Extreme model railroading
February 22, 2018 10:48 AM   Subscribe

In North Adams, Massachusetts, plans are afoot for the construction of a $65 million, 83,000 square foot "Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum", in which 2,000 model freight and passenger cars and 107 locomotives will operate in a landscape filled with scale models of the world's most notable contemporary buildings. Video walkthrough of first conceptual model. Building plans are being drawn up by architect Frank Gehry (the Bilbao Guggenheim, LA Walt Disney Concert Hall, Seattle Pop Culture Museum, etc.), while Thomas Krens (former head of the NY Guggenheim Museum, creator of its various spinoffs, and original driver behind the creation of MASSMoCA, also in North Adams) heads up the project, which will open in 2021.

Krens is also working to develop the Global Contemporary Art Museum in North Adams. Just down the road in Williamstown , Mass. are the Clark Art Institute (greatly expanded in recent years) and the Williams College Museum of Art where Krens got his start.
posted by beagle (47 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beside myself. On the list for things to do with my Dad, Lord willin'.
posted by Miko at 10:57 AM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


This sounds disturbingly like something I could fawn over forever. 2021 plans are a go.
posted by triage_lazarus at 10:57 AM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Now I have to put my geek hat on. This is a huge and expensive project. Who's paying? And what are they projecting for future attendance and fiscal sustainability? I love me some trains but I'm not a modeler or collector myself and never will be. It seems to me that the generation that loved model trains is aging up...do they anticipate future support to come from legacy gifts/endowment from train lovers? Or from a new generation of model rail-sniffers? I'd love to see some of their strategic thinking.
posted by Miko at 11:00 AM on February 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


They're good trains, Mecko.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:03 AM on February 22, 2018 [16 favorites]


Can I assume that they're going to include Supertrain?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:04 AM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh wow. I've been to MASS MoCA and the Clark a couple of times, and hardly needed any more reason to go back. Add Gehry to that, and I just might have to retire there.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:10 AM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


filled with scale models of the world's most notable contemporary buildings.

Are they accepting donations? Because I've got a model of a run-down Cape Cod style house located in the Boston suburbs they're welcome to have. It's notable, as far as I'm concerned. Frank Gehry might disagree.

This place sounds amazing but I don't see how it can possibly get built. I used to go to a bunch of train shows with my son and they were mostly filled with old guys who still ordered trains and track by filling out forms and mailing them in. Perhaps it's going to be billed as more of a Legoland-style attraction than just a big model train layout, I dunno. I sure as hell hope it gets built.
posted by bondcliff at 11:11 AM on February 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


I love the idea of huge projected backdrops that can change with the seasons or for holidays, etc. This is going to be amazing! I would definitely make an annual pilgrimage with at least one of our kids.
posted by trackofalljades at 11:11 AM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


It seems to me that the generation that loved model trains is aging up

Having been to the model railroaders setup in Chicago in Edgewater I'm not so sure I agree with you. There were far more early middle age members than I expected. People in their twenties were missing but they almost are because they are often too busy with school and attempts at mating or too poor for capital intensive hobbies.
posted by srboisvert at 11:13 AM on February 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


Building plans are being drawn up by architect Frank Gehry

No, no, this is just asking for trouble! Trains simply aren't designed to handle non-euclidian space. Mark my words, this will not end well.
posted by Naberius at 11:16 AM on February 22, 2018 [6 favorites]


I love MassMOCA. Such a cool museum. Seems like the overall economic impact for the area has been positive.
posted by gwint at 11:18 AM on February 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


North Adams is also the terminus of the Hoosac Tunnel, the second longest tunnel in the world when it was constructed in 1875, and the longest in North America until WW1. It’s still in active use today.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:19 AM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Got nothin' on Chris Burden.
posted by rikschell at 11:24 AM on February 22, 2018


North Adams is also not too far from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. It'll be quite a cluster of art museums in that corner of the state.

