Steam Whistle Music Tracks Ahead Brought to you by: Rancho de Tia Rosa, three unique Mexican restaurants serving culinary delights since 1990.

Music Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll visit one of the largest two rail o gauge layouts we've ever seen.

We'll step back to 1882, when the Denver, South Park and Rio Grande Railroad was still under construction, visit the railroad that originally took the industrial age robber barons to their summer mansions, and see how some rail travelers go in style.

Say the words Chitown Union Station and Detroit, and you would think of two locations in the upper Midwestern US.

We found that this Chitown is actually a lot closer to Detroit than you would suspect.

Lets go to Commerce, Michigan.

Annc: You'd have to go a long way to find a bigger two rail O scale layout than Paul Gribble's ChiTown Union Station.

Located in Commerce Township, just northwest of Detroit, Michigan, you won't find a bigger one in North America.

Paul's idea, started early in life.

Paul: I grew up in Cincinnati and learned about trains when I was a kid.

My grandfather used to take me out and watch the trains.

And a few years ago I got involved with a club, the Detroit Model Railroad Club, which is O scale.

And now since 1978 I've been into O scale.

This place was available.

I didn't think I could afford it.

But it turned out it wasn't any more expensive than some of the places I was looking at.

So once I got this huge building, I thought, "Gee, I ought to be open to the public so people can enjoy it."

Annc: With that much going on, you can imagine that this layout took a little time to build.

Paul: Right now we have about 7,000 feet of track in operation.

We have a little over 200 passenger cars and close to a 1,000 freight cars on the layout.

About 115 or 20 engines.

It varies.

Depends on what we have.

Annc: Paul's layout is really about running trains.

And while he runs the speeds to scale, you'll see that his trains travel from California to New York - with the ChiTown Union Station smack dab in the middle.

Paul: I like passenger trains.

I like the old passenger trains from the 50's and early 60's.

They're very colorful, famous trains that all the movie stars rode from like New York to Chicago on the 20th Century Limited and then from Chicago to LA on the Super Chief.

I started with the theme of a major station being in Chicago.

It's a 12 track station with multiple routes in and out of the station.

And from that it just evolved into trains leave Chicago and they go somewhere.

So we just made some places where they can go.

Annc: It's certainly too much for one man to do it all, and Paul gets more than a little help from his friends.

Paul:Well, I started out basically by myself.

Over the years I've had probably 25 or 30 guys.

But right now we have about a half dozen who come pretty regularly and another half a dozen who come from time to time.

Larry: I saw an article in the local paper about ChiTown.

I came over within minutes, found out what they were doing here, and I was hooked.

And ah been helping Paul for the last 5, 6 years to build this place up.

This place is fantastic.

It's 10,000 square feet of just about anything anybody would want to do.

Carpentry, electronics, prototype model building, you name it, it's here.

The artistry that's gone in here, the mural that you see behind you.

It's phenomenal.

Anything you'd be interested in, you can do here.

Tim: I met Paul about 6 years ago when I came up to the Detroit Model RR club to demonstrate DCC to the club.

And Paul was in attendance at that time.

And he asked me to come over and visit his layout.

I figured it was just a standard basement layout, the day I walked in I've never left.

James: I've had friends and my family who think I'm completely nuts for playing with trains.

"Why do you do this?"

I bring them to places like this here, to some of the other organizations I go to or I show them my layout and people start to understand that it's not just a bunch of grown men playing with toy trains.

It's a lot of workmanship, it's a lot of skills, there's a lot to do here.

Annc: Even though this is a large layout, Paul uses the process of selective compression to pack a lot into the area.

Paul: Selective compression is basically trying to get a scene into a smaller area.

Just vignettes instead of the whole thing.

Like if you look at say Chicago, I mean you couldn't do Chicago in a whole city block much less this building.

So you pick certain areas and just do parts of it.

Annc: Getting all these trains to run requires a bit of help.

Paul decided early on that computer control was essential to the operation.

Paul: We have a computerized control system that can run up to, we were running 21 trains a day with it and then we can run other trains manually.

But we can usually just kick back and run 24, 25 trains and take a nap.

It runs itself once we get it going.

Randy: Visual Dispatcher is the portion of the computer that runs trains automatically.

It controls the acceleration and deceleration, keeps track of where the other trains are on the railroad so they don't run into each other.

If we have a breakdown, all the other trains behind it stop.

All these are the essentially in cab displays.

I have the throttle that tells me how fast the train is going.

I have the cab indicator tells me the condition two blocks ahead, I'm I going to have to be stopping or can the train keep running, just like if I was a real engineer.

