(whistle blowing) (theme music) Announcer: Support for Tracks Ahead is provided in part by Kalmbach Publishing Company and its on-line video magazine, Model Railroader Video Plus.

And by Walthers.

(theme music) Spencer: Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll travel a Pennsylvania line that treks through the original oil fields of the U.S.--- Stop in Seattle for a look at old time Northern California through a scenery rich SN3 layout--- Plus, we visit Green Bay Wisconsin to see what's new at the National Railroad Museum.

But first, we explore some of the most amazing diverse and personal layouts you'll ever see- courtesy of a pair of brothers who revel in reproducing the past.

Time to get started.

(music) Narrator: What you are looking at is the painstaking care that goes into turning a dream into reality.

Dreams do come true.

And, they come true with the help of Images Railroad Company.

Narrator: Dan and Armando Vargas learned early in life that they had an affinity for modeling.

Dan Vargas: I first got interested in trains on visiting the depot at the Southern Pacific in San Francisco.

And ah visually seeing the train take off was incredible.

And then visiting local hobby shops and seeing the arrangement of all the beautiful models that are produced at the time when I was a kid.

When we were small, we picked up Model Railroader magazines, we looked at the scenes.

We were fascinated.

That's what intrigued us to get where we're building now.

And we loved the trains.

But we expected the trains to be running through tunnels and scenery and mountains.

So my brother and I said, Let's start doing scenery.

And we started experimenting.

Narrator: Dan's second interest turned to classic cars.

That turned out to be an entre' to his first love.

Dan: Where I grew up in a coastal town, Pacifica, everybody there seems to be a Saturday mechanic.

There's a car in the garage and somebody's wrenching.

We really loved the automobiles.

But we were always passionate about railroading.

If we had the opportunity to speak with our clients to show our love affair with railroads.

They told us about this collection, and that collection, and how they enjoy trains.

And then they were inviting us over to their homes to see what they had, and wanted us to participate.

Build us a set.

What could you guys put together for us.

And that's how it started.

Narrator: Dan and Armando offer a full service approach to the whole model railroad experience.

Armando Vargas: We try to get as much information as possible.

We ask them what gauge layout they have, what size.

And what are they looking for.

What's their main focus.

Is it scenery?

Wiring?

Whatever it is.

Narrator: Sometimes, the client project involves more than just trains.

Case in point - Tom & Gwen Price.

Armando: Gwen came to my brother and I and said I know you guys do railroads, racetracks.

Could you please assist him in his racetrack.

So my brother and I went to his racetrack.

And it was already built.

He said, I want to keep my original existing racetrack.

But the other thing is, I want to build Monte Carlo.

And my brother and I said, Oh my God.

Monte Carlo.

I hope he's just thinking about one building, not the whole thing.

It's a work in progress, it's unique.

It will be our most unique thing we've done, I think.

Narrator: Their work is stunning in detail.

Armando: My brother and I really enjoy the weathering and detail.

Because things age, things look more real when they're weathered.

Now we can appreciate the classic toy train look.

Because if you grew up with something, you want it to look exactly like when you were 12 years old.

But now if you get into trains in a serious manner, you want it to look like the real thing.

Narrator: What you are getting is a true work of art and a reflection of your own desires.

Dan: The Twentieth Century Scenic Railroad for Douglas Smith and Sandra Lloyd was developed upon the client asking us to put together miniature scenes.

One of the scenes was a New York scene.

The Yosemite scene, Colorado.

The Hollywood and also the Big Spee Creek bridge, which is the California coast.

These scenes were based upon their travel experiences and locations they were very fond of.

Narrator: Dan and Armando will tackle any gauge.

There is no project to large or too small.

Seth and Alicia Geresch had something unusual in mind.

Armando: So Seth wanted a European theme.

It's a Marklin.

Marklin is a very unique setup.

So to take the challenge of Marklin, with the pantographs and everything, that's phenomenal.

My brother and I are very happy with Seth's layout.

It turned out quite well.

It has that European theme.