I'm not much of a Norman Rockwell fan, but my visit to the museum was incredibly interesting and informative, and revealed to me that my perceptions of the man and his work were pretty limited and largely off. It's definitely worth going, especially if you don't think it would be your thing, like I didn't. But it is the Whitest Place in America, no mistake.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:24 AM on February 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


Or the Panorama of New York City.
posted by rikschell at 11:29 AM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


From a link in the article:

"Fifty-seven percent of the costs are expected to be borne by private investors, 24 percent from bank financing and the remainder from "corporate sponsorships, tax credits, and state and federal grants."
posted by disclaimer at 11:36 AM on February 22, 2018


OP here: Regarding the financing — no, it will not make it on the gate and contributions of model railroaders. There hasn't been much made public about it, but, Krens knows where the money is. MASSMoCA was built with some very generous infusions of state money; they are expecting the same for this. Of the private money, as of last summer they had raise about $2.5 million, which is helping to get the planning done. Between them just the Clark and MoCA have tapped probably $100 million of private money (individuals and foundations), and there is more where that came from.
posted by beagle at 11:40 AM on February 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


If it doesn't get built, we'll always have Trainland USA (loved that place as a kid).
posted by sysinfo at 11:41 AM on February 22, 2018


Thank God for model trains.
posted by hanov3r at 11:51 AM on February 22, 2018


Looks like Krens has more plans laid out, including a renovated downtown theatre, a luxury hotel, a contemporary art museum in the west end. And there will be a Museum of Time and a distillery at the same site as this new museum. So, quite a few places to attract people. (And the hotel is sorely needed.)
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:53 AM on February 22, 2018


By "always", I guess I mean until the 83-year-old co-owner dies. See it while you still can! Though it looks like this museum would be 32 times larger, so Trainland USA is sort of a 1 gauge model of this one?
posted by sysinfo at 11:56 AM on February 22, 2018


It seems to me that the generation that loved model trains is aging up

...

People in their twenties were missing but they almost are because they are often too busy with school and attempts at mating or too poor for capital intensive hobbies.

I’m in my 30s, but yeah, the only things keeping me from having a model train layout are money and a total lack of available space ha ha minor details). Even then I’m thinking of scratchbuilding something. I suspect there are a lot of people my age who just haven’t reached the point where this sort of thing is feasible. (It’s probably a sign of the times that my unrealistic fantasies involve having, like, a modest house with room for model trains.)
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:24 PM on February 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


the only things keeping me from having a model train layout are money and a total lack of available space ha ha minor details)

Well, it turns out virtual model railroads are a thing, too. Imagine the "extreme" possibilities of that.
posted by beagle at 12:35 PM on February 22, 2018


There are pretty strong strains of maker/ crafter and miniaturization culture among millennials, not to mention fondness for vintage throwback. I can see continued interest in model trains, but maybe less from the engineering geek perspective and more of the artsy/craftsy angle.
posted by Think_Long at 12:37 PM on February 22, 2018


I want to go to there. This looks amazing.
posted by littlerobothead at 12:39 PM on February 22, 2018


Hopefully they'll build an airport and have daily flights to Minatur Wunderland in Hamburg.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:42 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Heck, I love the model model railroad.
posted by rlk at 1:12 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trains simply aren't designed to handle non-euclidian space. Mark my words, this will not end well.

Okay, okay, this is the sort of thing I was talking about. Consider yourselves warned!
posted by Naberius at 1:31 PM on February 22, 2018


I don't understand, that claims to have been published in Astounding Science-Fiction, but it's clearly a factual account of how the Boston subway system works.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:36 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Fifty-seven percent of the costs are expected to be borne by private investors, 24 percent from bank financing and the remainder from "corporate sponsorships, tax credits, and state and federal grants."

