montanan
Whiskey Merchant
I've been a lone operator up here in Montana ever since I returned 40 years ago. I had no idea that there was a model railroad club in Livingston until I was notified of a train show in the old Northern Pacific Depot in Livingston, MT. The old depot has been restored and is now a museum.
The entrance to the club is in the basement of the building on the left. You can see the stairs going down to the left of the "Swap Meet" sign.
There's a lot of railroad history in that town. It is now the home of the Montana Rail Link shop.
I will start off with a video taken at the club.
For me it is a hunderd mile round trip to get to the club, and in the winter, having to drive over Bozeman Pass can be a pain, but it is worth it. The members are quite informal and extremely friendly. While attending a swap meet I had gone down to the club and was invited to run at the club.
I do still run DC only at home because not only being a lone operator, my layout was built for switching and there is no real need to run multiple locomotives. That is different at the club. The of course run DCC with Digitrax. I will be the first to admit that I am a DCC dummy, but do have a few DCC locomotives, and even purchased a Northern Pacific RS-1 mainly to run at the club.
The layout occupies three room in the basement of the old baggage building, which is on the left in the photo at the top. They had quite a job drilling through the 2 foot thick concrete walls of the basement to get the tracks into the different rooms. The scenery is very well done and some of the backdrops were hand painted by local artists of the actual area around Livingston and the surrounding areas.
The members were a little cautious at first having me operate on the layout, but having operated on some good friends layouts in Missouri in large operating sessions, I was able to suprise them and was easily accepted. The best part about the club that I like is that there are absolutely no politics, just a good bunch of guys who love model railroading.
The layout is open to the public on Thursdays and Saturday evenings from 7:30 PM until 9 PM during operating sessions.
There is no particular era modeled. You can see a mixture of just about anything on the rails from the old to the new.
It is not uncommon to have 6 or more trains running at the same time. One unwritten rule is that the longer train has the right of way if there is a meet, which is quite common. My with my wimpy RS-1 than is lucky to handle 10 cars on the grades is usually the one diving for a passing siding.
In the next post on the club, I will post some photos that do go back in history. At the turn of the century, the Northern Pacific did run a train south from Livingston down to Gardiner, MT which is the north entrance of Yellowstone Park. A couple of the members did an excellent job modeling part of the area using photos taken during the period that the train ran there. Service was discontinued in 1955 with the exception of an occasional excursion train that ran for about another year.
The entrance to the club is in the basement of the building on the left. You can see the stairs going down to the left of the "Swap Meet" sign.
There's a lot of railroad history in that town. It is now the home of the Montana Rail Link shop.
I will start off with a video taken at the club.
For me it is a hunderd mile round trip to get to the club, and in the winter, having to drive over Bozeman Pass can be a pain, but it is worth it. The members are quite informal and extremely friendly. While attending a swap meet I had gone down to the club and was invited to run at the club.
I do still run DC only at home because not only being a lone operator, my layout was built for switching and there is no real need to run multiple locomotives. That is different at the club. The of course run DCC with Digitrax. I will be the first to admit that I am a DCC dummy, but do have a few DCC locomotives, and even purchased a Northern Pacific RS-1 mainly to run at the club.
The layout occupies three room in the basement of the old baggage building, which is on the left in the photo at the top. They had quite a job drilling through the 2 foot thick concrete walls of the basement to get the tracks into the different rooms. The scenery is very well done and some of the backdrops were hand painted by local artists of the actual area around Livingston and the surrounding areas.
The members were a little cautious at first having me operate on the layout, but having operated on some good friends layouts in Missouri in large operating sessions, I was able to suprise them and was easily accepted. The best part about the club that I like is that there are absolutely no politics, just a good bunch of guys who love model railroading.
The layout is open to the public on Thursdays and Saturday evenings from 7:30 PM until 9 PM during operating sessions.
There is no particular era modeled. You can see a mixture of just about anything on the rails from the old to the new.
It is not uncommon to have 6 or more trains running at the same time. One unwritten rule is that the longer train has the right of way if there is a meet, which is quite common. My with my wimpy RS-1 than is lucky to handle 10 cars on the grades is usually the one diving for a passing siding.
In the next post on the club, I will post some photos that do go back in history. At the turn of the century, the Northern Pacific did run a train south from Livingston down to Gardiner, MT which is the north entrance of Yellowstone Park. A couple of the members did an excellent job modeling part of the area using photos taken during the period that the train ran there. Service was discontinued in 1955 with the exception of an occasional excursion train that ran for about another year.
Last edited:
There's some other good stuff going on too, and hopefully even more in the future.
