The Early Days of the Layout

These videos were taken at some of the club’s open houses in the early years. They show the evolution of the railroad. Come visit us and see where we are now!

April 2010

The helix has just been installed giving access to an upper level.  Very little scenery is in place, mostly just bench work at this point.  The track above Erving & Gardner hasn’t been installed yet.  To facilitate running there are several temporary by-passes installed.

April 2011

Readsboro and the staging below are installed along the left wall as you enter the clubroom.  The modeling of Readsboro has been done by Mal Houck & Don Carlton.  Other than Readsboro there isn’t much scenery, but the upper deck over Erving and Gardner is in and has track on it.

April 2012

Zoar, the Deerfield River Bridge and the east entrance to the Hoosac Tunnel has be sceniced by Scott Lukas.  The Erving Paper Mill as seen from the river side has been modeled by Bob McGuire with help from Scot Stewart.  Gardner has some buildings by Tom Fitzgerald including some of his customized fire engines fighting a building fire.  On the upper deck over Gardner a farm scene is being worked on by Larry Roberts.

April 2013

This year the focus has been on doing more detailed scenery with the aim of having all the layout seen as you enter the club room completely scenic’d.  These 3 videos show how far we have progressed.  The West Portal of the Hoosac Tunnel now has scenery as well as North Adams.  This work was done by Matt Paquette.  More details have been added to Erving and the bridge in Wendell has been completed by Mal Houck and Scot Stewart.  At the East Portal of the Hoosac Tunnel can be seen the first set of working signal lights.  On the far side of the club room can be seen the start of the benchwork that will take the layout through Fitchburg and east beyond Shirley and Ayer.

Thanks to conrailSD40guy for these videos of the club layout.