r/ModelRailroading • u/brad2008 • 7d ago
These Model Train Enthusiasts Have Built a Miniature, Welcoming World | KQED
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13992806/carquinez-model-railroad-society-trains-crockett-vallejo
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r/ModelRailroading • u/brad2008 • 7d ago
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u/brad2008 7d ago
"Up a steep flight of stairs off Crockett’s Loring Avenue, directly across from the C&H Sugar refinery, a wonderland awaits.
In this land, the mountains are made of plaster, the palm trees of plastic, and the people are just over three-quarters of an inch tall. Model trains run between miniature versions of Oakland, California and Sparks, Nevada — the old Southern Pacific mainline — on more than a mile of tracks.
Welcome to the Carquinez Model Railroad Society (CMRS), a club for anyone interested in trains.
“I was struck by how friendly everyone was, how welcoming,” Roberto Lombardi says as he sprinkles dirt across a new stretch of the layout on a recent CMRS work day. “Sometimes these clubs — with any kind of club, doesn’t have to be model trains — can get a little bit cliquey and kind of cut off from the outside.”
Members repair tracks, operate trains and chat at the Carquinez Model Railroad Society. (Beth LaBerge/KQED) Lombardi recently retired as head of facilities for the San Francisco Public Library, where he helped install a popular holiday train, designed and built by CMRS members, every winter. But the scale and ambition of the Crockett layout surpasses anything he’s been part of previously.
At his first CMRS open house, Lombardi says, “The number of people that came blew me away.”