Before SimCity — even before Dungeons and Dragons — back when "computer" was a job title, people still found ways to vaporize countless hours of free time designing and maintaining private universes. In the analog world, such parallel realities were built with tweezers, glue and a spouse’s permission to cover the basement with papier-mâché massifs and plywood plains.
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Show Us Your Model Trains
Though it's located just a short drive from the company that launched SimCity and Spore, the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society has stuck by these venerable techniques and still makes believe the old-fashioned way. Members operate one of the largest, exclusively HO scale train lines in the United States and have conducted at their current locations since 1974.
The society’s control systems are a steampunk fantasy: a roomful of vintage 1930s magnetic relays once used to route phones calls, clacking like mechanical dominoes with every move the amateur engineers make. A full complement of 30 members can run 10 individual trains simultaneously on the layout, though only a dozen or so are required for basic operation.
Read on, for a tour of this impressive train set and the machinery that makes it all work.
The layout for the Diablo Valley Lines — the members' imaginary railroad company — is 54 feet by 32 feet.
Photos: Jim Merithew
The society’s headquarters sits in a public park about a mile from the nearest full-sized train in the area — a drab regional people-mover that looks like it was created specifically to purge all romance from rail travel.
Resembling the backdrop for an Office Space sequel, the locations might make a casual visitor wonder if he were in the right place, until he sees the yellow sandwich board emblazoned with the Monopoly-esque silhouette of a steam engine.
Society member Ken Bechtle traces his affinity for the railroad to a childhood fascination. "My mother found me," he relates, "at the Southern Pacific Rail Yards in Sacramento when I was 2-years old…. I guess I snuck out and went down there."
A fan of the HO scale since 1946, Bechtle acts as the society’s "Trainmaster," wrangling teams of club members to guide locomotives through the society’s 1,800-square-foot diorama, called a layout in the parlance of model railroaders.
Tom Ferruggia of Concord holds his BNSF (more commonly known as the Burlington Northern Sante Fe) SD70
Photos: Jim Merithew
Nearly a mile of track winds through the layout’s miniature landscapes and tiny towns, featuring replicas of a wide variety of structures and scenery. Craggy yellow hills, made of wood and wire mesh, rise well above eye level.
Though the terrain is not modeled on any place in particular, its dusky hues evoke what member Ted Moreland calls "freelance western railroad."
Because they were in a hurry to get the setup presentable to the public, a lot of the scenery that was put out in the early days of the club is still on the Diablo Valley Line. The club has been going back in recent years and redoing some of those scenes.
Photos: Jim Merithew
The layout dominates the main room of the two-story clubhouse that society members purpose-built back in 1972. "The pouring and the finishing of the concrete slab was contracted out," says Bechtle, "but the rest of the building … was done by the members, other than main center beam, and a neighbor volunteered a forklift to put it up."
One of the model towns on the layout is still called "Olympia" in honor of the budget beer that helped fuel the construction.
With its high ceilings, windowless walls and spot lighting, the inside of the building feels a bit like a truncated sports arena.
One side is overlooked by a utilitarian press box filled with engineers, each controlling a single locomotive, while on the opposite wall a giant schematic of the rail lines, complete with a scoreboard-style lighting system, indicates the locations and direction of each active train.
From a darkened dugout on the main floor, a dispatcher routes the traffic through the 400-plus switches and turnouts of the Diablo Valley Lines.
Photos: Jim Merithew
Bechtle (not pictured) worked for the phones company back when magnetic relays were still used to route phones calls, and he rigged the relays for model trains and bundled masses of wire complicated enough to induce a headache on sight.
A less detail-oriented type would probably go mad keeping track of thickets of wire so tangled they look almost comical, but Bechtle clearly relishes his role as the man behind the scenes of a complex project.
Photos: Jim Merithew
All members of the crew communicate via headsets of the kind favored by NFL coaches, and most are clad in denim work shirts embroidered with a logo for the Diablo Valley Lines.
The gray-haired hobbyists focus on the tasks at hand, immersing themselves in their railroad roles and tuning out the parents and kids looking on. A sign on the wall reads "Children Left Unattended Will Be Given Sugar and a Free Puppy," making clear that the railroaders are not motivated by a desire to entertain the younger generation.
The result is a giant, live-action role-playing game where the players invent passenger routes with elaborate timetables and plot delivery schedules for imaginary freight cargoes. "You can’t relax at all," Moreland says. "You’ve got to pay attention, think ahead ... It’s just like the real railroad."
Trying to coax a train operator into conversation as he runs his route evokes the disdain you’d get for asking a Dungeon Master about his day job: a wince, a wave of the hand, then a look of concentration as he forces his way back into the realm of imagination.
To fully staff the Diablo Valley Lines and keep things running smoothly, the club needs 25 members. The members' ages range from 14 to 88. If you count all the engines the club owns and all the ones owned by members, they could pull 1,000 separate trains.
Photos: Jim Merithew
The club has designed a lighting and sound system that cycles through all hours of the day, including a lightning storm that strikes in the middle of the night. Like the trains themselves, timekeeping inside the clubhouse is also in miniature, and "night" occurs every hour or so, accompanied by the sound of thunder and, at least when the public is around, the opening bars of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Photos: Jim Merithew
Each scene of the layout is full of detail and imagination. Off to one side, a small port boasts a working bascule drawbridge, and a warehouse with the dimensions of a roll-on suitcase bears a lighted sign for "I.C. Sparks Welding Supplies." In front of a nearby building, figurines hoist chad-sized picket signs demanding higher wages, while an airplane lolls in lazy circles overhead, suspended from a trapeze of piano wire.
Ted Moreland, of nearby Pittsburg, holds his Union Pacific CA1 caboose.
Photos: Jim Merithew
The trains, buildings and scenery on the layout are all in HO scale, with a ratio of 1:87 to their real-world counterparts. The highest point is equivalent to a 1,350-foot mountain, bolstering the society’s claim that its layout has the greatest elevation of any in the country. No one is sure how long it took to put together the landscape and the models that populate it, though society members playfully suggest a figure of about a million hours.
The club actually lays railroad ties this size by hand, using railroad spikes like this.
John McCool of Orinda holds his Santa Fe 2-10-4 steam engine.
Photos: Jim Merithew
It is no surprise that Spacewar, often described as the world’s first computer game, was the handiwork of members of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club who were devotees of the most elaborate fantasy world available in the analog era. In some ways the rise of computer games, which allow users to instantly enter an alternate reality, has challenged the relevance of model railroading. Yet for the members of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society, escapism is best when built by hand.
Will Wright would definitely approve.
Eric Moe of Walnut Creek holds his F59, an Altamont Commuter Express Ace Train.
Jason Dutcher of Lafayette holds his Western Pacific GP7.
Photos: Jim Merithew