And what's really unique about that particular layout, we could work with our client.

Seth said I would like to build the buildings.

So as we're building the layout, he's coming down with Hey look.

I built the winery.

I built this or I built that.

And he did such a wonderful job.

Narrator: Time and again clients stated that Dan and Armando took the client's dreams and ideas, and transformed them into reality.

Armando: Stan Unger is a wonderful gentleman who has a great Golden State Southern Pacific Layout.

The layout was built, and he told my brother and me, I want something different.

But I tried not to change the theme.

So my brother and I added more trains.

So put a double track mainline.

He wanted a penitentiary, a prison.

He wanted a big icing platform.

So he wanted a lot in a little space.

Narrator: The Grand Funk Railroad is a reflection of one man's childhood and life journey.

Steve Funk: The short and easiest way to explain this, is I had a vision about things that were important in my life.

Vancouver and a hockey stadium.

A farm scene from Iowa.

Chicago.

A carnival which I always loved to go to.

And then the haunted house area down there.

And the Vargas Brothers and I teamed up.

And those guys took that passion and raised it to another level.

To the point where that's an historic building from Davenport, Iowa.

Narrator: Technological changes have opened up new avenues for exploration in the model railroad hobby: Steve: Technology.

Look at this little girl.

This is an opportunity to take technology and unseeable things and combine it with seeable things.

The chance to take a pad and communicate with a real, physical world.

And this has the chance to bring, kids and the youth back into the scene.

And one of the things that going to happen, and is happening in North America is that trains are now the fastest growing form of transportation.

They're again in people's lives.

And now a kid has a chance to take a piece of technology and jump into the life and the fantasy.

Rudy Trubitt: It's really important to us at Lionel to bring on the next generation of model railroaders.

And one of the ways we see to do that is, I have a 12 year old.

And sure that anyone with a similar aged kid knows that kids think that fun comes from a screen these days.

And so we are working on integrating virtual control over a physical train layout.

With a iPad or an iPhone, a wireless device to let people control a layout from a familiar interface.

Narrator: Jeff Silk wanted lots of operation and animation, all wrapped around his family activities.

Jeff Silk: What I love about Mount Marlborough, is there is something for everybody.

It's got little pieces of railroading history from around the United States.

It's got various pieces of California history.

So one of the brilliant things about the Vargas Brothers is they've been able to take things which are near and dear to my life and recreate it on the railroad.

So for instance- My family spends a lot of time skiing at Sugarbowl, which is in Lake Tahoe.

And so we spent, my family and I spent time there taking pictures of various parts of the resort and taking pictures of the old famous lodge.

And from the pictures, the Vargas brothers recreated an identical image of the resort and the lodge, of our house and just the good feeling you get from being there.

There's many really great accessories here on the layout.

And to me, I just like pushing the buttons on all of them.

And watching things move around and go in circles.

You know, men will come out and wash a car.

Or the windmill will move around.

Or the golfer will be hitting the golf club.

Or I'll watch the roller coast or the fair move around.

And they all give me great enjoyment.

Just to turn on the accessory, and watch them go.

Narrator: Both brothers feel that their work is about more than just building a model railroad.

Dan: It takes a lot of patience.

But the most important thing is they're satisfied and they're happy.

And it was great experience.

And aside from the trains, we establish great friendships with our clients.

And that means sometimes more than actually doing the project.

Narrator: Images of the Past can certainly turn your dreams into reality.

The final result is a work of art.

(Music) Spencer: Coming up, a railroad that once saw the boom and near bust of the oil industry in Western Pennsylvania found itself in need of rescue- and it did.

But next, there are lots of narrow gauge railroads in America.

Our next guest took the approach to build a free-lanced line in an area that he thought provided a variety of scenic opportunities.

(Music) Narrator: Welcome to the Pelican Bay Railroad.

This narrow gauge line serves a scenery rich area of Northern California.

The railroad is an invention of model railroader Paul Scoles.

Like most, Paul got started in model railroading as a child.

