Kalmbach Publishing Company, producers of an online source for rail-related information, where you can discover model trains, toy trains, garden trains and even real trains.

(Horn) The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturer's Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music Spencer: Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll visit a man who is an artist, a cowboy, and a designer and who carries his artwork into his passion for trains.

We'll look in on a garden railroad which has continued to discover gold, and experience some of the last, scheduled steam railroad operations in the world.

The Empire Builder is one of Amtrak's great train routes.

It runs from the big industrial Midwest city of Chicago, to the beautiful pines of the Seattle area and the great northwest.

But did you know there's another "Empire Builder?"

It's not a train, but it's just as impressive.

Ancr: In beautiful Arizona you'll find some of the best golf courses in America.

But this great southwestern state is also home to some of the most impressive garden railroads you will ever see.

G-scale layouts that compete for your attention, with the wonders of nature.

And it's often a pretty close competition.

We're not talking about something tucked into a little corner of the yard.

We're often talking about the entire yard, and then some.

Dan: We bought this home and we looked in the back yard here when we went to buy it and I thought, "Boy, that would be a perfect place for a new railroad."

I had a small railroad in Phoeniz here with about 500 feet of track.

And we looked back here and we just thought, I should say I looked back, my wife was looking at the kitchen at the time, and we decided this would be a great place for a railroad.

So we put about 2300 feet of track, 14 bridges, we have 36 switches, and we have about 200 pieces of rolling stock right now.

So it's a nice size.

It's on about a quarter acre of property in the back.

So it's just the right size to run a railroad and run it realistically.

It's also a double track main, so we get a lot of crossovers, a lot of sidings, a lot of realistic switching.

It's a lot of fun.

Ancr: These masterpiece layouts are the work of Rick Cartwright and his company "Empire Builder Railroad Design."

For more than a decade, Cartwright has been making his own dreams, and those of his clients, come to life.

Rick: Over the last 10 years I've built 14 separate railroads.

One was a ridable 7 ½ inch gauge and the rest have all been G scale.

Well my clientele are mostly affluent people that really have more important things to do than sit back and build a model railroad.

Although they have a love for trains, it's just to time consuming.

The most important thing I talk to my clientele about for this is the size of the land they'll give up for a railroad.

Most times I try and go for a third to a half larger than what they originally thought of, so we can broaden the curves, open up the grade a little bit, and make the railroad look more realistic.

Ancr: The Dynamite, Rio Verde & Eastern is in the North Scottsdale area.

It's a double-track main line spread out over more than two acres on the front yard of a private residence.

14 tracks.

Seven running east and seven running west.

Each main line is twelve-hundred-and-fifty feet long.

Jim: That was a project of my wife, believe it or not.

And she wanted a railroad.

And I said OK, and we met Rick and I asked Rick, I said, "Rick, what can you do for $10,000?"

Figuring $10,000 was a lot of money to spend on a railroad.

Rick looked right at me and said, "Nothing."

So it was all uphill or downhill from there depending on how you look at it.

But now we have probably one of the biggest outdoor railroads in the country.

And Rick just keeps improving and improving and building and building and I keep paying the bills and paying the bills.

It seems to be a synergistic relationship that seems to work out very well.

Rick: In laying out the DRV&E, I was fortunate to get a full 2 acres of property, and be able to lay it out as a real railroad would.

We surveyed the property first, and then we laid out PVC pipe to see where the track might go, resurveyed that to make sure we could make the grade and the curvatures, and then added bridges where we needed to.

There wasn't a lot of dirt moved, there was about 160 tons.

Jim: He's a wonderful guy.

He's the original train nut, and you want to know anything about trains, ask Rick.

He knows.

Ancr: The average Cartwright built railroad has between two and two-and-a-half thousand linear feet of track.

More than one-hundred feet of bridges.

And, countless tunnels, and towns.

You want a train wash to keep those cars clean?

Sure, Rick can do that too.

You'll notice one heck of a lot of passion in every project.

Rick doesn't just buy stuff and put it in place.

Many of the structures, he builds himself.

Rick: A lot of the techniques that I use come specifically right out of Home Depot.

I like to build buildings that will last from 8 to 10 years, so I'll use real products for real houses.

