Vol. 36: John Gray's Union Pacific Cheyenne Division
John Gray’s Union Pacific Cheyenne Division model railroad captures the vast, open spaces of Wyoming. His HO layout was designed to showcase the immensity of America’s West with broad curves and scenic sweeping vistas. The Union Pacific is a great place for John to display his huge collection of brass locomotives and cars. He believes it’s important to get them out of the box and run them both for his enjoyment and the history they impart to others.
Although John Gray is a railroad executive, he shuns the modern scene in favor of the late 1930s through the early 1960s. A variety of operating equipment can be seen on the layout, which is to John’s liking. He sees the layout as a way to recreate historical scenes and activities that he saw or wishes he had seen.
In this series, Allen Keller interviews the man behind the Union Pacific. John explains to Allen what makes his layout unflinchingly true to the West and how modelers look at most major lines. The Union Pacific is housed in its own 46×26-foot building, with a minimum radius of 34 inches and a spine roadbed. The UP is a double loop with a lower and upper line, and begins and ends on the only town on the layout, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
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3:43Allen Keller asks John Gray how he likes to operate the Union Pacific Cheyenne Division model railroad. The control system that John uses on the layout is a Linn Hanson Westcott “How to Model a Model Railroader 1959”. He tries to run it single-handed as much as he can, which means he can do only…
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6:06The locomotives and the cars look like they have been running through Wyoming. How does John Gray succeed with weathering a dry landscape? This is one of Phil Gazzano’s real strengths, to take a photograph that John provides him of a locomotive and to weather it so it looks like how it would in real…
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0:53What kind of questions do John Gray’s Union Pacific Cheyenne Division visitors ask him? The general public can’t believe that all the items on the layout that are made out of brass. Because of this disbelief, he keeps one locomotive unpainted to prove to them that they are indeed brass. Next they wonder why he…
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5:30With so many pieces of brass on the layout, John Gray must perform constant tweaking to get them to run right. He actually enjoys it because he likes problem-solving and getting the engine to run. Phil Gazzano demonstrates the tweaking. Phil starts by taking the superstructure off. Then he starts inspecting, slowly spinning the drivers…
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5:12Allen Keller sits down with the owner of the Union Pacific model railroad, John Gray, to ask of his advice to other brass collectors to ensure their stock is running. First, rather than just leaving a piece of brass in the box and storing it away when they collect it, they should catalogue it in…
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