Jack Burgess on Prototyping Yosemite Valley Railway
MRA EditorsDescription
For some modelers, the joy of the hobby lies in creating something in your mind that’s never existed on another railroad. For others, ultimate satisfaction comes from duplicating a once grandiose railroad in small scale. The buildings, the trackage, the landscape and scenery — all of it captured perfectly. Such was the goal of master modeler Jack Burgess when he set out to build a scale model of California’s Yosemite Valley Railway.
In this insightful conversation, Allen Keller sits with Jack to find out what made this expert prototyper keep coming back to the workshop after nearly two decades of labor. Jack talks about his passion for freezing in time the sights and sounds of a real operational railroad, and explains why he chose to model the YV as it appeared in August, 1939. You’ll also discover why Jack prefers to avoid freelancing a layout, and learn what he enjoys most about working with a prototype. This is one expert layout you don’t want to miss!
Your Yosemite Valley Railroad may be the ultimate prototype model. You've modeled almost the entire 78-mile line of the real Yosemite Valley with most buildings correctly duplicated and located. You've got exact models of cars and locomotives and an operating scheme that recreates August of 1939. Why are you such an avid prototype modeler? That's the challenge I get out of modeling is from trying to duplicate an exact railroad, in an exact period of time.
I get a lot of satisfaction from duplicating it, from doing the research, talking to people that worked on the railroad, talking to people that lived along the railroad, looking at photos and duplicating details, buildings and even doing general research of the period. What movies were out, what was it like? What was the economic climate at the time? And all of these things add to my enjoyment. Do you ever wish that you could free yourself from these, what many of us might consider, constraints?
Not at all. I find freelancing would be very difficult for me. Okay. If I don't have photos of a building, I'm really kind of stuck. And I think about that and how other people would freelance and my immediate thought is, well I will duplicate the building in another town or I'll duplicate another scene to just totally freelance a scene I couldn't do.
I have to omit certain buildings. Uh huh. And that's probably the biggest struggle is to eliminate something I know was there. That hurts, huh? Yeah, yeah.
I know what was there, I have photos of it, but because of the limitations of space, I just can't put it in.
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