 I'm down in San Diego in the San Diego model railroad museum with my friend Paul here. Paul's a member of the La Mesa model railroad club They're building a amazingly realistic model of the tohachapi pass route Paul We're standing in front of a track here that represents the tohachapi loop itself. Yes, that's correct. Okay, and How how big is the layout surrounding this loop? It's huge. We have about 8,000 square feet in this exhibit 8,000 8,000 5,000 on the lower level and about 3,000 on the Mizzaners. So what part of the line are you modeling from? We're modeling from Bakersfield to Mojave. Okay, including all of the stations along the way Now my impression was that you're modeling almost curve for curve What's really there in the prototype if the prototype curves them and this does too? To some extent we've had to eliminate some curves and a lot of trackage because we're only going to be having about a third of the length of the line So the length of the real line is what? About 68 miles 68 miles and the length of your model is going to be about 31 Holy cow 31 scale miles in HO. So it was the first loop that was Built in any railroad and of course it was done to maintain the two Percent plus grade. Okay So there's just no other way for them to get up the hill keep the grade in check other than to go around in a circle Yes, that's correct. What's that? What's the diameter here in the model? Our model? The main line has a radius of 56 inches. Okay Now you guys like to run Fairly long trains. I mean they're not quite as long as the prototype runs, but you know you're running. How long are they? Some of our trains are up to a hundred forty foot cars Going downhill The uphill trains are Pretty much limited to approximately 60 cars The limited to 60 cars just because of tractive effort or yes, okay because it Well, we have a rating system for our locomotives And it's basically two cars per powered axle and So, you know if you want to go beyond 60 cars now you're talking about having a lot of a lot of motive power on the train Now this area is the newest area on the layout in terms of senior right the seniors just You know the paint's hardly dry on it. Yes, and it's not finished. Yeah, so So you guys are getting a sneak preview of this thing here