🚂🚃🚋 Inside the San Antonio Model Railroad Association | Train-ing with Dude RV 🎥🛤️

it's kind of hidden but this we're going to go check out the S San Antonio the San Antonio Model Railroad Association They have a massive layout and we're going to go check that out I cannot believe how big this is All right be patient It's going to be a long video Welcome to Dude RV Hey I appreciate you stopping by And of course say it with me You got here just in time So this work order tells you what work you're going to do So the first thing you do is you pick up your train It says you depart the area and you go to this place South San Antonio yard Okay Okay You drop off Set out means drop off These four cars Okay You go to the next place There's no work here There's no work here Then you go to this place Rimrock and you pick up these two cars You go to this place There's no work There's no work You go to this place and you pick up these four cars And you go through and you do all your work and you when you come back here when you do when you're finished with your work you come back to the operator and you say "Train number one has run and the operator hits a button and it updates the new locations of the cars at the new spots But there's no like RFID chips or anything on the car chips in that no optical reader No we're not that you said it knew where they were I'm like okay Well it knows because number one it knew where they started from it knew what happened during the op session And number two we double check it to make sure that nothing has moved Okay because sometimes people come in here and they'll run a train and they'll be lazy and they'll just pick up a car and put it on there And that screws up us when we're doing a session It kind of makes us upset But at any rate but at any rate imagine that's how it works Okay So that's what that's this is what's going to be going on today Okay While you're here so that's supposed to start at 12 I won't be here that long Well I I But you'll see people But you'll see people working doing some yard work uh Victor but this this was really insightful because most of this is this is like the 18th or 19th facility that I've been to and shot footage of This is the first time someone has given me this kind of information pertaining to what y'all do in your hobby Okay Most of them are just you know goes around and around in circles This is these for our group This works There's more sophisticated systems There's cards There's you know there's actually things that can read things on the on the cards as they go by but we don't do that because you know we're old farts Okay Okay You with me i'm with you All right Let's take a quick look here at the layout and then you can run around and take pictures and do whatever you want Now we have people that are running the yards Okay And what they're doing is they're setting out the cars that need to be picked up by those when you get one of those trains so that you don't have to go in here and try to figure out where the car is Okay Okay That's the yard master So that young man right there is a yard master Yeah Right So let me set the stage for you Set the stage This is a simulated sort of trip looking at you between San Antonio which is over there in that corner Okay And Fort Worth which is down there against that wall Okay All right It's 19 Go ahead How big overall is the layout dimension wise the the building itself is 4,000 square ft The layout is an 850T mainline layout It's 850 ft around this thing Wow Okay Okay So let me give you an example of what that means I have a home layout It's in a 12x4 room My layout is basically a U It takes me about 2 minutes to go around my layout Okay And that's kind of at a normal speed We don't run fast We run what we call protottypical which is how the railroads would really work Right if you run out here at a normal speed it will take you 35 to 40 minutes to go around this layout Okay So that's the thrill of going running your train on this layout without without stopping to make set up That's right Now if you're doing work you may be here a couple hours So it's 1959 Texas Cool All right Do Do you know why it would be 1959 Texas why we would pick cuz you're going to have both steam and electric diesel electric You are the man So that's right So that's what we're doing So everything that you see out here is going to be from that period of time during an op session So the engines we have are from that that period of time The types of industries that you see will be from that time Now there's some things that would be there today that were here in 1959 Correct but there's some things that won't be And let me show you an example of that SC my man is already ready for it We have So the first place we built is a place called Clark Center It's named for Bob Clark That guy up there on the wall This guy right here That guy right there Take his picture So Bob built the lumber yard and the lumber mill Okay Up there And it's a it's not a real place but it's a typical East Central Texas town It's kind of like Temple Okay And remember I was telling you that there's some facilities that are that were there in 1959 that aren't here today because they've been overcome by technology Right and let me tell you what one of them would be Okay So he's the yard master is already working here So we're going to you'll have a train fooling around and you can see that But in 1959 if we wanted to keep something cold ice house we would have an ice loading reefer ice reefer loading facility right and here is one of those cars And what they would do is they would take they make ice in this facility They would run big cubes of ice out on the ramp and they would load it up into these bunkers at the ends of the cars Okay they go for three or 400 miles and they would do it again So every 3 or 4 hund miles they were icing cars Well today we don't have to do that because somebody got smart