The crete board that you see here is just a backer board that you'd use in your bathroom, but outdoors, I can paint it with outdoor paints, put mortar on it, fix it up with tar roofs, and make it look exactly like a real building.

And then I know it's going to last, just like a real building will.

Ancr: With the Verde Valley Line, built on a golf course, Rick hit a hole in one.

Connie: We, my husband and I, built the Verde Valley Line because we are kind of kids at heart and we have the background.

My husband has a Lionel train, an old Lionel, and we just got interested in just doing something for fun in our backyard.

Rick: The Verde Valley Railroad came about by a couple of people just calling me up and saying that they'd heard about me.

I met Dale and Connie, and when we put that railroad together, they just wanted a showpiece for their grandkids.

But putting it on the golf course, it's been a showpiece for the golf course.

We get more people stopping by just to peak over the fence, that the marshall now has to come by along the golf course and shag people to make them continue their rounds.

Ancr: The Dust Devil & Western runs on more than two-thousand feet of track in central Phoenix.

Dan: A railroad this scale, which took about 2 years to build, really takes a professional.

This is a fairly technical railroad.

We have video cameras, all the wires laid in conduit, there's three inches of concrete under all this track, it's all laser shot to prototypical grade, so it's real important.

Empire Builders and Rick Cartwright have done a great job of building this railroad for us.

Rick: The Dust Devil and Western has been one of my favorite railroads to build.

Dan is a great guy to deal with, being the construction boss that he is.

He knows a lot more about construction and timing than I do, so in putting his railroad together, I learned quite a lot about construction and putting things together in a very short amount of time.

But running that railroad has been the most fun.

I've never had a client who want to run trains as much as Dan does.

Ancr: Rick Cartwright is an artist and an architect.

He is a man who feels fortunate to do, every day, what he really loves to do.

He tells potential customers, if they can imagine it, he can build it.

There appears to be no limit to either those imaginations, or Rick's ability.

Spencer: Rick said that once he associated the smell of diesel fuel with railroading, it just never left him and that's why he's had a life long interest in trains.

When the great gold rush hit California back in the 1800s, prospectors could never have imagined digging for gold in the pond of a garden railroad.

But then again, they never could have imagined this next segment.

Ancr: Many garden railroads are family projects, and that's certainly the case with Andy De Lucia's Sierra Nevada Northern railroad.

This garden is special to the De Lucia family because the Japanese bonsai trees here were gifts from Andy's father-in-law 30 years ago.

Andy: He said they needed to be watered every 20 minutes and I laughed and he laughed with me.

He said, "No we're going to put them in the ground, but you have to be careful.

A lot of these trees I've given you are 60 to 70 years old."

Ancr: Andy had a lifelong love of trains, but it was his son Brian who inspired the garden railroad.

Andy: He was 2 years old when I got this size train, G-scale, and we had it going around the Christmas tree.

Then as he got older, he said, "Dad why don't' we go outside."

And I said, "Yea sure."

So I put it out on the deck first and then eventually he said, "No, no, no.

We need to go in the garden."

Ancr: They started planning how to blend a new railroad with the 30-year-old garden back in 1999.

Andy: We only live about 20 miles from the gold discovery site in Coloma, California.

As I was moving all this dirt around, a lot of it is decomposed granite a lot of it is rock, a lot of it fell in the stream.

Low and behold, as I was working on it, I see gold in there.

And if you look really carefully, you will still probably see gold floating around.

There's not enough to really do much but the railroad saw a profit on its first year.

Laughs Ancr: The Sierra Nevada Northern Railroad's time frame is 1939, when this make-believe railroad was struggling to recover from the Great Depression by servicing gold and silver mines, lumber companies and even cattle and sheep farms.

In the south, at the lowest part of the layout, the railroad connects the town of Truckee and the Southern Pacific mainline - through the infamous Donner Pass - then it climbs north to the Western Pacific and on to meet the old Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad.

With Andy's background as a professional photographer, it's no surprise that he always kept an eye on how the trains and garden would look, much like he would if he were composing a photograph or a painting.

It can take as long as 6 months to scratch build some of these detailed structures.

Recent additions inclu a firehouse and a garage.

And there's the "A. Adams & Company," maker of fine cameras and lenses, a tribute to Ansel Adams, the father of nature photography.

Andy: The wood that is used here on these buildings was originally used on a Southern Pacific trestle on the Sacramento bypass.

