Vol. 54: Gary Hoover's Santa Fe Railroad
Gary Hoover’s former layout, the Missouri, Kansas and Quincy, was a beautifully done work of art that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and set in the present day. His new Santa Fe model railroad is set in the steam-to-diesel transition period and runs from Chicago to Los Angeles staging. Gary used photos to create exact scenes, as building scenery and taking photos of a layout is what he enjoys most. This HO railroad follows the Santa Fe rules and operating practices and was designed as a rail fanning experience with deep scenes and walk-around controls.
Allen Keller joins Gary Hoover to discuss how the current layout compares to his previous Missouri, Kansas and Quincy model railroad. Steam and first-generation diesel rules the new layout and is based in August 1951. The almost finished layout fills the basement of his home with a minimum radius of 30 inches, and the benchwork is plywood and two-by-fours. The model portion of the Santa Fe runs from San Bernardino, California to Chicago. Staging yards serve both ends of the layout. The tour of the layout starts in Chicago at the Dearborn Station.
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5:46Touring the Santa Fe Railroad
The tour of Gary Hoover’s Sante Fe model railroad with narration by Allen Keller begins at Dearborn Station, Chicago. Here the final call is made for the Super Chief to Los Angeles. The semaphore goes up as Train 17 leaves Dearbron powered by a series of F3s. This is the Santa Fe’s premier passenger train.…
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11:00Operations on the Santa Fe Railroad
Operations on Gary Hoover’s Santa Fe model railroad begins at San Bernardino, California where the 484, Number 2929 will help the Grand Canyon get up to Summit. The hepler is positioned in front of the depot prior to the arrival of train 24 to Grand Canyon. This is a mixed consist with both heavyweight and…
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5:28Owner Inspiration and Techniques on Santa Fe Model Railroad
Gary Hoover’s second layout, the Santa Fe is in the basement. The old Missouri, Kansas, and Quincy layout ran from Chicago to California. Allen Keller asks him what the route of the new backdated Santa Fe layout follows. It is still pretty much the same route as the old layout, starting in Chicago and ending…
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7:32Custom Backdrops with Gary Hoover
Gary Hoover has some fine looking model railroad backdrops on his Santa Fe layout. The backdrop was a challenge for Gary when he first started the layout because so many backdrops were needed that had to match the prototype. For his model railroad backdrops, he uses simple, easy to find art materials. The materials he…
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15:06Making Joshua Trees with Gary Hoover
Over in the area between Summit and Victorville, typically around the Frost area in the high desert of Gary Hoover’s Santa Fe model railroad, there are a lot of Joshua trees. These are not commercially available for modelers, so they must be made from scratch. So, Gary had to come up with ways to create…
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6:05Switch Panels on the Sante Fe Model Railroad
Gary Hoover is using a DCC system for his Santa Fe model railroad layout. He controls the turnouts by stationary decoders which then run through the DCC system. When he wants to make a position change on a turnout, he issues a command through his handheld controller and then the turnout throws. With all the…
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6:12Resistance Wheelsets on Gary Hoover’s Santa Fe Model Railroad
The signal systems that Gary Hoover has for the DCC on his Santa Fe model railroad requires current between two rails. For the freight cars to accomplish this, he adds a resistor that bridges from one metal wheel to the other metal wheel. There are two types of resistors that modelers can use, one is…
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