and they put refrigeration units in the cars right so they're like little refrigerators going down the road So we don't need that facility to make ice anymore So you don't see those But on our layout we have three of those facilities Okay Okay So that's just one example But the other kinds of things that are out here pretty much you see today There's only two rules Don't touch And the more you look the more you see Oh I have this piece of technology Good Because there are little scenes within scenes Like here's a gas station Here's a guy that's they're changing a tire on a piece of farm equipment Uh there's there's all kinds of other things to take pictures of and and you're on your own in a little bit Thank you Mr George Thank you George All right So you want to light this thing uh we can do that Got it You ready so not all of our layout is lit Okay But everything is wired to be lit So eventually you know we can have sessions in here that simulate nighttime operations And you know inside the buildings you can see in the stores you can see what's going on I kind of like the bar right here So but you get the idea Okay good Thank you So I do have one question while we're standing right here Sure How do you work back there the answer is there's a lift out See where that church is yes Okay and that can come up Okay there still are a lot of places on this layout that are a pain in the neck Okay when this layout was envisioned and designed this is the way layouts were done If you go to look at the way layouts are done now like in some of these magazines please feel free to take a look I think that's very long They make everything so that it's in long thin modules Correct Yeah So you can reach everything and you don't have to deal with things But like right now if we have a wreck in that tunnel there Doug has to crawl under the thing get up there reach like You must be the spriest of the most of us can't do it anymore Okay so that's Clark Center kind of a typical east central Texasy town Okay Okay cool Keep [Applause] going So you leave Clark Center you start coming into an industrial area that we call Longhorn Okay And Longhorn the first place you come to is an oil field and an oil loading facility So the oil is pumped out of the ground here It's collected in these field tanks This little truck drives up the hill goes up there puts the oil in the big tanks and when the big tanks get full we call for a tank train that comes in there They use those that loading ramp those arms swing out and we load the tank cars with the crude oil and take it to the refinery and make it into gasoline or barbecue fluid or whatever we need All right The other main thing in Longhorn is the Longhorn cement plant And the Longhorn cement plant was a real plant Um so the way it was made was some people went over to the quarry where it where it is They took pictures of the quarry Okay Then they came back and they made a mold They mold is plaster They put that on the walls They cut it They sliced it They diced it They made made it look like a quarry was being operated there And then we started building the cement plant itself So the idea is you have people getting the the material the limestone out of the quarry You've taken that That's right over there The steam shovel's got a big pile of it over there and it comes down there It gets goes into this rotary kiln where it's mixed with some other chemicals and things and then it ends up in bags over here So when you go to the Home Depot or Lowe's you can buy a bag of quickrete and that's how you make your cement for your sidewalk or your barbecue pit or whatever it is that you're doing So that's the Longhorn cement plant Very big industry right here on the edge of the Hill Country because of all the limestone Exactly So you come out of there and you come into a place that we call Van Aen and Van Aan is also not a real town but it is named for Dr Van Aen who was a uh famous master model railroader here in town and he was also president of the railroad club here Samra So he gets a town you have to be somebody Oh yeah Okay If if we can't come up with something some other idea So the idea of Van Aan is that it's a place where the farmers and the ranchers come into town to do business So maybe they've grown some crops Maybe they need to ship it out of town and get paid So they might take it over here to this big deal Is that is that all that just do that it doesn't have a job Yeah Scratch built Excuse me Grain elevator They might put it in there Might be soybeans Might be what maybe they need to buy some fertilizer or some feed for the for the animals back at the farm and go to the feed store You know what's funny there's a little downtown here where they can you know gas up the car get beer whatever they need for the weekend the most expensive thing Maybe they've grown some crops that need to be canned some beans or something like that Or they might take it down here to the Delmonte plant Maybe at I like this little building because it kind of rocks around the track Yeah it's kind of it's kind of cool So that's Van How we doing doing good Keep right on talking All right sir This is probably the most detailed overview of a layout I've had in all the ones that I've shot So this is what we call the Lonear gravel operation Okay Lonear gravel is a place where in this canyon if you look here there's a river that flows through And when the river gets into like a flood stage kind of a thing it picks up gravel The gravel comes down here And where the river gets wider and deeper slow the flow slows down and the rock drops to the bottom So the drag line crane picks it up off the bottom puts it in a pile The steam shovel then picks it up puts it on the conveyor belt takes it up into the plant and they crush it up and slice it and dice it and they make it into railroad ballast or to construction material or whatever else they need Uh couple of pretty nifty