Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society

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Special Notes About the Layout

Here are some note's on particular areas of the layout. It includes our Interurban and Trolley system, the Narrow Gauge, and the massive Diablo Yard.

Interurban Line

The streetcar and the interurban electric routes powered from the overhead wire as in real life. The trolley runs up and down Olympia Main Street from Port Allen, past a cemetery, and up to the City of Olympia.

There are two operating positions located between the Olympia passenger depot and the mountain side. They control (left position) a section of the Olympia Electric interurban and (right) the "Oly" Freight Yard and the branch line switchback on the mountainside up to Potterstown.

At the east end of the building is Mallard. The real Mallard was only a signpost at the edge of the San Francisco bay. Most of our Mallard is imaginary. Only the electric train ferry and its slip are accurate models. Boat operation was used by the Sacramento Northern Railroad to cross the Suisun Bay between Bay Point (West Pittsburg) and Chipps Island. This ferry received traffic until 1954 from a line passing through Walnut Creek. This route is partially followed by BART trains from the Walnut Creek station along Port Chicago almost to the North Concord station.

Our Mallard can run interurban engines which receive their power from the overhead wire, or two-rail engines which receive power from both rails.

Narrow Gauge

The narrow gauge line is operated from Thompson Flats. Their main line traverses the west end of the layout, past Buffalo Landing, and terminates at the elevated yard under the high mountain backdrop. It was built in HOn3 gauge, representing three feet, between the rails, gauge in HO scale. There are four feet eight and one-half inches between the rails on standard gauge railroads. The steep track grades average 5%, with a maximum of 7%!

The scenery for the narrow gauge represents different scenic areas. Thompson Flats was modeled after the Sierra foothills. It features a church that was modeled after a prototype in Sonora, California. The area around Buffalo Landing represent the Sierra Nevada range at about 6,000 feet elevation. The upper yard on the Diablo side represents the Colorado Narrow Gauge.
In the area below Coot's Castle is a scene recreating a portion of Buffalo Landing on the Westside Lumber Company as it looked during the 1950's. The Westside was based out of Tuolumne, California, and extensively logged the Stanislaus National Forest from 1898 until 1960.  This was their last truck to rail reload before they went exclusively to truck logging. It includes dirt from the actual area and lots of pine trees and manzanita brush.

Diablo Yard

The large Diablo Yard on the south side of the layout handles several separate functions such as sorting and assembly of freight trains.  Diablo Yard also contains an engine service facility and an icing platform for pre-mechanical refrigerated cars. The yard also has an interchange track with the interurban lines. On the front edge of the table lies a portion of a small town served by an industrial railroad.  There are enough control panels to keep 6 people busy during a show.

The Trains

All of the trains are owned by the individual members of the Society and cover every kind of equipment that ever existed (and some that never did). Only a fraction of these trains can be operated at one time, therefore at a public show a visitor is likely to see trains of a type not seen during an earlier visit. An attempt, however, is made to balance the traffic on the Diablo Valley Lines so that a large variety of equipment can be on display. A time-warp is not unusual where an old steam logging train might be side-by-side with BART [San Francisco Bay Area light rail system] or perhaps a start-of-the-art high speed train from France.