It was a mere chance meeting between museum volunteer Marshall Wilson and David Nicandri, director of the Washington State Historical Society. An informal conversation gave birth to the idea of the 1950s model railroad exhibit that opened in 1996 with the new Washington State History Museum. That discussion took place in 1993, when the new history museum only existed as an architect’s model and a few drawings.
Marshall Wilson is a charter member of the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers (PSMRE). Like many other members of the group, he first came to the Pacific Northwest while in the military and decided to make it his home. Combining a keen eye for detail and a skilled dexterity with small tools, he was drawn to a hobby with the complexity of a system and the richness of a historical artifact. Wilson became active in the local club that provided a temporary display for the history museum when it was still housed in the old museum near Tacoma’s Stadium High School (now the Washington State History Research Center).
The conceptual plans for the new museum hung along a wall near the room in the old history museum where Wilson passed many volunteer hours staffing the temporary model railroad exhibit. "I spent a lot of time looking at the designs, when traffic was slow," he recalled. "I gradually got to understand how they planned to use all the exhibit space. I noticed that on the top floor there was all this space that was ‘to be developed.’ That got my attention because I am always thinking about railroad layouts and any open space is an invitation to build."
One day when David Nicandri wandered by, as he often did, to enjoy the model railroad, Wilson stood looking at the plans for the new museum’s top floor. As they both considered the drawings, Wilson casually pointed to a section of empty section of the top floor and said, "I could put a layout in there." Nicandri’s response was encouraging. Before long, Wilson had begun assembling information and recruiting compatible souls to help develop a formal proposal.
"The museum wanted [a layout] to represent Washington state railroading [and said the exhibit] would have to be open to the public any time the museum was open, and that it would…be in operation…any time the museum was open. Those were the primary stipulations at that time," said Wilson. Though he was no expert on Washington’s railroads, he knew that five railroads passed through the state and that the Northern Pacific and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific (more commonly known as the Milwaukee Road) had their western termini there. He searched a Washington map to see if there was any place in the state where all five railroads converged. There were several cities that came close, but only one seemed ideally suited to the project.
Wilson found that while other organizations had created layouts depicting parts of some of the cities where railroads came together in the Northwest, none had focused on historic Tacoma, a major rail center and port in the heart of the Puget Sound region. The PSMRE layout would depict the 90 miles between Tacoma and Stampede Pass.
"And is there a more beautiful building anywhere for a centerpiece?" said Wilson, in reference to the former Union Station next door to the site of the new history museum. The museum’s architecture echoes the red brick arches of the 1911 beaux arts structure, which now serves as Tacoma’s U.S. district courthouse and holds pride of place-in miniature-at the center of the history museum’s model railroad layout.
Wilson recalled, "Once we decided to model the local area, the choice of era was fairly easy…we wanted the transition era (1950s), from steam to [diesel and] electric, because the Milwaukee was electric. The fact that it was pre-merger [before the Great Northern and Northern Pacific became part of the Burlington Northern Railroad], and the fact that all the railroads except the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S) came here made it ideal for capturing the essential elements of railways in the Pacific Northwest."
The two railroads with tracks depicted in the model are the Northern Pacific, which owned the majority of track in the area, and the electrified Milwaukee Road. The Great Northern and the Union Pacific contracted trackage rights from Northern Pacific and shared the use of Union Station-so named because of that cooperation.
Surrounding the exhibit is a glass wall that protects the exhibit but also allows it to be viewed in its entirety. The unique design of the wall (courtesy of BLR&B Architects, Tacoma) permits sections of the glass to be lowered for photography, maintenance, or interaction between museum visitors and the PSMRE volunteers who operate the trains from inside the exhibit. Although a computer system operates trains for visitors any time the museum is open, on the first Saturday of every month members of the PSMRE come in and operate the exhibit the same way real railroads were operated in the 1950s.
Today all of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad’s communications originate in an office in Texas, and much of the operation is computerized. By contrast, in the 1950s a telegraph operator was needed at each station to pass orders to train crews. During the monthly operating sessions trains are assembled according to simulated orders for individual cars requiring delivery to separate stations. The operators use clocks, timetables, and radios to re-create a day in the life of a mid-20th-century railroad. The existence of over 300 turnouts along the tracks is testimony to the complexity of the museum’s railroad display. This is not a simple matter of running trains in a circle; it is a miniature working railway system-one of the finest in the nation.
