In San Luis Obispo, California not far from the Amtrak station...
Craftsmen have been working for the last five years on building a historically accurate and very realistic model train layout.
It depicts railroad operations on the Central Coast of California during its heyday in the 1950s...
When railroad operations were at their peak and steam locomotives were transitioning to diesels.
The San Luis Obispo railroad museum occupies the original 1894 wood freight house which dates back to the Southern Pacific railroad's arrival.
The museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the railroad history of California's Central Coast.
Museum members have collected, restored, and displayed all sorts of historical railroad artifacts, photographs, and documents.
And not many people really know about this little museum, which opened just five years ago.
Ever since that grand opening back in 2013, a very talented group of model train fanatics has been working to add an additional feature to the museum.
Let me take you upstairs and show you how things are coming along on construction of the Central Coast Model Railroad!
It's an incredibly complex and detailed model train layout...
That realistically portrays all of the significant features of the railroads that have served San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties since the late 1800s.
Building a detailed, historically accurate layout like this takes a huge amount of work.
Like I said, they've been working at it for five years now and they're only about halfway there!
But they've made tremendous progress and a lot of the individual scenes that make up this layout are basically complete.
At this point, they're able to run trains on quite a bit of the layout...
Even though a lot of the details of the realistic backgrounds aren't quite complete yet.
And the goal is that by the time the Central Coast Railroad Festival occurs this October...
That all the track work and supporting wiring will be complete...
And they'll be able to run trains through the entire two level layout...
Even though it'll be years before all the scenery will be completed.
On the day I visited, only the lower level of the layout was operational. But it was still pretty incredible!
These are HO scale trains, and very realistic.
They've got trains that represent several different eras of railroad operation on the Central Coast.
My favorite part of the display is a scene modeled after the Pacific Coast Railway...
A 3-foot narrow gauge railway that began operation in the 1870s...
And was used to move people and freight off steam ships arriving at Port Harford... now known as Port San Luis.
Trains reached San Luis Obispo in 1876 with later extensions to Santa Maria and ultimately Los Olivos.
Avila Beach of the 19th century is recreated in incredible detail...
Including the pier, the yacht club, the old custom house, and even the old railroad bridge...
That crossed San Luis Obispo Creek and which remained there all the way until the 1980s.
And Harford pier, which you can still visit today in Port San Luis, is recreated with amazing detail!
Including the hotel Marre which used to sit not far from where Fat Cats restaurant is today.
But that's just one small part of the Central Coast Model Railroad. It's a big layout...
And with so many amazing little details, you can see why it's taken them five years just to get to this point.
They've got some really cool model trains running on the layout, too...
Representing many different kinds of trains that ran through San Luis Obispo County over the years.
This cab-forward steam engine represents what it was like during the steam era from the late 1800s until the 1950s when diesel locomotives started to take over.
The Southern Pacific liked to use this type of steam locomotive with the smokestack in the rear and the crew at the front...
Because of the large number of tunnels around here especially on the Cuesta climb towards Santa Margarita.
If the smokestack had been at the front, like it is on a conventional steam train, the crew would have had trouble breathing in those tunnels.
This Southern Pacific diesel locomotive in the famous daylight paint scheme is an E7 from General Electric's Electro-Motive Division, EMD.
These were a common sight on the Central Coast starting after World War II.
And this beautiful model of an Amtrak Superliner is a very realistic representation of the passenger trains that still run through our area today.
In my next video, we'll follow the Southern Pacific "Lark" passenger train pulling Pullman sleeping cars all the way through the lower portion of the layout...
That was operational the day that I visited the Central Coast Model Railroad at the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum.
And if you come for a visit yourself during the Central Coast Railroad Festival October 5th, 6th and 7th...
You'll see trains running through both the lower and upper sections of the layout.
I'm Jim Zim... normally a G-scale model train guy, but...
I've got great respect for the artistry I saw today at this beautiful HO scale layout at the San Luis Obispo railroad museum.
I think you'll get a big kick out of my next video also shot here at the Central Coast Model Railroad
So, subscribe to my YouTube channel to make sure you don't miss it!
And here are a few links to a few of my other videos...
All of these are big G-scale trains running at my house.