Great layout! Had no idea how massive it really was.

Ya, I caught how big this layout is from visiting their website a while back. This is like a La Mesa club size layout, but with it being built vertical instead of horizontal. Crazy to try and follow how the tracks go from floor to floor. The track planner(s) obviously know how to think in 3D. Good to see some magazine finally discovered this and made an article (thanks MRH). These guys don't have a lot of detailed scenery from what I can tell, put this track plan needs to be publicized. Not that anyone can do this in their basement mind you, but its quite ingenious.

Afraid to say that MRH isn't the first magazine to publicize our track plan. Back when the late, great RailModel Journal was still kicking, they printed a 14-page article about the WRMRC in their July 2003 issue; and 7 of the pages were just the track plan. I guess Mr Fugate is fortunate that virtual paper is a bit cheaper than the tree-based stuff, so MRH can use up as many pages as required.

Although the WRMRC was written about in a couple of local NMRA mags prior, technically the first proper, glossy page magazine to 'discover' us was Canadian Railway Modeller about 12 years ago now. However they couldn't afford to spend so much on publishing our monstrosity of a track plan, and had to settle on just printing the link to the club's website.

Speaking for myself, I'm quite happy that Model Railroad Hobbyist has the format it does, and can publish articles on in-development layouts such as the WRMRC's. Although there are plenty of great sceniced layouts shown too, there's also room to show the construction and engineering photos as well. Often they're just as fascinating and informative to me. That was something I missed after RMJ became a fallen flag, so I'm happy MRH seems to be filling that void.

As a Southern California modeler, my only complaint about the La Mesa club is that it is located in San Diego, about 2 hours and 100 miles or so from my house.  I still hope to join the club and get down there once or twice a month to operate.  Hopefully, MRH will be back or have articles submitted from time to time to show us updates on the construction and scenery of this layout as you guys continue to build it and finish scenery.

Actually, when the Sudbury Division grows up, it wants to be the La Mesa Tehachapi layout.  Though the comparisons are flattering, we are only a pale immitation of what they have achieved in San Diego.  The Tahachapi line is in a 6000 square foot building, I believe, and ours is only 2000 sqft.  They are modeling slightly more mainline than we are with far less of it hidden and modified to fit.  Our scenes are compressed much like many home layouts in many cases, and we have had to compromise far more often than I personally prefer.  Wider aisles would have been a nice improvement, but we decided we could suck it in and squeeze by rather than sacrifice some of the mainline.  Their minimum radius is something we can only dream about. 

I'm hoping we will be able to shift some of our focus towards getting more scenery finished in the near term.  So far the layout is more promise than reality.  It's fun to run, and our operations and equipment are really coming along, but we need the visual end to match the rest to really bring it together.  Hopefully, if things keep going as they have been lately, we will be able to share more realistic, finished scenes relatively soon.

When the issue first came out, I downloaded the embedded version as I always do, and this article was not in it...I am downloading it again to see if it changed....

Great Article, good to see it coming along since I last saw it

Just thought I'd warn anyone who is clicking the article's links to the WRMRC's webpages that our web host seems to be having some intermittent server issues today. Please be patient ...this should be cleared up soon.

Well done to all for their work and to you for the article, Jurgen.

Roy