Paul Scoles: It started when I think I was 6 years old when my parents presented me with a Lionel train set.

I fascinated by it naturally.

But I was also fascinated with scenery at the time, I didn't know anything.

So I hauled the Lionel train set out into the garden where I immediately got the track all rusty and the locomotive dirty, much to the chagrin of my father who was very angry about it.

But it wasn't until I was 14 or 15 that I started to become interested in scale model railroading.

A next-door neighbor had an HO layout that he was building and I saw that and started spending more and more of my time there.

After college I was drafted in the army like almost everybody back in the 60s and I went to Viet Nam, where I was badly wounded and spent almost a year in a hospital.

It was while I was in the hospital recovering that I stumbled across a copy of Model Railroader Magazine.

And I opened it up and that just immediately turned the switch back on.

I was suddenly very interested in model railroading again Narrator: Paul became interested in narrow gauge.

It seemed as if everyone was modeling Colorado lines.

But Paul wanted to be different.

Paul: I had discovered that California had a large number of narrow gauge railroads on their own.

As many in fact, as Colorado had.

But they were largely ignored by the model railroad hobbyists themselves and the manufacturers.

That didn't change the fact that a large number of narrow gauge railroads actually existed in the late 1800s, early 1900s throughout California.

Northern California has a variety, a wide variety of scenery.

They have the coast redwoods that I think everybody knows about, the giant trees.

So modeled the redwood forest.

But also in northern California, there's also the rocky, arid central part of the state and then the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

So you have this huge mountain range.

So you go from the redwood forest to the hot, dry inland valleys- rocky, arid, almost desert like - and then to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

So I've depicted all of that here, in various parts of the layout.

The northern most modeled town on the railroad is the town of Klamath.

It's a lumber mill town and it has vastly different scenery than the rest of the railroad.

In any case, the mainline leaves Klamath going southbound, passes through a little mining hamlet called Camp Riley and the second mining hamlet of Dooley Canyon, and winds up at the seaside town of Fort Nash.

And Fort Nash is an army town, where an army post is located.

From Fort Nash the mainline heads south and into the main town on the layout, known as Pelican Bay which is the main yard.

From Pelican Bay the line continues south to the town of Rio Dell where a kerosene refinery is located.

From Rio Dell the line continues south through the redwood forest and to the small station known as Big Trees.

From Big Trees, the line turns east into Diablo Canyon, which is a river, the Diablo River.

And Diablo Canyon is a rocky, arid desolate place prone to train robbers and Indian attacks and so on.

And eventually the line emerges from Diablo Canyon and winds up at the southernmost town on the railroad, Silverado.

Narrator: Are there any future plans?

Paul: I've got to finish my city scene.

And that's months away from being done but it'll eventually be finished.

Beyond that I still need to deal with the army facility at Fort Nash.

I haven't gotten to that yet.

Narrator: Paul has some advice for anyone thinking about the hobby of model railroading.

Paul: I think it's important number one to realize how much fun this hobby is and how rewarding it can be.

This particular model railroad is big.

I admit it.

I bit off maybe more than I could chew.

But the most important thing is I've enjoyed every minute of it for the last 20 years, while I've built it, developed it, torn sections out and redone them so I could improve them and so on.

It's been, it's been a wonderful journey.

And the only thing I can tell you is that is you have any notion of building a model railroad, do it.

Narrator: The Pelican Bay Railroad.

While it started as an imaginary project in Paul's mind, the reality is a visual treat of life in 1890's Northern California.

(music) (train whistle) Narrator: Every year, thousands of people get onboard to ride through a history-making valley, on the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad, in Titusville Pennsylvania.

Jim Watson became the railroad's general manager after moving back to the area more than 12 years ago.

Jim Watson: This runs down through 'the valley that changed the world.'

It's known as the valley that changed the world because that is where oil was discovered.

You know, first processed Betty Squire: The valley that changed the world is with the drilling at Drakes well in 1859.

It created basically the industrial revolution.

Narrator: This revolutionary valley was a major freight hub for more than 100 years.