That trestle was taken down in the 1920s and the old wood that was taken out of there was put into homes in the Fairoaks area of Sacramento.

Just recently, about three years ago, that wood was torn out of those homes and my friend helped me cut it up on a table saw and it became these buildings.

The wood is knotless, it doesn't have any knots in it at all, and people who look at this wood and the large pieces of wood are just totally amazed at how beautiful the wood is.

A lot of this wood here is from the original growth redwood trees in northern California.

Ancr: Andy and his friend Jim Daly scratch built or kitbashed all of the structures to fit the railroad's theme.

And there are lots of personal touches.

Andy: The graffiti you see around the layout is family momentous occasions.

Here on the water tower, I have my youngest son's graduation day.

I've had my oldest daughter get married, you'll see that on other graffiti on the layout and on the bridge.

You'll see some graffiti written on another water tower.

Ancr: Andy & Jim also built all 10 bridges out of plastic or metal.

Andy: All the oak trees here, there's quite a few that are in this back yard.

There are 12 that are in range of the railroad.

The oak trees are beautiful trees but they can be destructive because of their leaves.

There's a lot of acid in their leaves.

Other plants love them but wood does not like it.

Ancr: While the oak trees are busy naturally distressing any wooden structures on the layout, Andy works hard to add manmade distressing techniques to his engines and rolling stock.

Everything, even the more modern diesel engines, are air brushed and detailed to look like they stepped right out of 1939.

Those diesels come in handy when the trains make their way up the 3.5 percent grades into the mountains.

Andy: I'm like Walt Disney.

He said Disneyland will never be finished.

I'm kind of like that as well.

The track is at the length it's going to be but I want to start doing some animation, and all the buildings are going to be lit.

Right now I have about 90 percent of them lit.

There are lights in the buildings and it's just a matter of wiring.

Just a lot of detail work yet to go.

Spencer: Tom says that batteries are such a great way to go for powering garden railroads.

Artistic talent has always been something to be admired.

It's a gift, that when expressed and shared, can bring a tremendous amount of joy.

In a moment we'll go to New Mexico, and meet an artist whose hobbies are as impressive as the bold and bright colors he puts on canvas.

First, let's go to Poland, where we'll find two steam locomotives in regular passenger service.

It's a trip laced with reminders of the mid twentieth century.

Ancr: Wolsztyn, Poland is an easy to reach and picturesque town about fifty miles from Berlin, Germany.

It is a simpler place, and a simpler time.

It's the only place in the country that still has regularly scheduled steam service, and people from all over the world come to see it.

Steam trains that pull you from small town to small town, and through the Polish countryside.

Steam trains that serve as escorts while showing off impressive pieces of Polish history and architecture.

Steam trains that are functioning pieces of the local economy, though only a few remain.

Museum quality locomotives that also sell the opportunity to drive up front with the engineers.

And if you know what you're doing you canbe the engineer.

It's an easy sell.

Because it's an experience you won't find anywhere else.

Malcolm: Well, I've been interested in steam all my life from the age of about nine years, when I was at my first school.

And the interest has just developed over the years.

I had a twenty odd year career with British Railways, and when I finally managed to escape their clutches with a payoff, I went to work as a volunteer with a steam museum in England, at Bressingham.

And the word soon gets round us drivers as to where to go to get a real good driving experience.

And this is it, as far as I'm concerned.

It makes you extremely nervous at first when you're put in charge of one of these 180 ton beasts with a trainload of passengers behind you, but you soon get used to it.

If you can drive one steam locomotive, basically you can drive any steam locomotive.

Of course braking techniques and the refinements vary between locomotives and trains.

Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Jokiel: The busiest time here in Wolsztyn was back in the 70's and 80's.

We had about twenty-five hundred steam locomotives in daily service and more than three-hundred people worked in the roundhouse.

When the state run railroad changed to more modern locomotives, many of the surplus steam locomotives were brought here to Wolsztyn.

And, they never made any real effort to modernize this roundhouse.

So that's one big reason that steam survived until today, and consequently Wolsztyn has the last steam roundhouse in the country.

It really is a big problem to keep the steamers in working order.

It's expensive, and things break.

Diesel and electric locomotives really are cheaper and more efficient to operate.

