Listening ESL
Charlie Comstock: Hey there. I’m Charlie Comstock, with Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine. I’m here with Nick Muff. Nick has got this Kansas City Southern layout downstairs in his house, and it’s a very unusual layout. In fact, we have to, uh, take quite a walk to get through it. He’s got a, uh, a passenger car down there, and we’re, we’re gonna hike through that. And he’s got a bit of a station down here. You can hear some of the sound effects in the background. So um, you want to show us what you get here?
Nick Muff: Sure. I’d be glad to. Welcome.
Charlie Comstock: Okay, let’s go.
Nick Muff: Alright. Well, my real love is the passenger trains and passenger train travel, so here in the basement; I’ve recreated in full scale and in an HO scale an experience in passenger train travel. The lobby here simulates the midway at Kansas City Union Station. And, uh, to the left is the entrance to the Pullman car. To the right here is what looks like part of the side of an F unit. And, uh, the pneumatic, the pneumatic door operates. And this represents the mock up of a Pullman car. People ask where I got it. I built it. I tell them that everything that’s in this car, I carried down those stairs. So, come on in. So, there’s a roomette, a museum, restroom. Come on in here and see the museum, with Miss Southern Belle standing on the left. And like all passenger trains, it’s cramped. Around the corner here, and down the hall is the buffet lounge. And again, this is all, uh, a mock up. Probably about one-third the length of a real passenger car. And like all model railroaders do, it’s been selectively compressed so that, uh, it recreates the feeling of being in a passenger car, even only it’s only one-third as long as one. And the table setting here, that’s Kansas City Southern’s Roxbury pattern china, and Kansas City Southern flatware and hollowware on the table. And come on through this way. Through the door is the layout room. Hobos jokingly referred to boxcars as side-door Pullmans. This is a real side-door Pullman. And out here, we’re in the layout room. To the left here is the passenger car, and then the locomotive. As opposed to the passenger car the locomotive is not a mock up, it’s the real thing. And then across the room from right to left is Kansas City downtown in the late 40s, early 50s.
So, I like to have animations on the layout. Uh, visitors really are interested in those things. And, but I want reali- uh, realistic animations, so a kite on the end of a piece of music wire goes around and around isn’t going to work for me.
Charlie Comstock: Okay.
Nick Muff: And so, first animation on this end of the layout is this little Rock Island switcher. Number one.
Charlie Comstock: Aren’t you afraid it’s going to come off the end of the chessel?
Nick Muff: Well, we’ve arranged so it doesn’t, actually. There is a diode in here that blocks a section of track so it can only run so far and it will stop automatically. The same on the other end when it gets in behind the buildings, where it’s hidden.
So next animation here is a hobo campsite. Actually, the model was built by a friend of mine when he was just a teenager. I’ve replaced the fireplace electronics with something a little more modern, so it gives a very nice effect. One nice thing is to have buttons that visitors can operate on the edge of the layout, and so there’s a button here that says, “Hear the lonesome hobo call.” So, you push that and
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