Annc: The ChiTown Union Station layout isn't done.

But it is open to the public.

For a few dollars, you can see the largest two rail O scale layout in North America.

So why does Paul do it?

Paul:Because I'm kind of nuts.

I'm getting older and I enjoy it and I've always had fun with it.

And so with a lot of guys come and enjoy it and the camaraderie of it.

It's something to do.

And it's a very creative thing.

What people don't realize is we're artists.

We're artists in three dimensional.

Everything is working.

We get all kinds of comments when people come in to see what we're doing.

There's people who are real modelers and they look at the detail, they say "Oh look at that."

And then we have kids come in, they come running in, they look down an aisle, or we have a Thomas the Train set up in the back, they'll go running down to look at Thomas and it's go around a few times and then they'll come over here and look at these trains.

And we have a good time.

Annc: ChiTown Union Station.

Start with one man's dream, add the help of friends, and the result is something that can be shared by all, young and old alike.

Check their website for special exhibitions and openings.

Railroads were a vital link to carry out the riches of the Rockies and to help settle the area.

Let's go to the end of the 19th century, when the rugged mountains were just being opened by rail.

Annc: Let's step back in time.

The year is 1882, and we're riding the rails on the historic Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad, a narrow-gauge rail line running west from Denver over some of the toughest terrain in the Colorado Rockies.

Andrew: The railroad served the mines of Colorado, which was the industry of the period.

And also handled a lot of construction traffic for the railroad, because it was under construction at the time.

And also people - passengers, men, miners, and ladies.

The railroad is narrow gauge, which means it's three foot between the rails, instead of the four foot, eight and a half inches of standard gauge.

It's much cheaper to build, do can do much sharper curves.

It goes through some of the most beautiful parts of the Rocky Mountains.

It travels over the continental divide three times, and it serves a lot of boom towns, a lot of mine interests which therefore has a certain mystic to it.

Annc: Inspired by a book he read as a child, historian and author Andrew Dodge built his model railroad with meticulous detail.

That inspirational book belonged to his father, a serious rail fan and modeler who helped nurture young Andy's love of railroading.

Andrew: My layout is a point to point layout.

And what is actually modeled includes the Platt Canyon which is southwest of Denver, which is a beautiful canyon area with steep walls.

It goes over Kenosha Pass into South Park, which is a prehistoric caldera from a volcano, and has a division point at Como.

From Como, the railroad goes on to a staging area for Gunnison and Leadville and the modeled area goes on to the branch line which goes over Boreas Pass to Breckenridge and will eventually go on to Leadville.

The railroad in 1882 was under construction, and therefore to show the railroad completed would be inappropriate.

The Pacific Hotel in Como is under construction as it was photographed in 1883 with only part of the roof of one section completed.

The engine house at Boreas Pass is under construction.

I left it that way.

A railroad is a living unit.

And in order to show that, you have to show the vitality of it, whether it's in the building phase, where you have to show things being built, or you're in the operating phase where you're just operating the railroad.

But since I'm in the building phase, I had to create both aspects of the railroad.

Annc: The complex layout allows multiple operators to run different trains at the same time.

Each station is equipped with a telegraph key so that the entire operation runs smoothly.

Andrew: The telegraph allows the operators to signal to another station their desire to move on to their station or to telegraph back to the previous station they've left, that they have now cleared that track so another train can be put on that area of the railroad.

Annc: All the signals are routed to a central telegraph control station which allows the central station to regulate traffic flow.

Andrew: When I receive a signal I get a light which tells me exactly what station it is, so I don't have to listen to the code.

And when he has finished that, I will connect that and send an acknowledgement signal (beep, beep) and then we'll proceed through the codes for the rest of it to determine what the train wants to do.

Annc: Most of Andy's locomotives and cars are scratch built.

In some cases, he begins with sheets of brass and a few castings and creates the rest.

Sometimes the only thing to go by is an old photo.

From there, Andy does all the painstaking research and puts together drawings of how he intends to craft the railcar.

With all this attention to detail, Andy never looses sight of the big picture; the philosophy of modeling that is both mindful of historic accuracy and respectful of how these railways blend into their surroundings.

Andrew: My approach is, less is more in model railroading.

And I wanted the railroad to look like it was part of the scenery.

I wanted the scenery to be as a co-equal partner with the railroad.

And in order to achieve that you try and reduce the amount of track and let the scenery play a huge role in that.

The rolling stock does not need to be a great amount because it is narrow gauge, and typically the trains only pull three, four or five cars at any one time.

And so this also diminishes the size of the railroad in relation to the scenery.

Annc: This historian also give a nod to geological authenticity.

