Mike Engler, MMR/photos by the author and Ray Knight
I have been to several hundred model railroads on layout tours during shows and conventions over many years. I think that almost all of them offered an idea or two and some a lot of great features. Many have great scenery, others demonstrated great model building, and still others, trackwork and operations.
ABOVE: The fictional town of Whisky Butte. Many buildings are various kits or scratchbuilt and most with interiors and lighting.
John Niemeyer offers all of these things, but the outstanding features are the lighting, sound effects, and animation he provides. The lighting installed into structures and rolling stock is remarkable, but is also present in many details such as fires in forges, bonfires, wood stoves, and fireplaces. But my favorite is the glowing red color of the lantern carried by a brakeman.
ABOVE: A Con-Cor Goose No. 7 on the Ophir Loop. Aspen trees are from Scenic Express.
John started in the hobby in the early 1960s by building some Varney engines and rolling stock and he built two standard gauge layouts. He found he was fascinated with the imaginative ways that he could do lighting, locomotives, structures, and other details. He eventually was bitten by the narrow gauge bug and combined a couple of smaller layouts into one that is 12 feet x 24 feet. In his estimation, it is about 80 percent finished, but as we all know, you never finish them, but rather just stop working on them.
ABOVE: Ridgway Office Building by CC Crow, shop buildings by Banta Modelworks.
His layout depicts the Colorado Four Corners area as it was in autumn 1939. It is a freelance operation and features his rendition of the RGS Ophir loop and the town of Ridgway and also some Colorado & Southern. But there is also some creative license John used to add a fictional town and a few scenes typical of the locale he is modeling. The structures and rolling stock are a combination of kits, kitbashed and scratchbuilt. The locomotives are brass imports or kits…
