This layout connects. a family

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1 1. If a love of the Union Pacific and the Western Pacific dates from Forrest Jerome s youth in Oregon, his deep appreciation for the Southern Ry. has flourished ever since he retired to Florida in With his wife, Nancy, and occasionally their four daughters, Forrest now has fun running Lionel green-and-white E6s through town as they pull the passenger cars of The Southerner. cover story This layout connects a family Forrest Jerome s four daughters influenced the design of his 20 x 21-foot O gauge railroad by Roger Carp photos by Forrest Jerome We all know the stereotype. Toy trains are just for guys. Men love smoking locomotives, noisy coal loaders, and animated cars of all sorts. Their wives and daughters cough when steamers generate smoke, regard operating cars as cute, and then return to their beading. Forrest Jerome will be the first to insist that this stereotype is outdated and flat-out wrong. Proud as he is of his 20 x 21-foot O gauge layout, this father of four adult daughters doesn t hesitate to state that his kids have made the layout better and love to operate trains on it. Starting with Dad in the 1950s At the same time that Forrest complains when anyone imagines his current model railroad is ignored by his wife and daughters, he admits his boyhood layout just bolstered the common image of a father enjoying the hobby with only his son. Life in the Jerome household of the 1950s generally reflected customs of the time. Forrest s father, returning home from Europe during World War II, eventually made sure his young son had a Lionel outfit to enjoy. One Christmas, Forrest came into the living room of the family s home and found O-27 set no. 1447WS 44 Classic Toy Trains 2012 October Kalmbach 2010 Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.

2 waiting for him. The no steam turbine and the four cars it pulled kept him quite busy. It would be more accurate to say that this Lionel work train kept Forrest and his father quite busy. Like a toy train magazine advertisement come to life, a simple train set connected a boy and his dad in a manner unlikely to happen with a Hopalong Cassidy cap pistol or any other popular toy of the era. With help from Forrest, Mr. Jerome set about building a moderately sized layout. There would be an oval of track and a pair of remote-controlled switches, an accessory or two, and a few structures on their simple version of the Union Pacific. Later, the two of them strengthened their bonds through other activities. The layout stopped growing and sat unused until it was dismantled. The trains were packed away as the Jerome family pulled up stakes from Oregon and moved to new homes in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Florida. Starting small in New York A few years after Forrest married Nancy and they settled into an apartment in New York City, some boxes with Florida postmarks arrived. Initial confusion gave way to delight as they realized his parents had found the Lionel trains and other items from long ago. Nancy liked the locomotives and cars and hoped they would become part of their family s traditions. She helped Forrest design a compact layout they could raise off the floor to have more room. That O gauge trains assumed a place of importance can be credited to the Jeromes four daughters. Here s where the story gets interesting, and you have to throw stereotypes about girls and electric trains out the window. Maybe Forrest was pouring smoke fluid on their cereal, but his daughters loved the trains. Besides putting a temporary layout around the family Christmas tree each year, Forrest and his children constructed model railroads that stayed up most of the time. First came a simple layout designed for his eldest daughters, Jennifer and Julia, to enjoy with him. When the twins, Mary Jo and Judy, came along, he revamped it so they could join in the fun and eventually operate the trains. 2. A scene to delight every fan of railroading on the West Coast the California Zephyr (K-Line and Lionel cars) running on Forrest s upper line. Don t get so absorbed in watching that classic streamliner that you miss the Lionel no Southern Ry Mountain struggling to grip the rails alongside a trout pond. a larger and more elaborate layout, the one he had wished for since his youth. To keep his dreams alive, he purchased new trains, along with some of the terrific operating accessories that were hitting the market in the 1980s and 90s. All the while, time was passing and the four young Jeromes were growing up. As had occurred with their father, the family s electric trains seemed far less important once they reached their teenage years. Then, much like their parents, the girls attended college, moved away from home, and pursued careers and marriage. A new beginning in Florida What was going to happen to the trains, Jennifer and her sisters wondered, now that Dad was on his own? The answer emerged fairly soon after Forrest and Nancy retired to Florida, where he had spent part of many winters as a youngster. I ve associated Florida with railroads my entire life, Forrest says. I was born there, although my family moved to Oregon and I spent my early life in the Pacific Northwest. But every winter we traveled by train from Oregon to Florida. Going each way took five days. I can vividly recall watching the world fly by from the windows of cars on the Union Pacific City of Portland and the Atlantic Coast Line South Wind. Maybe those memories helped lead Forrest back to the Sunshine State in Pretty soon, he was busy remodeling what had been his mother-in-law s home and planning to use a portion of it for the train room of a lifetime. Time for a new generation Happy as Forrest was to be supervising a crew of four girls on his railroad, he occasionally allowed his thoughts to drift into the future. He imagined building Forrest and Nancy Jerome (center) treasure those rare occasions when all four of their daughters visit them (on the left are Mary Jo and Judy; on the right are Julia and Jennifer). Before long, everyone is in the train room, jockeying for spots at the layout s control panel so they can run trains and operate accessories. Focus on the train room Forrest talked with Nancy about tearing down the carport and building a train room over what would be the garage. She agreed, and they worked with an architect 45