Andy has visited each area along the railroad's route, and hauled away freezer bags of rocks and ground material to accurately replicate those sites on his layout.

Thanks to historian Andy Dodge' s meticulous attention to authenticity of a by gone era, and his artist's eye for every detail, Andy Dodge has transported visitors back to the 1880's, in the rugged Rocky Mountains of the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, and we are enriched by the experience.

(Whistle) Andrew is always adding details to his line.

Like so many other things these days, travel has become incredibly fast, pretty efficient, but not very much fun.

You hop on a plane, or pull onto the highway, and you get from point a to point b.

That's pretty much it.

In just a moment we're going to take you back to a time when travel really was "first class."

First let's look in at the United States around the end of the 1800s.

The titans of the industrial age, known as the robber barons, spent enormous amounts of money on luxury never seen before.

Their summer homes in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts still stand as testimony to their enormous wealth.

Railroads were the way to get from the heat and humidity of the east coast to the mountains, and we found a living history museum that still runs along that rail route.

Annc: It's easy to see why the families of the industrial robber barons escaped New York City to summer in the rural beauty and quaint charm of the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts.

It's here that the Westinghouse, Morgan's, Vanderbilt's and other celebrity families built their summer mansions.

Referred to as "Cottages," they typically had a minimum of 20 rooms on at least 30 acres of land.

What better way to imagine this era than to travel on the same tracks that brought these families to the Berkshires between the 1850s and the 1900s.

Annc: This experience is all made possible by the volunteers of the Berkshire Scenic Railway.

Pamela: The Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum is an all volunteer, not for profit museum founded in 1984.

We're a very unique operation because we're a living history museum.

We actually travel on the tracks that we have adjacent to our museum, and we share that line with an active freight line, the Housatonic Railroad.

Annc: This unique partnership allows passengers to travel back in time and experience the excitement of rail travel in restored passenger cars.

Conductor: All Aboard Pamela: The passenger coaches that we use are actually Pullman built back in the 1920s.

They were utilized on the Lackawanna Railroad and then the Erie Lackawanna Railroad and were actually used as commuter coaches in New Jersey Transit.

They are very original.

They have had very little work done to them over the years and they're very well preserved.

They're fairly large capacity, they're 70 seats per coach, they're 70 feet long, and they weigh 54 tons.

Annc: Passengers riding the coaches are greeted by a volunteer train conductor who punches their tickets with a vintage ticket punch.

Jay: The ticket punch is just as important to a passenger train crew member as a lantern is to a freight crew brakeman.

The ticket punch is used primarily for cancelling passenger tickets so they can't be used again on another revenue run.

Each conductor or assistant conductor trainman will have their own individual punch.

And that's used for accounting purposes.

Passengers complaining their ticket was or wasn't punched the railroad can go back and look at the individual punch that was made and identify the actual crew member, the train crew member who punched that ticket.

Annc: Once the train gets underway, there are plenty of sights to take in.

Pamela: Someone riding our train would see a number of different industries, some that are still active and others that are not.

They will see three historic stations which is fairly unique, because a lot of museums don't have the access to historic stations that our museum does.

Pamela: We have our museum here at Lenox Station which was built in 1903.

The original station had burned down.

We also have the Lee Station, which is now a restaurant, that is also an original historic station.

And at the end of our route we have Stockbridge Station which our passengers also have the ability to walk around and explore much like Lenox Station.

Pamela: As you travel along you'll see October Mountain State Forest, which is very scenic, it's a very beautiful area.

You get to see a lot of open fields, some private residences.

It's very unique because you see a combination of industry, nature, residential areas, downtown areas and it's a bit of a mix.

You can see a little bit of everything.

Annc; The steam locomotives that brought the barons to the Berkshires were retired long ago.

The engines used today are vintage diesel electric locomotives from the late 40's and early 50's.

Tom: The Berkshire Scenic Railway has several switcher type locomotives.

The locomotive behind me is a 1953 switcher, SW-8, built by General Motors.

The other engine, is the 9128, an SW-9, very similar, again built in the early '50s for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

We also have a small industrial switcher that is mainly just on display in the yard.

And we also have a product built by American Locomotive Company that was built in Schenectady, New York, an S-1 type switcher, built in 1945.

Annc: Volunteers run all the locomotives.

Schenectady, New York, an S-1 type switcher, built in 1945.

Annc: Volunteers run all the locomotives.

It's this volunteer effort that makes it possible for this important railroad history to be preserved.

Pamela; What's important about railroading and preserving railroad history is that railroading is really and truly the fabric of American history.

It helped the expansion of the West.