But by the early 1980s, the 13 point 5 miles of track around Titusville had fallen into disrepair.

Many local businesses were caught off guard when they learned the primary rail company was planning to discontinue freight service.

So a couple of local groups banded together to buy the tracks and fix up the stations on the line.

Betty Squire is the marketing director for the railroad's historic society.

She was part of the original group that worked to save the railway.

Betty: And we had a company come in and survey and tell us about how many passengers we would possibly have throughout the season if we did operate a multiple unit, tourism and freight moving.

And at that time they said between 5 and 10 thousand people a year would probably come ride a short line.

And low and behold the first season of operation, we had over 35 thousand people ride the trains.

So we indeed knew that it was going to be a success.

Jim Watson: To date?

We are about 655 thousand people have rode the train in the last 25 years.

Comes out to a little over 26 thousand people a year that come to Titusville to ride the train.

Narrator: Even though this local attraction has brought thousands of riders since it opened in 1986, the railroad's popularity only half the story.

While the line hosts riders from June through October, freight trains run on the tracks all year long.

Betty: There's no way that the passenger revenue can provide for itself without the utilization of freight.

We have a very, very unique arrangement with our designated operator.

He takes care of everything from the bottom of the cars down to the rails.

And they work with the state for rail-freight assistance.

Jim: Well we need both sides, freight and tourism, to survive because initially, we're a non-profit company.

We haul wax pellets that's used to make plastic pipe, and that they're using for new gas lines and that type of thing.

Narrator: Still, on this railroad-passengers enjoy a glimpse into the past with vintage stations and cars that take them through the heart of Pennsylvania Oil Country.

The three hour trip starts at the Perry Street Station in Titusville, then travels south to Drake Well, where there's a museum that specializes in American oil history.

Melissa Mann is one of the museums managers.

She works with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to preserve this piece of American history.

Melissa Mann: The museum interprets and preserves the Drake well, which was the 1st commercial oil well that gave birth to the oil and natural gas industry in the United States in 1859.

The main thing that they'll see, which is really the heart of our site, is the Drake well replica.

It is a board for board reproduction of Drake's original well um, that struck at 69 and a half feet.

Narrator: Along the route, riders can sit back and relax, or enjoy some of the railroad's unique features.

Jim Watson: The post office car, originally, it came down from Canada.

It was donated to us in 1989.

You can take and by a postcard, it'll be-fill it out, you can stamp it and it'll get mailed back to you from where you're at.

Another specialty car is our open car.

We call it our flat car.

It's wide open for scenery, pictures, you know that type of thing.

People love it.

Narrator: Though the ride is fun and relaxing, the railroad's volunteers are hard at work keeping the area's history alive.

Betty: We try to get the word out nationwide about what we have here because it is a vintage train.

There are a lot of people who have never, never been on a train.

Our train only goes about 10 miles per hour, it's just a nice, relaxing ride for anyone.

Jim: Hopefully, in the future, my biggest thing here is maintenance, keep people coming.

We average 26 thousand people a year come here to Titusville.

When they come to Titusville, they spend dollars.

You know?

When they come here, they-they stay at the local hotels.

They eat at the local restaurants.

So it's good for Titusville.

Spencer: Green Bay is home to, hmmm, a few famous things!

Beer, brats, NFL's Packers and-the National Railroad Museum.

As this story demonstrates, the draw to this Northeastern Wisconsin city is every bit as much about trains as it is football.

(Music and natural sound) Narrator: Cook Memorial Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin is the site of the National Railroad Museum where daily the trains roll.

Jacqueline Frank: We have about seventy-five plus pieces of rolling stock here as well as thousands and thousands of railroad artifacts from throughout the United States.

Narrator: Established in 1956 and through a joint act of Congress in 1958 this became THE National Railroad Museum.

Jacqueline: We were established basically, kind of as a club.

There was a group of local business men who were really interested in preserving locomotives and any rolling stock during the 1950's and early 1960s as they were gradually being scraped for newer pieces.

