Welcome to a Tribute to Springfield

A couple years back, my modular railroad club needed a new corner module just in time for the 2014 edition of the Railroad Hobby Show. I was tasked to complete the project and the group began to brainstorm ideas for a module theme. As the ideas rolled, we realized we would be setting up inside the Young Building for the 20^th time. After a couple of sketches, the idea for a corner module with a scaled down version of the Young Building was created and eventually constructed. When it was displayed at the show, it caught the attention of some astute observers but everyone’s reaction was – where were the rest of the buildings?

The second Tribute to Springfield project displayed at the 2015 Railroad Hobby Show.

Fast forward a year later and it is getting close to show time again. This time we needed four more feet of modules to complete the layout. I began thinking back to those suggestions from the previous Springfield and decided to build a module with the essence of all four buildings squeezed into a 2’x4’ footprint. At this point, I figured the gag was up and I’d show the module for a year or two before rebuilding it - but it turns out I was wrong. As folks stopped by the module, I kept getting the question – did you model this after the real spur? My reaction was – what real spur? Turns out, the Young Building was actually served by rail up until the late 1970s. Amazingly, the spur was used during The Big E fair in the fall as a promotional track for the local railroads like the Boston & Albany then later the New Haven Railroad and Amtrak.

As I did more research, the more I realized what had started as a joke, had the potential to be an interesting model railroad layout. In addition, over the next couple of years, several big anniversaries will hit related to the show as well as the Eastern States Exhibition. In 2016, for me personally it will be my twentieth anniversary since I displayed my first module in the Young Building but it will also be the 100^th anniversary from when the spur was constructed and the first Eastern States Exposition was held. In 2017, my club – the Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club – will celebrate 30 years of exhibiting our HO layout at the Railroad Hobby Show. Of course, the big anniversary is in 2018 when the show itself celebrates 50 years! There are just too many events aligning over the next couple of years to not make this happen.

After much sketching and designing, the third edition of the Tribute to Springfield will be a 6’x12’ O scale switching layout based upon the prototype spur as if it existed during the Railroad Hobby Show. This will include the buildings which are used during the event, the spur itself, the parking lots, and Gate 9 entrance. If all goes according to plan, the hope is to have the layout well underway and on display for the show in 2016 and mostly completed for the 2017 and 2018 editions of the show. The plan will be to setup inside the space allotted for the Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club’s HO modular layout in the Young Building.

A lot of work is already underway and my plan is to share updates on this blog with a basic schedule as follows:

• Layout Update Mondays – As the name implies, layout updates
• Track Planning Tuesdays – Track plans from my archive 
• Wordless Wednesdays – Photos relevant to the topic of the week 
• Exhibitor Thursdays – A meet and greet with some of the exhibitors at the show
• History/Figure Fridays – A look back at the show’s history as well as Layout Figure updates

You can follow updates through the RSS feed of the blog or follow along on the Facebook page. For now, it’s back to work. See you along the line…