bridges here That one up there is three spans of a deck girder bridge It's in a curve Very difficult to make I like the cypress Uhhuh The cypress trees And you see the little ducks and things that are there And then this bridge here the one in the front is a really a composite structure for its super structure It this part is trestle and then this part is three spans of deck girder bridge So you build that you put a deck onto it And then you lay the track down and then you ballast it and you have a bridge Simple as that As simple as that Except it's a lot of work Simple and timeconuming Now over here we have Rimrock And Rimrock is those farmers and ranchers I was telling you about Okay Okay So this is a little place we call Crossweight Farms And those cows over there we're gonna herd them up Yeah we're gonna herd up the cows We're gonna take them over here to this feed lot We're going to fatten them up We're going to send them down to Fort Worth and we're going to make McDonald's cheeseburgers out of them The uh there's all kinds of things going on in the farm Here's a farmer that's working in his tool shed replacing a tire Have the lady feeding the chickens There's a vegetable garden a nice barn mail The mail right the lady's checking the mail So this is the rest of Rimrock here which is the feed lot operation the feed store the general store This is one of those facilities that I told you was overcome by technology It's called a cotton seed oil gin They used to squeeze the seeds and get a really nice machine oil out of them But nowadays a semi-truck pulls up and do does this But one of our members found out that there was an old factory over by Brenham Texas He got in his car He went over there took a picture of it and so he scratch built made a model of it It's cool So this is the Railway Express building Okay Railway Express was kind of like UPS and FedEx and Amazon rolled into one in 1959 If you were going to get a package it was probably going to come to you by Railway Express And then it was either going to be you came down and picked it up at the Railway Express office or it was delivered to you in one of their green trucks for an additional fee I'm sure that's right That's was their business uh little passenger station and then you start to come into San Antonio Now San Antonio's undergoing a little revision Let us go ahead take our train ride around make your route so we can catch up with you from San Antonio They don't like for me to go fast Okay Now we're in San Antonio Go to your speed So always say slow down You're going too fast Right to San Antonio We got to about 60% and we there was some things there that weren't there that we didn't like So we decided to revise it Good So now we have some mockups of things that we're going to put in here We have a mockup of the Riverwalk We have the Alamo back here in the corner and some of the key hotels and motel downtown Uh so a lot of these buildings are being built by people at home They'll eventually show up When you come back in 10 years maybe you'll see it built The model layout is never built It's never You're never done And you're always improving it You're always changing it So this is the Sunset Station There was a very famous train which happens to be parked there right now right here with the Southern Pacific Sunset Limited and it ran from New Orleans to Los Angeles Okay So that's why it was called the sunset That's correct Into the sunset So San Antonio is about the halfway point of that route So the the big building there which was the original passenger station today is a convention center and an entertainment area And the freight station which is right here was uh used as a trans shshipment point for a lot of different things is now the Amtrak station So that's how it's used today Okay make mockups of the trees These are going to go back there Okay Those are temporary places Yeah that's exactly another example This is the actual building that that is Okay It's been finished and set in there And that's cool Went back to get some more revisions on it but it'll eventually be in that spot where this one is sitting Yeah See with the green roof Well I see the green What I was looking at so all of the buildings you do like a temporary rendering just to give you a vision of what you're trying to do This here might turn into that Okay that's cool So this is the current Museum of Art building downtown It was a brewery And then if you go to downtown San Antonio One of the areas you might go to is something that we call the Pearl Brewery which is a now a big uh shopping area restaurants There's a culinary school there etc Is Pearl Beer still available is that even market is it i really don't know I don't think it is but I I don't think so I'm not a beer drinker so I don't know I remember pearl beer cans when I was a kid but I didn't I don't think I don't think it is So this is another one of those ice loading reefer things That's a big one Yep And then this is the South San Antonio yards Okay So um we've just just done that backdrop there Looks looks really good Unless you want to keep You're starting to wander out of San Antonio and you're you pass some big um storage buildings The scobby warehouse pioneer flower mills [Music] This is a little diesel maintenance area We have a steam engine repair area over here that we're working on Uh this is our railroad the San Antonio Northern Another brewery We're big on breweries out here a little power plant And this is going to be a trailer on flat car area that we're working on So this is a place where the the trailers come in on a flat car Uh that's crane picks them up puts them on the ground A uh tractor put attaches it to it takes it where it needs to go wear these glasses because of my good eyes So is the round table being phased out or that's is that No no We're we're we're going to put it in here We just haven't put it in yet So we're we're working