They’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad--for 10 Years

No one would ever suggest that the sturdy, stout-hearted railroad men had it easy when they built the Southern Pacific line between Los Angeles and Bakersfield in the 1870s.

But hey, at least they didn’t have to build their own scenery. The mountains and deserts and trees were already there.

Which brings us to the Belmont Shore Railroad Club, 50 or so members strong, who have toiled nights and weekends for more than 10 years at their clubhouse in San Pedro to build a mammoth model railroad that, in part, replicates the Southern Pacific line stretching from Los Angeles through the Mojave and Tehachapi to the farmlands of Bakersfield.

Already, the railroad club’s members have spent more than twice as long building the model as Southern Pacific’s crews took to build the real thing. But as any true model railroader will tell you, “a model railroad is never really finished.”

“It’s true,” says George Gaskill, an enthusiast from Torrance who’s been with the railroad club for 16 years. “Even when you get the last piece of scenery in place, you tell yourself, ‘Hey, this piece of track has never worked right,’ or ‘That building looks like it was made by a 2-year-old.’ ”

Such attention to detail might seem maddening. And, Gaskill admits, there are some obsessive modelers and modeling clubs around.

“Sure, some people really get carried away with this stuff. The contest modelers, the ones at the big conventions, might bring in steam-engine models that they’ve been building for three years,” Gaskill says. “If a tender (a coal and water car) had 10,000 rivets, there are some who would build the model and press in 10,000 dents to simulate row after row of rivets.”

Likewise, Gaskill says, some railroad clubs insist that their projects be “prototypically precise,” with every boxcar, building or bush done to scale.

“We’re not one of those clubs,” Gaskill says of the group, first formed 19 years ago in the Belmont Shore library but now meeting at Angels Gate Park. “We’re here for entertainment, not to raise each other’s blood pressure, which we already do from time to time.”

That’s not to say the club is satisfied with just slapping together some model railroad.

The Belmont Shore Line, built by the club and on display today at Building 824 at the park, is billed as the largest N-scale model railroad in the nation. Ninety feet long and 25 feet wide, the model has more than 350 feet of tiny track winding through terrain that simulates Southern California. Over the years, Gaskill guesses, the club’s members have spent about $250-a-month building the model.

“It’s basically a free-lance model. It doesn’t precisely model the real line because even at 1/160th scale, with a 50-foot boxcar four inches long, we wouldn’t have had the room to build a model of the entire 200-mile line,” Gaskill says.

But the model does simulate the so-called Tehachapi Loop, the winding stretch of the Southern Pacific line that circles the Tehachapi mountains. And spread out over the model’s vast landscape are scores of intricate scenes. A train depot with lanes of tracks. A Main Street dotted by tiny stores and shoppers. City scenes. Hillsides. Deserts.

Most of the scenery is made of plaster, some of it from plastic foam.

“We don’t use too many real building materials because they would look too grainy and out of scale,” Gaskill says. For that same reason, he says, beach sand would never do to simulate the stretch of Mojave included in the model.

“A grain of sand on a real beach looks fine. But on our scale, it would look like a rock the size of a baseball.”

Then, there are the trees.

Tiny, tiny trees whose assembly sounds like a recipe. Beginning with a real twig, the simulated tree is first spray-painted green. Then synthetic batting, the fibrous material often wadded into pillows or bandages, is stretched and draped over the twig. Next comes hair spray to make the treetop sticky. Finally, finely ground foam rubber is sprinkled over the twig to simulate leaves. A final spray of green paint and the tree is finished.

Of course, a project the size of the Belmont Shore Club model means the process will be duplicated thousands of times. But Gaskill insists the work is both simple and quick for experienced modelers. “It’s really easy. You usually do it in an assembly line, so each one doesn’t take even five minutes,” he says.

Those minutes, however, quickly add up, and today, despite years of work, the railroad model is still without some major features, including buildings and streets marking downtown Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Another branch-line track is also on the drawing board for the model.

But those additions will come in time, says Gaskill, 43, who’s been building model railroads since 1974.

“Railroaders can be strange people, but they’re dedicated. They keep at it,” Gaskill says. “I know from experience.”