My N-Gauge Railroad

And now for something completely different. Until today I've been blogging about photography, travel, publishing, music, bicycling, military service and other subjects. But model train mania?

Back in the late 1960s I once again got the modeling bug, which I thought was banished forever around the age of 12. The desire to create a perfect miniature world that was exactly the way you wanted it to be, where there was no hardship and where the trains always ran on time (when they didn't derail, that is). It all started when I was visiting the home of a fellow New York photographer, and he showed me this fantastic train layout that went from room to room, all over his large apartment. It was in N-Gauge, a size so small that the tracks are only 9 mm apart (thus the name), and where even large steam locomotives are only 3 inches long. I was immediately smitten by the possibilities of creating an entire perfectly-ordered world right in my own bedroom.

N-Gauge is often referred to as N-Scale. Gauge is about the distance between the rails, scale is about the size ratio between the real thing and the model — which varies among manufacturers from about 1:148 to 1:160, not a significant difference except to purists. I was not one of those.

At that time I was also absorbed in exploring my German heritage and was looking for an excuse to make more trips to the Old Country. By choosing to model aspects of the German Federal Railroad — the Deutsche Bundesbahn — I could occasionally fly over on purchasing expeditions to the well-stocked spielzeug (plaything) stores in Nuremberg and other cities. These sold not only beautifully detailed rolling stock but also kits for making scaled historic buildings, German style houses, little cars and trucks, and even tiny pedestrians.

I got the necessary tracks, switches, lighting, powerpacks and control electronics at a small store on West 44th Street in New York, and the plywood and 2x4s at what must have been Manhattan's only lumber yard. From these I constructed an L-shaped platform about 12 feet long each way by about 3 or 4 feet deep. On top of this rose mountains and valleys made of screening and papier-mâché, covered with plaster and strewn with tiny trees. For rivers I used a clear liquid plastic that dried like glass. A tunnel pierced the mountain, a miniature cable car carried little folk to its top, there were waterfalls, and even a working roundhouse with its turntable.

As it progressed, however, the buildings and scenery became much more important than the trains — a fact not unrelated to the difficulty of keeping them on their tracks, or running at all. A meticulous engineer I was not. Just making them run soon became boring, but the satisfaction of creating an imaginary world was a different story.

At some time in the late 1960s I had visited an historic German town on the Main River about 50 miles southeast of Frankfurt called Miltenberg. Above its market square (Marktplatz) stands an amazing array of half-timbered houses (Fachwerkhäuser) that made a perfect centerpiece for my little town. Much to my delight I later found a model kit of this very same scene, made by Kibri and in perfect N-scale, in a shop in Nuremberg! Although slightly damaged after all those years, it still sits atop a speaker cabinet in my living room. Compare what it looks like today (photo, above left) with my 1969 photo of the real buildings (photo, above). Other models of historic structures, such as the Town Hall of 1484 in Michelstadt, have long since disintegrated, as delicate plastic models are sadly wont to do.

My favorite beer train (above) transports liquid happiness. I call it Mein Zug der Gemütlichkeit.

Why are there no photos of the layout? Because I can't find them, that's why.

RECENT CORRECTION: May 2008. I did find these three photos taken with a small Polaroid SX-70 with flashbar in the mid-1970s. Not too clear, but they do show a corner of the layout with "mountains" and a roundhouse, a roundhouse turntable, and a small steam engine. Click on them to make them bigger but, alas, not sharper.

Digging through the long-forgotten boxes of these things revealed that I still possess dozens and dozens of cars, locomotives, various vehicles and other things, all of which are of German design by such makers as Fleischmann, Arnold, and Minitrix — and all of which are in good to excellent condition. What to do with them? I have neither the interest, time, space, nor energy to resurrect my railroad, so I'm open to ideas — like maybe eBay.