Category: Layout Tour

Jim Sabol / Photos Scott Buckley & Jim Sabol

See the Tehama Valley Railroad and Ten More Great Model Railroads

This Saturday, March 2, you can visit eleven — count ‘em, eleven — great layouts in one day in the Olympia/Lacey area. Visiting hours are arranged to flow from Northeast to Southwest to help you visit as many layouts as possible without backtracking.

Lucky us! These are among the finest model railroads in the Fourth Division, several of which are regularly written up in major modeling magazines and considered “must-see” during convention tours.

One such layout is the HO Tehama Valley Railroad of Scott Buckley, recipient of the 2012 4D Grab Iron Service Award. In its purpose-built, 25′ x 40′, climate-controlled room, the TVRR short line originates and serves the northern California town of Walnut Grove (freelanced but you’ll swear you’re in Chico or Colusa or Yuba City). Even as many towns north of Sacramento were strung out along the tracks and old Route 99, the thriving agricultural town of Walnut Grove is oriented to the tracks of the little ten-mile short line. The authenticity of the scratchbuilt grain elevator, feed store, packing house, fuel dealer, and cattle pens, along with a supporting cast of era-appropriate town buildings, convinces even casual visitors that this is indeed the northern Sacramento Valley. (Don’t miss the sturdy but economical benchwork of this innovative layout.)

Like most of the home and club layouts in Thurston County, the Tehama Valley is built for prototypical operation, with local freights shuttling loads and empties related to the predominant ag business and other community necessities between Walnut Grove and its interchange with the mighty Southern Pacific’s mainline at Hamilton City, as well as serving other small towns along the way. Even the scenery Scott Buckley has created convinces the guest operator that this is, indeed, Golden Bear territory.

Steaming out of Hamilton City headed east with the morning local, the summer sunrise in your eyes and deer grazing along the right of way, you half expect to see wisps of steam from distant Lassen Peak drifting across the rolling landscape of golden grass and black oaks. The friendly waves from ranchers stopped at the grade crossings in their pickup trucks tell you that the Tehama Valley road is both needed and appreciated by the hard-working citizens of this important crop-growing region. They will enjoy waving back to you, too, on Saturday, March 2, from noon to 5 p.m.

For a map to Scott Buckley’s Tehama Valley Railroad and the ten other layouts open on March 2, from N scale to 1:32 scale, email Scott. Ten more talented modelers and their helpers would love to share their layouts and their knowledge with you. Come visit!

Scott Buckley

Be sure to mark your calendars for Saturday, March 2nd, as this is the date of the 10th Annual Olympia Model Railroad Layout Tour.

There will be at least eight layouts on the tour. Various scale and gauge combinations will be represented, including N, HO, On30 and 3/8n20. Some of the layouts have been featured in national publications, and some have been on national convention tours. Most of the layouts are in various stages of construction, which will give visitors an opportunity to see each builder’s construction methods.

As with previous years, a few of the layouts will be open early, while a few will stay open later; which will give visitors the opportunity to see as many layouts as possible.

We hope that you will take the opportunity to visit our layouts. As I say every year, there aren’t many chances to see these many layouts at one time without spending the money to attend a convention.

Additional information will be provided in late January. In the meantime, please email me if you have any questions.