this area Just trying to get an understanding of crawling facility ash pit zone [Music] So you leave San Antonio and you start coming into a uh a little town that's up the roadways about 30 miles called New Bronfelts Uh New Bronfells had two railroads serving it In 1959 there was the Katy the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad And there's its station back there And then the other station that served it the other railroad was the Missouri Pacific which is over here The Missouri Kansas Texas station is no more The Missouri Pacific one is a railroad museum now It has all kinds of cars and engines and things there and displays So here's the downtown part of New Bronfells Most people when they go to New Bronfells they recognize the uh little gazebo pavilion in the middle of town right but there's some of the older buildings that are there The Brontex Theater the Henny Hardware uh Nagland Bakery Yep Naggel Bakery That's the oldest bakery in Texas Yeah So New Bronfells is kind of famous for its October Fest activities that they have there Um this is if you've ever heard of a movie called Secondhand Lions with Michael Kaine and Robert Duval heard of it Here's the real house is up in Fluterville and somebody's made a model of it And you can see the lion the giraffe and back there under that tree you'll see a hippopotamus So you're about ready to leave New Bronfeld [Music] and you come to the textile mills And at this point you're kind of heading out of town Pick them where you can't see where the scene is That's So there's a cotton field here where the sharecroers He lives over here and That's where it stores it equipment over here But there's a little fruit stand and the grocery store and a little farm Now now right here this scene that you're coming to there's an overlook Yeah that's good The a little place to park your car We call that the We call this whole area the Doyle Bond Forest There's about a thousand trees in here There's butterflies on that sign Uh there's snakes out here There's all kinds of stuff to look at So this particular scene right here is uh one of the more photographed ones that you see and it's people really like the bridges and tunnels They really like that And this particular bridge is uh called an open spandrel arch bridge and it was designed by a guy by the name of Mr Eiffel of the Eiffel Eiffel Tower You got it So that design you see that design a lot of places Then this is a more modern uh style of bridge with the suspended span And then there's two tunnel entrances The train goes in there and comes out here That's right Okay There's nobody around So not too much more of the tour A little bit little rules Great content man You just keep right on going Yeah I've done this a few times Um little farm here And uh with the cattle operation and for kids we put a hippopotamus in here So you've got to find the hippopotamus Oh yeah Oh there you go In the distance over there is Fort Worth You have the big grain elevators and then you'll have the stockyards and uh we're going to walk over there and see what's going on But on the way we'll show you a few things Here's an armadillo about ready to get run over Surprised y'all didn't put a dead one Well next time you come in there'll be blood on the road So this is the little little town of Brazos There's some lumbering that goes on out there and that kind of a thing So then you have uh hobos Uhhuh So here's hobos and there's people fishing up there on the dam Here's a a picnic going on remember early roadside too Yep Texas was actually the first state I think it was actually the first state with roadside picnic stuff Really yep Uh some people that have been bad [Music] Yep We got some couple guys that have run out of gas trying to get to the gas station So here is our our rendition of Fort Worth the the parts that the railroad really wanted to be near So you have your grain elevators This is the the stockyards and the swift um meat packing plant So the they're brought into the cattle cars The cows are herded up here Okay now we're catching up Yeah this this area right in here is a suburb of Fort Worth that we call Clayburn Clayburn is a real place It's it wasn't it's a suburb of Fort Worth and it was in a city So the reason I'm doing these videos is cuz I was at Cleburn State Park and we went into town and there this the city has a railroad museum with the layouts So I did a video of that because I was bored Okay I posted that and it skyrocketed Everybody's like "We want more of that content." So we we're very familiar with our that's what our intent is here So we have all kinds of things here The library was a real important centa railroad tent They reworked engines there They uh reworked cars a lot of their people worked for industries that were connected to the railroad or things that were trans shipped from the railroad So worked out pretty good So we also we also use it as a kind of a place where people can build new buildings We can put them in here We can ship them in and out We just added this Greyhound bus station It's pretty cool I had a medical we can just lift out that whole section change out the whole new building new scene I have a practice area kind of a modulous training and we and we let people you know things through and they they kind of like that So uh on the other side of the there's a little landscaping burn is railroad related stuff and we're going to walk around that and and show that to you Um but I want you to look up here See up here we're going to have later on today a dispatcher And the dispatcher can use his phone to call down here using this phone and he can talk to people here and say "Train number five you're ready to go to the next town." He would normally be in there That's exactly what this simulates So the idea is you've got communications between the big dispatcher and the people working the yards and the guys driving the trains And if