The Club was created in 1950 and originally began a layout in a storefront in the Ingleside district in San Francisco. In 1961 the building the club occupied was sold, and the Club was offered space in the basement of the Randall Museum, where it has been to this day.
Our layout is the result of more than fifty years’ effort to create a railroad in miniature with the communities it serves and combined with engineering and geographical features found on railroads in California. We have snowsheds on the high mountain line, various types of bridges spanning canyons on the Mountain Division and a narrow guage line. Our layout is HO scale and is contained in a room measuring 57 feet long by 38 feet wide. The mainline is about 600 feet long (nearly 10 scale miles), with an additional 200 feet or so of sidings and passing tracks (see the trackplan).
We run a wide variety of equipment ranging from “transition era” (1938-1955) through the most modern equipment found on today’s railroads. Several current members love passenger trains so we have modern Amtrak passenger trains, Union Pacific streamliners of the immediate post war era, as well as Southern Pacific’s Coast Daylight.
Our freight trains range from long strings of wooden ice-bunker reefers behind Cab-Forward articulated steam engines to modern diesel powered double-stack container trains. The occasional long coal drag is seen as well.
We appreciate and enjoy running fine models of any prototype.
We maintain a collection of railroad photographs and artifacts on display in the ante-room. Our collection is modest but some of the items on display come from the bygone days of railroading and cannot be duplicated.
If you are interested in model railroading, developing and improving skills employed in building and maintainng benchwork, track, wiring, and scenery, not to mention operating trains in a realistic setting: Memberships open on an equal opportunity basis. Come on down!
The railroad is run by the members for their pleasure and yours. Funds for rent, maintenance, construction, and impovements of the exhibit come solely from members’ dues and contributions. [7 Jan 2006]