Daniel Liedtke: We have anything from buttons off of conductors uniforms to large trains like you see here at the museum, we have, and anything in between.

So any clothing the conductors wore or the folks that were working in the restaurant cars.

We have dishes, so some of the plates that they used on the dining cars, we have tools that were used to fix the locomotives.

We have a large photograph and slide collection.

We have books, our oldest book goes back to 1836 and we have anything, anything modern along with the technical manuals for the locomotives.

Narrator: Some of the big things at the museum are the Pullman Porter Exhibit, the Aerotrian and the Big Boy.

Bob Lettenberger: We have one of eight Union Pacific Railroad Big Boy locomotives.

Arguable they are some of the largest or among the largest locomotives in the world.

The Big Boy weights in one point one eight million pounds, a hundred and thirty two feet, nine and seven eight inches long and to be able to stand next to it is incredible.

To get into the cab is even more phenomenal and that's one of the things you can see here at the museum.

General Motors back in the fifties built an experimental train call the Aerotrain.

We not only have the builders model that they created for that but we have one of two prototypes, ah, that were actually built, and it's a neat train because all the technology was recycled to be used in the Aerotrain and it really shows the creativity that the railroads were trying to use to draw people away from their automobiles and airplanes and back to highways.

We have an exhibit call the Pullman Porter from service to civil rights, a look at how the Pullman porters struggled for twelve years to form the first minority labor union here in the U-S and then how they went on to become the backbone of the American civil rights movement.

Rich in history, a lot things that when you walk in you'll be awed by the size do the trains but when you start peeling back the surface and seeing what's underneath, you'll be incredibly amazed by the story the machines can tell.

Narrator: Another major exhibit at the museum is the Bauer Drumhead Collection.

A drumhead is a device that was used to advertise and identify trains back when there was more than one passenger train company.

Daniel: They were the large round signs that were placed on the backs of the locomotives or the back of the trains rather so you knew exactly what route those were going.

They went on specific routes and one person collected about forty of these and donated them to the museum.

And they were very important because the railroad would have their own specific brand, so every line had their own logo.

They had their own specific things they would have in their dinning cars in terms of meals that they would serve.

They would really, if they were going through the southwest in the United States, they would show off the pictures, the grand pictures of the U-S or depending on where they were going.

So these were really the images of the locomotives or the trains themselves.

Bob: One way the railroads have, have affected us in the past that a lot of people really don't realize; Ask yourself what time zone you're in.

The railroads invented our time zones.

In Wisconsin going back to the 1840's, 1850's, there were literally dozens of different time zones and the railroads all operated on scheduled time.

Wel with different communities have different time how can you safely operate a railroad.

Time zones were a railroad invention.

There're dozens and dozens of things like that, that the railroads have left us over history that are still important to us today in one way or another.

Narrator: The newest addiction to the National Railroad Museum is the children's area.

It explains the basics about railroading Patron: What's a freight car, you know, how did people travel by train, those types of things.

Narrator: The National Railroad Museum sits on 33 acres along the scenic Fox River.

It has steam engines, diesel engines, trains that take you across the span of railroad history... Daniel: And then really still showing how they're important today.

When you're going to Wal-Mart you're still getting things that were transported by trains.

So if that train breaks down, you can't buy things.

So that still impacts your life today.

(Music) Spencer: We sure love to stop up at the museum every so often.

Things change, but the history and quality of exhibits stay rock steady: A museum well worth your visit.

That'll do it for this episode, and this series of Tracks Ahead!

We hope you've enjoyed this, our ninth season of bringing you rail related stories, journeys and personalities, as well as our Classic Trax looks at some of our favorite tracks segments from over 25 years on the air.

I'm Spencer Christian, and I hope to see you back next season, on Tracks Ahead.

(theme music) Announcer: Tracks Ahead.

Brought to you by: Kalmbach Publishing Company and its on-line video magazine, Model Railroader Video Plus.

Walthers.

Manufacturer and supplier of model railroading products, serving the hobby since 1932.

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