you're not doing what you're doing he can yell at you and he can say "Train number five what the heck are you doing get off your butt and get moving." And you'll see the picture of Mussolini up there Okay Mussolini had a saying which was "The trains will run on time So if you get a call from El Duche you better get moving." So big uh freight freight house a little a little park here where people could uh you know look at the trains as they go by So on this side of the of this landscaping burn is railroad related stuff for Fort Worth There's a diesel repair facility down the end We we'll walk down there There's the Fort Worth yards in the middle Another one of our ice reaper loading platforms And then this is steam engine stuff So there's coaling tower water tower a roundhouse etc Eventually the one in San Antonio will start looking like this That's right So here's your round your turntable Now over here is a new thing which is we've been working on this for year and a half two years And this is a port and it's like Corpus Christi but we're not calling it Corpus Christi We're calling it the port of South Texas And it's going to have ships and tugboats and barges and fishing vessels and stuff like that And the the idea is they're going to be industries commun you know working together with the ships the railroads and trucks to move materials around industries to support each other So you'll have also here uh grain elevators Then there's some warehousing So there'll be a cold storage place Uh and you know we're still working on it We still have lots and lots to do but you can see it coming together There'll be a refinery here And then this area here is going to be uh like a fishing village So there's a motel a place for your boats to launch There'll be shrimp boats and other kinds of boats here There will be seafood restaurants and markets and old gas stations and that kind of stuff And then the railroad will go down this back wall and connect to the main line back in that corner Okay Okay So that's pretty much the layout Uh you're on your own You can do whatever you want to do Try to stay out of their hair Uh doing my best to stay out of everybody's hair The little the little that we have left Um this is kind of an award-winning scene that one of our members did that won some awards national awards And there's a train station and a little control tower area and that kind of stuff So there you go There you go There you go Is right If you got any other questions let us know You know I I I think this has been my most uh informative and detailed overview that anyone has given me on this Well that's right That's right And Doug too Doug does it too So there you go So this this for when people come by and so is he to pick up so they won't have to go into the yard and get all this stuff Okay Okay [Applause] Cool Got what we call storage tracks and then arrival and departure tracks Train comes in the locomotive will detach the big service yards which will come out break it up and sed [Applause] [Music] You got this guy [Music] inside access Oh I've got a I've got a run We We got people coming over Okay You know how that is This is what we call a fun run yard People when they we just go okay a big loop around the a continuous loop goes through here Okay If you don't have your own cars you can use any of these They're not part of the system out there They're just extra cars because they don't fit the time frame or they're too modern or but they can just pull those out here So do you you allow someone flies into San Antonio on business and they just happen to have their HO scale locomotive in their pocket they I'm not sure that but we have members that aren't really I think it is Yeah Into the so much the modeling or the uh operations They just want to run trains They just want to play They bring their own They might bring a We got a train show up in New Bronville next week They might buy a new locomotive there Test it out here That kind of up here Watch your head when you get top Oh see Oh wow It's not quite designed for people of stature right so dispatcher sits up here He's got these little It tells you the name of the train on there and what direction So he'll put them up here and he keeps track of all the trains that are running He can tell these are all the different phones around the layout Okay We have staging yards underneath I don't think you saw them They're underneath the raffles There's 12 tracks under there So trains come off come into the layout from out of our frame so to speak So he keeps track of everything He can set up the meats The main line is red on all these panels It shows red So he can we got different places where trains can pass each other He'll call you up and say "Okay you're you're through in Longard There's a train working here We're going to put you in on the east side And then until they're done and that can move after Okay that time That's cool That's That's way more technical than what I was expecting Yeah nice boats that are Those are cool Those are very cool Yeah the guys making these those the holes are cut out of a 1x4 That net is an old tea bag What this bridge here sits down enough to work That's a cantal lever Yeah Very neat Well they they are serious about operating their trains here today They're actually running schedules Here's the whole layout All right Got to go Wow that was a long That's a huge train layout I cannot believe how big that is And we actually got a a personal overview That was awesome All right if this is your first visit to the Dude RV Traveling Road Show I would be honored if you'd consider clicking on that subscribe button For those of you who have been following along thank you I wouldn't get to do this if it wasn't for y'all For my patrons your generosity is most appreciated Thank you You guys rock All right y'all Come back now You [Music] here heat [Music] Heat Heat [Music] Heat Heat Heat Heat [Music]