Santa Fe railroad, this is how fast they move. The location is Verona, Illinois. This is the wallpaper on my iphone and quite often people think it is a photo of a real train on the Santa Fe.
This is another set of Warbonnets rolling into Joliet from the west. Whenever looking at the layout, to your right is East and to your left is West. The close track is a switching lead and the back 2 tracks are Main South and then Main North. The track here was elevated about a 100 years ago so that trains did not interrupt downtown Joliet street traffic. The first home here is a kit bash Model Power model. The next houses were scratchbuilt by MMR 29 Frank Hughes. The large factory/office building was at this location in 1995 but is gone today.
This an eastbound train out in the country between Verona and Mazon, Illinois. All curves on the mainline are superelevated and this can be seen as this train is coming out of this turn. The superelevation was created by using a thin long strip of masking tape placed on the outside half of the road bed. After the long strip was put down another but smaller strip was put down and then another smaller one after it so that there was a gradual easement into the superelevation. Not a lot was put in, but enough that it can be noticed. You can see the glass block windows that we added to the basement as soon as we moved in to eliminate the older casement windows. I think this helps cut down on some spiders, but clearly not all of them.
This is a local train bringing in some cars onto the switch lead. This older GP7 locomotive does represent some of the older smaller locomotives that Santa Fe often used for local trains. This locomotive is a brass hybrid kitbash done by Paul W Brown.
This is one of my favorite scenes on the layout. It was created by Frank Hughes using a bunch of the Prieser corn field painted brown for harvest. The town in the background is Verona and the corn will be going to the elevator you see. This scene is at the tip of the peninsula and one of the first things a visitor sees when looking at the layout.
This is another view of the same scene, but taken from inside the layout looking out. Using the cellphone for a camera allows one to put the camera in the layout instead of looking at it from outside. You can see some of my photo shopping to obscure the view of the layout across the aisle.
A view of the siding at the grain elevator at Verona. Several grain covered hoppers are always sitting here. You can see the tractor between the Main tracks and the siding that the grain elevator sometimes uses to spot the cars for loading.
A scratchbuilt house in Verona built by Frank Hughes.
Another photo taken from "inside the layout" looking out. A sratchbuilt Frank Huges business situated trackside in Verona.
On my layout, the Indiana Harbor Belt does some local switching for this industry, Stepan Chemical and also at Dow Plastics, not seen here.
I have 2 good friends, Paul and Bud and here are the 3 of us railfanning the Santa Fe at a grade crossing. I wish that we did have a cool mini van like seen here.