3 3. Forrest s 20 x 21-foot model railroad fills most of a room over the family garage. His priorities included being able to run several long trains at the same time, installing operating accessories, and adding Lionel s TrainMaster Command Control. 4. Whenever this Lionel no Union Pacific SD90MAC roars by the local surf shop the laidback dudes who like to hang out there end up dashing for cover. Forrest used the nickname of a nephew who loves to surf for this MTH structure. to be sure the area would be as large as possible to accommodate the biggest O gauge railroad he had ever built. Forrest wanted the flooring and lights to be just right for his layout. There also had to be plenty of electrical outlets, including some built into the floor. Before the contractor left, he had erected the solid and sturdy benchwork for a 20 x 21-foot O gauge railroad. The framework consisted of 2 x 4 lumber with a ½-inch-thick plywood tabletop. The main level would be 29 inches off the floor so kids could operate the trains. So far, everything was progressing on schedule, as though Forrest s dad were organizing the project as he had in the 50s. Now, a lifetime of enjoying O gauge trains and building small layouts would culminate in a dream railroad. Track and some new accessories The new house was strangely quiet, Nancy and Forrest agreed, now that they were on their own and their daughters were gone. Most of the noise echoing through the halls was produced, not by phonographs or ringing telephones, but by saws cutting wood for the benchwork and hammers nailing the lumber together. Nowhere near as loud were the screwdrivers used to secure Atlas O track to the tabletop. Under the nickel-silver sections, including O-54 curves (with a few O-72 pieces) Forrest glued down cork roadbed to deaden the sound. Atlas O switches powered by no. DZ-1000 motors from Z-Stuff for Trains came next. The wiring proceeded smoothly, with the decibels of sound remaining low except when Forrest muttered about the hassles of soldering 16-gauge feeder wires to every 20 feet of track. He used 22-gauge wire for the switches, lights, and other accessories he was installing. 46 Classic Toy Trains October 2010

4 21'-0" 20'-0" 3 2 Layout at a glance Dimensions: 20 x 21 feet Track and switches: Atlas O with Z-Stuff for Trains switch machines Motive power: K-Line, Lionel, MTH Rolling stock: Atlas O, K-Line, Lionel, MTH, Weaver Controls: Lionel ZW transformers (4) with TMCC Accessories: Lionel (modern), MTH Structures: Lionel, MTH, scratchbuilt, Walthers Vehicles: Corgi, Kinsmart, Tri-ang Minic Figures: K-Line, Lionel, MTH, Trainsformations 1 7 Illustration by Kellie Jaeger Winter Park Yard Southern Ry. line Union Pacific line Western Pacific line Trolley line Memories of his father and inspiration from his wife and daughters influence every aspect of the 20 x 21-foot O gauge layout that Forrest Jerome built as a retirement project. The numbered arrows correspond to the photo captions to help you locate the area on the layout where Forrest took each picture. Interestingly, the accessories dated from the modern era of toy train production but the power sources came from the postwar period. To be specific, Forrest relied on a quartet of Lionel s ZW transformers from his youth. Why aren t there freight loaders and stations from the 1940s and 50s as well? Forrest says that his dad never gave him any of the behemoths he admired, notably, the nos. 97 coal elevator and 164 log PLEASE PROOF: Individual illustrators, designers, art directors, and editors must proof and sign this form. loader. Probably because there was not sufficient empty space on their layout. In recent years, Forrest has made up for lost time. He has picked up reissues of postwar accessories and come to appreciate the new ones. Lionel s Mi- Jack crane occupies a prominent spot on the layout, as do a couple of the best ones from MTH Electric Trains: the operating gas station and firehouse. Knowing the goals of the layout Forrest, like so many builders of O gauge layouts today, wanted to explore the latest technology. Ironically, even though he was intrigued by the advantages of command control, he went lowtech at the beginning. He preferred to design a track plan without using any of the computer planning programs on the market. The number one priority, Forrest begins, was to Illustrator be able to Kellie run several trains at once Designer and not on separate lines. So he made Art Dir. sure that the main lines were linked Story and Ed. a train could meander from Man. one Ed. to another and cover every scale Exec. mile. Ed. Related to this Editor initial goal was Forrest s wish to avoid having to install reversing loops. I wanted the layout to be simple enough that anyone, even a Title CTT Issue OCT 2010 Job # MAG-CTT-OCT10 Code CTT-A1010 Proof 3 Date Return Without cramming a lot of track into his 400 or so square feet, Forrest has managed to find room for several accessories, models that youngsters always enjoy seeing. child, would be able to operate it and not have to worry about collisions. That s the reason that I decided to set up a control panel for each of the ovals of track. A third goal was to leave enough room for an assortment of accessories plus the platforms used for operating cars. In some places, Forrest had to install parallel tracks. After all, a few accessories need to have a car unload on one track and then have an empty car show up for loading on a track on the opposite side. The pictures leave no doubt that Forrest has successfully achieved that final goal. Without cramming a lot of track into his 400 or so square feet, he has managed to find room for several accessories, models that youngsters always enjoy seeing. The only downside to the plan, says Forrest, is that O-54 curves were unavoidable in many areas. Using them and not O-72 sections made it impossible to operate such new models as Lionel s Union Pacific Veranda diesel and 47