It brought a lot of industry into various areas that otherwise may not have had it.

And particularly in the Berkshires what's very interesting about railroading history is that it brought tourism to the Berkshires.

Because you had the wealthy individuals from the New York area who decided to build their cottages here.

Because of those cottages, the tourism industry in the Berkshires was born.

Annc: So take the time to not only relive the Gilded Age of the past, but experience a bit of living history today on the Berkshire Scenic Railway.

Music Annc: David and Marilyn Hoffman are the proud owners of a home away from home.

A home away from home, on wheels.

They own their own private railroad cars.

Two cars, originally built for the Union Pacific Railroad back in the 1950's.

Their cars were purchased, rehabbed, and have been thoroughly enjoyed by the Hoffman family and friends for the past 20 years.

David: The Northern Sky was built in 1955 by the Union Pacific Railroad as a dome lounge car.

For our use, we have put four bedrooms on it, a galley, a lounge and of course, the dome.

And 95% of the time we spend our time up in the dome watching the world go by.

Marilyn: I like it because you can sit back and relax and have fun with your friends and family.

It's just a great experience to see this beautiful country.

David: The other car is the Northern Dream was built for the Union Pacific in 1956 as a five bedroom lounge car.

When I got it in '97, it was an eleven bedroom sleeping car.

A little too much sleeping space.

So two years after we had it we took out five of the bedrooms, put in a galley and a lounge.

So that car now is a six bedroom lounge car.

Annc: The Hoffman's have joined other car owners here in Savannah, Georgia for a convention of private rail car owners.

These are people who have put a lot of time, energy, and money into acquiring, rehabbing, outfitting, and maintaining these gems from the glory days of railroading.

Now it's a time to see, and be seen.

A time to share stories and compare notes.

A time to stare beauty in the eye while in the company of like- minded friends.

Stan Garner has his hand on the pulse of this luxurious hobby, and he says there are more than 120 of these private cars approved for Amtrak runs, and hundreds more on small private railways.

And Stan has hooked up lots of private cars with Hollywood movies and television shows.

The silver screen loves these classic cars as much as we do.

Stan: Oh, trains are great for films, my gosh.

You know you've got a confined space.

You can set up a circumstance where somebody would really like to get away and they can't.

Or if someone is escaping from somewhere, and they're trying to get from something else and they're on the train going somewhere else.

It puts people together in a circumstance they otherwise wouldn't be in Annc: David Luca and Janet Dittmer own the private Pullman car Federal, which was built in 1911.

It's the oldest car certified to operate on Amtrak.

Restoration took nearly five years.

Janet: We use it for travel.

We use it for stationary dinners, happy hours.

We've used it on National Railroad Days as a part of the display that the Arizona Railway Museum had to promote Amtrak.

One of the reasons we bought the car was that so much of it was intact.

We have the original 1911 tables, six of the chairs (David) A lot of the fixtures are still original like the matchbox holders, the call buttons for the annunciator.

Because it's such an historic car, we enjoy when we're stopped like here in Savannah, and interesting people that come by and don't know the first thing about railroading.

Or that you could even still ride a private car.

And you know, we invite them in and give them a tour of the car and its just fun to watch their eyes light up because they know that they're able to share a part of history.

Annc: Most of these cars were built when luxury was still an acceptable option in travel.

They come from the first half of the last century.

But they all have been brought up to modern day safety standards so that they can be safely connected to an Amtrak train.

As you might imagine, bringing them up to modern travel and safety standards can be a time consuming, expensive and painstaking job.

One of the best in the business is Avalon Rail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

June: The typical customer can be anything from a business owner to an individual who has just loved trains for an awfully long time.

Sometimes though, I do find that our clients do have the yacht and the jet first, and the train will come last.

Costs are all over the board for repair and operating.

So you could acquire a car for 20, 30 thousand dollars or several hundred thousand.

It really depends on what stage the car is at.

If it is Amtrak compatible, that is a benefit when youy buy it.

Things need to be brought up to speed if it's never been Amtrak compatible, so you could be looking at 100s of thousands of dollars for that work.

Annc: Many private rail car owners rent out or charter their cars so that the rest of us can have the opportunity to really see what first-class travel was like on the trains of yesteryear.

The say you can't go back in time, but this is one experience that gets you pretty darn close.

Private rail cars are always for sale and can be purchased through a variety of dealers around the country.

Well, that's it for this episode.

Be sure to join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead.

Tracks Ahead Brought to you by: Rancho de Tia Rosa,three unique Mexican restaurants serving culinary delights since 1990.

Walthers, manufacturer and supplier of model railroading products; serving the hobby since 1932.