Large Scale Central

CaState RR Museum

General Discussion
#1

Wife and I went to the California State Rr Museum in Sacramento Wednesday, thought I would share some pictures

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the UP cab forward 4-8-8-2. 1 million lbs of loco and 370,000 lbs of tender, that is my 5’3”wife standing beside this monster
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1 of several beautiful steamers
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Thats me trying to figure out how to fit this in the car for the ride home
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Some of the diorama’s they had by " master Model railroaders" dont know if that is an official title or no. the logging scene includes some steam donkey work I thought woud fit with what several guy are doing here
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trestle scratch built in I think G scale , 653 pieces, note the light colored area in the middle the beautiful spokesmodel is pointing to!
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same trestle in Nscale
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coal dock diorama
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a “compressed”sawmill diorama very well done,it had to be close to 3 feet long in HO scale.
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don’t remember who this loco belongs to Eric shade I think, but I know he is on here .
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view from the 3rd floor .

3 Likes
#2

Pete,
Me and the wife have been there three times now and it is considered the best RR museum in the USA.
Old Sacramento has really deteriorated though ( actually all of the city has), along with most big cities.

#3

Isn’t that museum amazing. We have been there a couple dozen times through the years, we only lived about 250 miles from it, but haven’t been there since moving to Oregon in 2015.

When in the area be sure to check out the Heidrick Agricultural Museum in Woodland CA. just a few miles from the CSRRM. If you like old trucks and farm machinery this is a must see.

Linc https://www.californiaagmuseum.org/calfiornia-agriculture-museum

Edit for updated information.

Apparently the Hay’s truck collection was removed from this museum in 2014 and relocated in Reno Nevada but the space fell through and most of the collection was sold off and the remainder is in storage, what a great shame. If you look in past issues of the Gazette you will find a large number of drawings of these trucks by the late Al Armitage.

Oh well, tractors are great to look at too.

#4

Thanks Pete, I love that place! Lots of V&T there. I haven’t been there since all the model RR’s were installed on the second floor, I sure want to see that.

Another fun thing right there in Old Sac is the “Sacramento Underground” tour, where you walk through what used to be the ground floors of several buildings before the great flood of 1862 – after which the city was jacked up a floor.

#5

They have a lot about the Transcontinental Railroad and interesting and really sad information on how the Chinese laborers were treated, especially by Central Pacific RR owner and later governor Leland Stanford. In one area they have a steam Loco and a full size snow shed as part of the 1:1 diorama of the Chinese laborer work.
The model RR area didn’t have a whole lot about G scale , most of the information was about 1:22.5 LGB being the suitable for outdoor use. They did have some 3 rail layouts that would run, set up pretty nice with lot of detail, and at certain times a workshop was actually open with a guy that is working on the museum stuff.

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The 3 rail was quite a bit larger than Lionel, but seemed to have the same accessories.

#6


That 3 rail is Old Lionel and Gilbert Standard gauge
And the round house shown looks to be standard gauge while the switch shanty looks to be ‘O’

#7

Yeah they had some stuff that was obviously regular Lionel, the detail on the big loco was pretty good with all the brass/ shiny bands and whatnot!

#8

G is not a scale, it’s a gauge.
1:22.5/1 is a scale where 1 inch = 1 foot 10.5 inches on the model. :nerd_face:

#9

Yeah, didn’t clarify my comment , G scale/gauge/ size is a bunch of kind of almost and maybe stuff that if you don’t mind a 1/32 car can be used on the same train as 1.24 and 1/29 cars, rolling past 1.22.5 buildings with 1:29 people and 1:25 autos and 1/32 trucks …

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