03/06/2020
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OPEN HOUSE! March 7 and 8, 2020, 1pm to 4pm, Free, 15 trains all running! Lakes, waterfalls, mountains, and towns! Finest model railroad in the state!! Private home. Be cautious.
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My wife and I custom-built an indoor HO gauge and outdoor G gauge detailed model railroad at our home. Free entry for all. Indoors, 5 trains run at once on a fully landscaped lighted railroad.
(34)
Outdoors, 10 trains run at once on 3000 ft of track, with landscape, lights, 4 lakes, and 5 waterfalls.
Operating as usual
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OPEN HOUSE! March 7 and 8, 2020, 1pm to 4pm, Free, 15 trains all running! Lakes, waterfalls, mountains, and towns! Finest model railroad in the state!! Private home. Be cautious.
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MAP to RFrailroad
2018 CITY PHOTO
-Another video riding several trains with different views!
this is a video of an amazing layout by Roger and Faith! just strapped a Gopro to some trains and set them off throughout there adventure around the yard! ho...
New video for 2016 by Nick!
This is a video update from Rogers G scale layout, he has more than 3000 feet for code 332 brass tack. 13 separate trains can be run at one time. This is a w...
All aboard video, G scale outside! by Nick Parill6
this is a video of an amazing layout by Roger and Faith! just strapped a Gopro to some trains and set them off throughout there adventure around the yard! ho...
An 8 min ride through entire HO indoor railroad..by Mike H.
I am testing out a new Dice Camera that allows me to get an engineers view of the layout. The R&F HO scale layout is in a four car garage. This layout featur...
Railroad at a glance:
Size: 110' x 165' (1/3 acre)
Scales: 1:20.3 to 1:32
Gauge: No 1 (45mm) (G scale)
Era: 1920s through the present
Theme: Predominately western railroads, including Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Denver & Rio Grande Western
Railroad Age: 20 years
Length of track: Total, 3,000'; double 500' mainlines
Type of track: 90% LGB flex brass, 10% USA flex brass
Maximum grade: 2%
Mainline radius: Varies between 14' and 30'
Power: Track from centralized power packs
Motive power: Mostly steam, some diesel, various manufacturers
Sound: Phoenix on-board units
Structures: 50% scratch built, 50% kits
ABOUT: Hello, welcome to the HO and G Scale Train Layouts in Riverside, Ca. What was once a mere diversion kept picking up steam, roaring to life as a full-blown obsession over the past three decades.As it stands now, the layout has reached 3,200-feet of track crisscrossing 1/3 of an acre in their Riverside backyard. With a flick of several switches in an elevated control tower gazebo that Roger built, 14 trains can simultaneously chug through tunnels, over bridges, around waterfalls and lampposts. The trains, ranging from two to 50 cars per train, coast past turn-of-the-20th-century mining towns, a harbor, Mt. Rushmore, factories, an airplane hangar, an oil company, a winery and a California mission, and much more.
During the past three decades, Roger and his wife, Faith, have shared their their two miniature railroads with thousands of visitors through home and garden tours and stories by CNN, NBC, Australian and cable TV and “Garden Railways” magazine.
Roger loves to see the looks of amazement when people just stop and stare, most can’t speak. They’re overwhelmed.
His hobby began modestly but earnestly around Christmas 1983 when Roger bought himself a model train and a stretch of track. At the time, he owned a collection agency and his wife Faith worked in banking.
On board with Roger’s new passion, during the next 4 years she encouraged and helped him transform their three-car garage into a fantasy HO Scale trainscape. Instead of sticking to one era or theme, Roger and Faith juxtaposed a jumble of mountain skiers, a circus, a hot-air balloon, Sunkist orange factory and a burning IRS building. The Clarksons were having so much fun and expanding so fast that they ran out of garage space.
But in 1988, the couple, inspired by the haunting whistle from a friend’s garden railroad, decided to go bigger, faster, more elaborate and outdoors.
Garden railroads are called G-scale (12 inches equals 24 feet) and a steam locomotive can be more than 2 feet long and weigh as much as 60 pounds, like the behemoth UP 4014 Big Boy steam engine. This railroad took 20 years!
Roger poured hours into designing, wiring and building his course while Faith helped landscape with small shrubs and trees, ground covers, annuals and perennials. She also configured the hundreds of tiny tableaus. She painted with deft brushstrokes, sometimes personalizing the buildings, cars, people and critters that would become permanent backyard scenery.
If it weren’t for my intelligence and her money, it never would have happened,” Roger joked. “All from the seat of my pants.”
He installed hundreds of lights to create night magic and constructed seven waterfalls. A crew helped him haul in all the bricks, rocks and stones from quarries. Clarkson installed all the electronics, including a sound system inside each train’s engine. He wired computer chips to simulate various engine noises, steam escaping, brakes being applied outside the stations. Listen to the nuances in tones when a train sits at a depot, its generator running.
As with the indoor trainscape, the outdoors is an imaginative mashup of time periods, terrains and buildings. The trains, many controlled by computer, chuff around an Old West Gold mine and puff past a hydroelectric dam. The Lilliputian buildings all have electricity; churches boast stained glass windows; grand hotels show off Victorian fretwork and peaked roofs. The Mission of Hope, modeled after a California mission, sports an eerily realistic red-clay tile roof. The structure is surrounded by shops for the tourists and mariachi bands.
The presidential figures carved into Mt. Rushmore peer down into a New England harbor town. A trolley is on hand to transport fishermen and tourists. An airplane hangar sits beside the local fire station, engines ready to go. Adjacent to three operating oil pumps at the Red Rock Oil Company is the 8-feet-long oil refinery Roger made from scratch, complete with a gas flame that shoots 15 inches in the air.
In another corner, newly cut logs float downstream and travel up a flume to the mill, passing under a bridge crossed by an R&F Lumber Co. train. It's easy to spend a whole day here and still not seen everything.
Because garden railroading is an expensive hobby, Roger and Faith fed their their habit by opening and running Pacific Coast Hobbies on Indiana Avenue in Riverside from 1992 to 1998. “I bought everything wholesale” he said.
“I love sharing what we built with people ,” Roger said. “Especially the children, as long as they behave”, he joked.
(Thanks to Riverside's "The Press-Enterprise" and staff writer Laurie Lucas.)
2 min VIDEO by Hooknladdr ........
Visit to this garden railroad during an open house event.
RF pics
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