Kenneth Anthony’s posting of an N-scale MGM Studios layout and his recommendation of MGM – Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot inspired me to create my own version in HO. Here is a map of the lot with railroad tracks on the lower left. And here is my track plan The track is to scale but the pink structures are not. Here are the specs of my layout: Era: 1939 Location: Culver City, near Los Angeles, California. Size: Two 1’ x 4’ modules (total eight feet long). Vertical line in pic shows dividing line. Height: 60 inches Base: One-inch foam board on pine shelves, resting on steel brackets attached to wall standards. Track: Code 100. Mostly embedded in the ground or concrete, like the original, to make filming and re-using the surface as something else easier. Turnouts: #4 Minimum radius: ? but as big as possible. Most of the track is straight. Fiddle yard: One –track and four feet long extending from upper right. Represents interchange with Pacific Electric on Culver Blvd. Obviously, I’ve used modeler’s license in spots, such as when putting tracks onto the docks and having tracks going into the Train Storage building. In real life, both tracks simply led to the blank area between the storage building and the docks. I added a runaround track for operating interest. It may seem short but I wanted the module break to cross one track, not two, and switching can move just one car at a time. A typical scene might only show two or three railcars, if they were short, or one railcar, if it was a long one. I may put the small town set on a removable base, so I can exchange it for other “sets” on the studio lot, such as the Western town, European village or jungle. This simulates the impermanent and changing nature of the sets. Operations Studio steam switcher (4-4-0 DCC Richmond Modern from Bachman Spectrum) sets up passenger and freight cars in various sets to set up scenes for different movies. The cars are rented from railroads, delivered by Pacific Electric locos to Culver Blvd interchange, and then brought in by the switcher. Sometimes, locomotives are also rented for scenes. (Interestingly enough, sometimes locos were transported on the back of railcars and hoisted onto studio tracks by cranes.) After setting up a shot, I’ll either use a digital camera or webcam to take a picture of the scene, to see how closely it matches the initiating railroad scene from an MGM movie. Occasionally, flatcars and gondolas are brought into the lot to pick up supplies for delivery to remote locations outside the studios. Not sure yet where supply storage will be, but most likely in Train Storage or in a warehouse next to the Docks. Comments and suggestions for improvement welcome. Thanks.
Thrilled to see someone doing something with this old sketch of mine. You might not put a building at what you label "train storage." I understand a lot of the time, MGM took railroad equipment off the track and stored it inside in an adjacent building that would be "in the aisle" on your trackplan-- the big world equivalent of putting our trains away in a box! The "train storage" track could do double duty on a layout as the access for RR equipment to the storage shed, AND as a place for loading and unloading rail shipments of supplies to the studio.
That's also something I've thought about, Kenneth, and is still a possibility. But I just liked the idea of a separate, visible destination for the spur. But even in its current incarnation, the Train Storage can still store props and such, making it a potential structure for loading and unloading supplies.
