Q&A with David Barrow on Cat Mountain & Santa Fe

What kind of questions do you get mainly from other model railroaders when they see the railroad?. I think most people are interested in that they have probably not seen. A large model railroad with a linear track design and the walls separating the sense like mine. Do they ever say it feels like we're in a maze, do they count it?. Yes. And then, because the visitor like that is not running the trains and looking at the trains. which would then, you lose that sense I think. The train pulls you to the scene?. Yes. But the visitors haven't seen one that you have to walk around that much to and try to imagine the whole after you finished it, what did I see here. How do you decide which structures to put in the layout?. Oh just aesthetically by. Whatever it goes here. Yes. I have a lot of different ones when I got to know Laurel Joyner the old scale man from San Antonio. He has a masterpiece of a railroad as far as structures and other things go but technically, the quality of the structures and I go through a period where I go down there every once in a while. And then I comeback and look at mine and if I have anything that's not in shouting distance of the looks of the way one of his is, I remove it immediately, and replace it with a white cardboard box until something better comes along So, he is your benchmark then?. That's right. Most of your things kits are scratch built and you said you don't build much of it yourself. I have built some but over the years, different people have built them. It's turned out now to where most everything we have is scratch built or severely kit based in one form or another.