From the beginning of the project over 14 years ago, realism was a priority. The builders literally became historians and industrial archeologists. Because of the detail required, a number of the model’s structures have been multi-year projects. In many cases the builders had to draw their own blueprints based on photographs and then construct a building stick by stick. At times they had to make their own molds to cast parts unique to particular structures and trains. Bill Claypool, who modeled the ASARCO smokestack, recruited a jeweler to fabricate the ladder attached to its side.
The exhibit depicts the terrain as well as the industry. The art-and irony-of this exhibit is revealed in the painstaking detail and historical accuracy of its structure and operations juxtaposed with the equally breathtaking liberties taken in depicting the landscape. The distance between key locations, individually modeled to exceptionally accurate scale, is at times shortened and the direction of the track adjusted. Central Washington University professor Gina Bloodworth called it "brilliantly designed, but a cartographer’s nightmare to depict," in reference to its use of selective compression. After all, 96.2 real miles, or 506,880 feet, would require 5,792.9 feet in the exhibit’s 1:87.5 "HO" scale. The model railroad engineers managed to compress that distance into just a 10th of that-they used 580 feet of mainline track with another 2,620 feet for sidings and yards. The layout manages to collapse the distances between a few representative structures to only 38 feet. The effect is still plausible because people’s field of vision is normally limited to their arms’ width, and each scene is carefully rendered to draw the viewer into it.
One measure of the exhibit’s success can be found in the comments of visitors who have lived and worked in the areas depicted. For example, Jim and Cereta Fredrickson, during a visit to the exhibit, recognized the living quarters they occupied while working as telegraphers at the Stampede Pass tunnel and the steep hill behind the telegrapher’s shed. Cereta remembers the long winter she spent there with a toddler and how nervous she was about the possibility of avalanches from above the dwelling, the dangerous railroad tracks in front of it, and the precipitous hill on the other side.
The entire exhibit was constructed to a standard far more exacting than the typical model railroad. This includes the details seen by the public as well as those areas that are generally unseen. The initial plan for the railroad was converted by PSMRE member Paul Rising, a Tacoma architect, from Marshall Wilson’s early sketches to a 1:12 computer-assisted design (CAD) "blueprint" -fully dimensioned down to 1/16th of an inch. Topographical drawings were also made showing the elevations of hills and grades in the finished exhibit.
The CAD drawings allowed the exhibit’s benchwork-its infrastructure-to be built off-site by a team led by member Bob Stumpf before the museum was ready for occupancy. This part of the project management was so successful that construction of the railroad could begin two months before the gallery was ready, and when the benchwork subsections were delivered to the museum they fit exactly. This process-as flawless as a subcontractor delivering an aircraft part to Boeing for final assembly-was possible because several members are in fact Boeing engineers and professional carpenters.
The end result of the PSMRE’s efforts is a smoothly operating world-class exhibit. Although modifications are constantly in progress on any given day, there is never any obvious indication of a project under construction. Also unseen but tremendously important are the hidden electrical and control systems. From the very beginning the model railroad engineers modified commercial systems-and even occasionally designed their own-to allow for unobtrusive monitoring and control of trains, tracks, and signal systems.
For well over a decade, the history museum’s model railroad exhibit has provided an outlet for the creative talents of the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers and supported the educational mission of the Washington State Historical Society by telling the story of Washington’s 1950s railroads. Seven simple words-"I could put a layout in there"-gave rise to an incalculable effort on the part of a community-minded group of hobbyists and fostered increased public understanding and appreciation of an important element of Washington’s transportation history.
Naomi Jeffery Petersen is a professor of education at Central Washington University and an outreach education consultant. Jim Murrie is a member of the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers who, as a docent for the Washington State History Museum’s model railroad exhibit, has spent many hours explaining the exhibit’s features to museum visitors. Petersen and Murrie have collaborated on several projects related to the exhibit.