We don't have a lot of spare parts, and to get new ones made is simply too expensive.

So we get spare parts from the old steamers that we have that we know we won't be using in the future.

We get lots of visitors not only from Poland, but from all over the world.

They come here from Australia, from all the European countries, from the U.S.A. and Canada, even from Japan.

For example, this weekend we have a group from Japan coming and they'll be riding the steam train.

Music Ancr: It's expensive to keep these old steam engines running.

Parts can be hard to come by.

And yes, diesel and electric trains, that's what everyone is using now.

But not here.

Not in this part of Poland.

This is a place that's holding onto history.

But everyone knows, when it's gone, it's gone for good.

The people behind the Wolsztyn Steam Railroad are determined not to let that happen.

Music Ancr: Malcolm Furlow lives out here in the middle of nowhere.

And it's exactly where he wants to be.

Malcolm Furlow is truly a Renaissance man.

He is most well known for his vibrant and colorful paintings of Native Americans and southwestern themes.

His work grabs your attention the minute you set eyes on it.

Furlow: Well the reason I'm here in the middle of nowhere with this ranch is, I'm one of those guys you would call land poor.

I wanted a whole bunch of land without a lot of people around because I don't want to have to adjust my life to fit somebody else's dream, I have my own dream.

So we bought the ranch.

I like the solitude, I like the game.

We have the elk run is right in my back pasture.

The elk come through in the spring and fall.

I'm a nature lover so this was ideal.

Ancr: He's an artist, but also a cattle rancher who watches over a large spread about thirty miles from Taos, New Mexico.

He's a Harley-Davidson motorcycle enthusiast who likes to both rebuild, and ride.

And, when he needs time to relax, Malcolm Furlow models railroads.

His artistic talents are evident.

Furlow: It allowed me to see shapes and shadows and forced perspective and where infinity is, and all the things that you study in the art.

And I could apply that to model railroading.

Ancr: He's building this large scale extension of his fantasy railroad in an old woodshed attached to his studio.

It's a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

It's a little bit of Cuba, and a touch Colorado.

Maybe a dash of South America, with a taste of Mexico.

Furlow: Number one is creating for me.

It allows me to get the creative juices flowing on all aspects of the art endeavor, from building mountains to.

Part of it encompasses being visual.

I have to learn to be visual with things.

I'm very visual anyway, but it teaches you to notice the nuances of the color of rust, the color of a locomotive, the ash that falls on a locomotive, the weathering, the streaks.

How things are put together mechanically and so forth.

So it encompasses so much that it teaches you a lot.

That's why I think that young people ought to look into model railroading as a hobby because you learn art, you learn mechanics, you learn electrical.

It's everything.

Ancr: Like life, it's a work in progress.

Like life, model railroading can be both frustrating, and deeply satisfying.

Furlow: I guess what I love to do most is build a scene, put my funkiness into it, the realism and so forth, and then photograph it, write an article about it, and send it to the model magazines.

See it in print, see how they publish it and so forth.

So that's been sort of a hobby within a hobby that extends the hobby beyond just this little train room.

Mostly what you're looking at is foam, some plaster castings, but even the castings are done in foam A lot of the time I'll just take spray foam that comes out of a can that you buy at Ace Hardware or wherever, spray it up into a pinnacle, and it kind of forms it's own self as you spray this thing up.

And then you take various dental tools, knives and whatnot, and carve it into a shape.

So I see all these scenes in my head, and then where the artistic things comes in is that I see for me the fantasy world of light and shadow and shapes and so forth.

And I just want to see this little magical thing.

So where somebody else may be more of a technician and build the B&O with all the little buildings that are the same color that fit the B&O scheme and so forth, I, on the other hand, have this round robin effect that happens in my brain that makes me want to do this building yellow and this building pink, and this building tall, and this building small.

It's part of that art thing that is in here.

I just see shapes and that kind of thing.

I don't see the corporate structure so much as other people do, as scenes.

I'm a scene maker.

Ancr: A scene-maker who invites us into his world and into his dreams.

An artist who loves color, loves learning, loves doing, and loves life.

Spencer: Although he is still busy, Malcolm loves living the unstructured and unfettered life.

That's all for this episode.

Please join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead.

Music Ancr: Tracks Ahead.

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The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturers Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music