Humor is reason gone mad. Groucho Marx
Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post, from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
This series was conceived as a haven where folks can drop in to share conversation, ideas, weather reports, and music. Feel free to leave a note, comment, picture, or tune. As always the diarist gets to sleep in, and may show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Pull up a chair, get your cup of tea, coffee, or other favorite morning beverage and join us for a neighborly start to the day ahead.
For eight and a half years I’ve been building my own world. Actually, I found Daily Kos because I needed to sit down and rest and stumbled across the site at my work computer.
I can’t even call this my dream job, because never in did I entertain the notion that someone would pay me to do this. There’s a certain amount of God Complex that goes into being a model railroader. One really has to have the desire to remake the world in their own image. It takes logic and reason to make it work well. But it takes a healthy minds eye and artist endeavor to make it look good. I like thinking on both sides of my brain.
I was volunteering as a docent at a little museum when a man walked in and announced he wanted to build a model railroad of the Union Pacific in Wyoming in the 50’s. I raised my hand to help. With several years of planning, here I am 11 years later.
There are two of us working full time on this layout (what we call a model railroad). As the former director for the Nation Model Railroad Association, Arizona Division I know for a fact that we are the only two people in the state that get paid to do what we do. That makes us as rare as Senators.
Dang near everything you see in these photos has been built, made or manipulated by me. I painted the building ceiling blue and the red stencil lines on the floor was officially day one of construction. We started the Monday after Thanksgiving Day. I think it was an appropriate time. I have poured my heart and soul into this project, often working 14 to 16 hours days. My record is 19 ½ hours in one day. But there’s no way I can take any other approach.
See, this project is personal to me in many ways. My grandfather was a lumberyard manager in Green River Wyoming in the 50’s. I get to build his business from scratch based off photos dad took when he was a teenager. My great great grand father herded sheep from the north rim of the Grand Canyon up to Wamsutter, Wyoming because it was the closest railroad at the time. I have built that town as closely as I can to what it looked like in the 50’s.
I have another grandfather who was part of the Mormon churches effort to help grade and build the railroad through Utah in 1868. So, I am consumed with putting in the effort to make this a tribute to my boss, who grew up in Cheyenne, and my family.
The man hours it takes to build something like this can be staggering. My co-worker specializes in the large buildings that we get to make based off of blueprints if we’re lucky, photographs as a rule, and a Sanborn Fire Insurance map if we aren’t.
He will be staring at this building for months until it becomes something like this.
Some of his projects last for over a year. I specialize in the scenery. Trying to make the middle of nowhere look interesting is quite the challenge.
When I get tired or burned out planting individual sage brush plants, I’ll dive into a building or work on the locos and rolling stock (freight and passenger cars), of which there are over 120 and 2,400 respectively.
Part of my job is to be a history sleuth. It’s not easy recreating something I never saw and 60 years removed from the present. I travel every year up to Utah and Wyoming to do research at the U of W and museums stretched out from Denver to Ogden. I take photos of what I see now, because thankfully the hand of man hasn’t made as many marks here as it has in other places.
Being a westerner, I grew up chasing trains with dad. There’s a ton of little details that make the scene complete that somehow get left out of other modelers efforts. After all, what else besides barbed wire fence and cattle guards do I have to model in wide open Wyoming?
I love my job. I am so thankful that I get to do something like this. In a way, I can say I retired at the age of 36. Most of my friends are, and this is what they want to do with their time.
If you are interested in seeing more of what we do, check out our website.
❧
☕️
Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?