ALABAMA GUYS....

[Gracie]

Check this out.... amazing! (not porn) The detail is unbelievable.

sshhhhh... its OT, don't tell Ryan!

http://www.cbu.edu/~mcondren/Kens_Layout.htm

[Bruce Lancaster]

!!!!WOW!!!!

I always try to avoid model RR stuff as it would be so easy for me to get sucked into that alternate universe and never again have any money or time for deuces....

MAJOR IDEA!!

Why don't all the car modelers on here get together and make a 1/25th layout of Catalina Island as "Rumpsville"???
Remember the "Saga of Rumpsville" from hot rod comics? All the rodders pooled resources and purchased Catalina, turning it into a rodder's paradise...
they had to move back, though, as civilization was collapsing without anyone able to fix anything on the mainland...

Someone please please post the Saga for the edification of the young and ignorant...

[orange52]

Wow. The most surprising thing for me was that its here in Cedar Rapids Iowa.

[Ryan]

Let's keep this one our little secret... Way too cool to delete....

[warpigg]

those guys are nerds.
i wish i could do that.

[RileyRacing]

Model RR stuff is how I blew most of my money in High School... the rest was on petty stuff like gurls http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Jay

[av8]

Wow! Thanks, Gracie.

[sodbuster]

I went to a friends dad's house in Lawrence, Kansas after a KU/MU game and he had a set up like that in his WHOLE basement. The ceiling was painted like clouds and he had a Bose system that would shake the walls like a train was going by. He was showing us what it would do and his wife yelled down stairs to TURN IT DOWN. Oh did I mention the guy was in his 70's.

Chris Nelson
Kansas

[Bigcheese327]

I love that stuff, but even in HO (which is almost too big) it's almost a bigger cash vampire than cars! This is on topic, though, isn't it? After all, Dick Scritchfield is a model railroader.

[Smokin Joe]

I've got a couple hundred N-scale cars and locos. I run them on a 4 by 6 table layout with no scenery tho... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Now that the kids and cats are out of the house, and I have a spare room... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[k9racer]

Thank You Gracie. This site is great looks just like I recall it as a child.The detail and workmanship is tops. The man knows to much about Pratt City , Ensley and the B'ham area he must have lived there.

[Gracie]

My grandfather worked at the Birmingham terminal... I still can't believe they tore it down... makes me want to cry! That first pic is surreal... it looks just like a photo of downtown! Creepy!

[Bruce Lancaster]

When I was young and just getting into cars, every summer I rode the train from Virginia to visit my Grandparents in Mississippi (One Grandfather worked for the Illinois Central RR). Early sixties, roughly. I always spent the daylight hours glued to the window, checking out every junked car I could spot--the train gives a great vantage point for back yards, remote dumps, woods, etc. In those days the view was wonderful-all sorts of neat stuff I would never be able to find my way back to and couldn't have afforded anyhow. There's no better blend than the rural south and weird old junk. Anyhow, Birmingham train yards were always a high point--the train usually spent a long time sitting in a part of the yards adjacent to a huge scrap pile, probably feeding junk from all over the southland into Bessemer. I methodically eyeballed that mountain of neat old stuff until the train moved on to the duller world of the terminal. Old cars of every description, gigantic chunks of retired locomotives, the hull of an M8 armored car, stuff that looked like it came from other planets...maybe I can visit the guy with the train layout and build the scrap section for him.