5 5. A Lionel E3, custom-painted by Jeff Sohn, leads streamlined passenger cars by one of the personalized structures on Forrest s O gauge layout. Each of his four daughters contributed time and inspiration for the railroad he dreamed of. 6. Forrest seems bent on making up for the Lionel accessories his dad never put on their layout in the 1950s. Check out the Mi-Jack crane that dominates this area. In front are reissues of the postwar nos. 164 log loader and 356 operating freight station. Big Boy steam locomotive. Too bad, Forrest says with a laugh. I guess you have to make sacrifices. Nevertheless, Forrest absolutely refused to sacrifice his wish that any visitor should be able to run his or her train over the entire O gauge layout. He concluded that the best way to accomplish that goal was to install TrainMaster Command Control. Forrest has four CAB-1s, so three people can operate trains while someone else handles chores in the rail yard. Help from familiar faces Another goal of this model railroad was to have more and better scenery than Forrest had enjoyed on his previous layouts. His father had been limited by the materials that were available and the techniques developed back in the 1950s. And Forrest had been limited on the family layouts of the 1970s and 80s by limited space. With nothing to hold him back now, Forrest devoured books on making scenery and learned about the great products being made and offered by Scenic Express and Woodland Scenics. Even better, he discovered that assistance from a very talented friend was forthcoming. My daughter Mary Jo proved to be a wizard at scenery, he says with pride. The two of them had no wish to recreate actual sites or regions. The scenery on this O gauge railroad is intended to be evocative rather than purely realistic. To be specific, Forrest and Mary Jo decided that the mountains, river, valleys, and more ought to suggest areas in Florida, Oregon, and other states that had been home to family members over two generations. In the end, Forrest s layout can be considered to have three general areas, each traversed by equipment from a favorite railroad. The Southern dominates one segment, while the Union Pacific and the Western Pacific control the other two. Mountains tower over parts of the layout, and Mary Jo was instrumental in building them. She benefited from the plaster-impregnated cloth currently being marketed by several firms. After placing the wet strips where desired, she waited patiently for them to dry and painted them with latex colors to make the basic form. 48 Classic Toy Trains October 2010

6 When Jennifer was visiting, she always found a few hours to add details to the mountains. In the meantime, Mary Jo was painting mountain backdrops on three walls. Everyone chipped in to add ground foam and vegetation. While the scenery took shape, Forrest s wife and her sister worked overtime to complete the skirting that conceals the beams and boxes under the tabletop. My sister-in-law Patsy was eager to help, Forrest says with a bit of surprise in his voice. Why not? This layout became a project for the extended family too. Personalized structures In addition, Forrest came up with a clever way to share the fun. He has developed some unique structures that convey something interesting about each of his daughters. For example, Jennifer is allergic to gluten, so the Lionel grain elevator on the layout notes that it is free of that element. Julia, a talented dancer, is listed as proprietor of a O gauge dance studio that even features miniature photos of her performing. Turning to his twin daughters, Forrest acknowledged Mary Jo s interest in vegetarian cuisine by including a restaurant on the model railroad that has on its walls tiny pictures of Mary Jo cooking a meatless dish. Judy, who has acted in several musical and dramatic productions, finds the name of one of them on the marquee of the Walthers theater. In fact, she starred in the off-broadway production of Hoboken Chicken Emergency with her mother, whose name is also up in lights. If you re worried that Forrest may have overlooked himself, you can relax. Since his other hobby is baking (breads are a specialty, he states), he plastered his name across another restaurant. The figures on the layout can never decide where to eat. Forrest s layout can be considered to have three general areas: The Southern dominates one segment, while the Union Pacific and the Western Pacific control the other two. 7. Can you blame Forrest for boasting about this part of the layout? The names on the marquee of the Walthers Palace Theater belong to his wife and one of their daughters, both of whom love to act. Next door is Julia s Whirl and Twirl Dance Studio, which reflects the talents of another daughter. Over on the corner is Memma s Veggie Grill, reminding our host of his daughter Mary Jo s nickname. Fighting over the CAB-1s Having grown up with O gauge trains and accessories, the four Jerome daughters have no fears regarding the new layout. They don t get scared about crashing the trains or setting the town on fire. Just the opposite they scramble to grab the CAB-1s that are used with Lionel s TrainMaster Command Control system and let their trains loose on a journey. Mine is really a family layout, Forrest says. I did most of the work, but everybody contributed with encouragement and assistance. That s why I wanted to add structures that are somehow associated with each of my daughters. It s also the reason I m excited about the special O scale figures that Trainsformations is making that will look like each of them. Forrest and Nancy Jerome know that whenever their four daughters are visiting it won t be long before they re heading for the train room and flicking some switches to turn on the layout. These girls just wanna have fun with electric trains! 49