Yeah I read this in the article but that's not what I was asking about - that's just the startup money, not the operational requirements. A museum of that scale is going to require an annual budget of at least $10m a year in today's dollars. I am well familiar with the notion that gate is a drop in the bucket for most museums, so I'm not talking about gate at all - attendance there will be, though the projection of 250,000 visitors a year is not really a lot of users in the grand scheme. In fact, there's not a museum in the area that equals that even now, and as some have noted both the Rockwell and the MoCA are among the finest museums you'll ever visit. Growth is probably just plain limited in growth by geography.

No, what I mean is ongoing funding for the sustainability of the organization and its continuing capital needs. Also, given an expectation of 25% of startup from state and federal grants, I'd be concerned because in this climate public funding is ever more challenged and it is highly variable. The language of "private investors" is interesting - that's not usually how you term donors for a nonprofit museum. This article seems to indicate that Kerns is imagining a for-profit venture, but then other pieces have him drastically scaling back the attendance projection. In any case, you can perceive a lot of mutual-back-scratching development partnerships underlying this plan, and the economic impact study is not lost on any of the players:
he proposed museum is part of a much larger plan Krens and others are championing for Western Gateway Heritage State Park and nearby lands that includes a distillery, a commercial art storage facility, a new park, and multiple structures designed by well-known architects.
Beagle's comment was really interesting, and no doubt correct: Kerns knows where the money is. That region is a really unique one in that a lot of the local population is poor and working-class, but benefits, as it has for over a century, from massive infusions of cash into cultural organizations from part-time residents and visitors mostly with ties to NYC or the Boston area. So that makes some sense, money is around. But given the growth constraints there, the museum operation in and of itself will very likely be unable to generate a profit, so it's a little confusing how they expect to work the budget. The money is going to need to come almost completely as regular large-scale cash infusions or one-time endowments/bequests from big big funders. I'm aware of a couple of big-time rich train collectors - among them Rod Stewart (as discussed here), Warren Buffet and Neil Young. Maybe they are angling for some big gifts of support or maybe some of those people are already bankrolling.
posted by Miko at 1:36 PM on February 22, 2018 [7 favorites]


This is what wealth looks like in real life. I wonder what the bitcoin billionaires are going to do with their hundreds of millions.
posted by Laotic at 2:00 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Two words: Roadside America.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:14 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


What Miko said, and well, this is essentially a huge diorama. That was a form that worked well in the 1800's but is seriously on the wane as a museum format. It could be a collector with an overabundance of "stuff" that also has delusions of grandeur. There are a couple "personal museums" in the area that have surprisingly large amounts of artifacts but are not really actual museums. The desire for institutional legitimacy seems to be a real thing in the collector mentality.
posted by sammyo at 2:15 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Tobascodagama speaks the truth. Just yesterday there was a huge derailment, complete with broken windows and smoke coming out of cars.
posted by Melismata at 2:15 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


What Miko said, and well, this is essentially a huge diorama. That was a form that worked well in the 1800's but is seriously on the wane as a museum format.

Fun fact! I once took a class in museum studies, and we learned that dioramas are on the wane because miniatures evoke a false sense of timelessness. The psychological effect of small-scale scenes and figures is that they create a small-scale temporal world with a feeling of slower time. Also, historically they are heavily stylized, and attempts at capturing authenticity often reflect the viewpoint of the curator (wrt what is "authentic") more than anyone else. Besides that, a model will almost always have to be simplified in some way because of restrictions in size and material. What gets simplified, and how, is very subjective.

I think that's probably related to why they were so popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many cultures were thought of as being effectively timeless, unchanged since the Dawn of Man, living relics of our own primitive ancestry, etc etc. It was all nonsense, but this was also how they were presented to museum audiences. I'm sure there are parallels that can be drawn between this idea of "timeless" people, and the psychological effect of seeing a timeless scene in miniature.

I mean, I still love models, so I'm not against this museum for any reason. I think there's something sort of comforting about them. If you agree with what the museum professionals say, maybe there's something reassuring about seeing familiar things presented to you in a way that makes them seem more simple and timeless. It's certainly a lot more stable than the real world.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:08 PM on February 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


$65 million, 83,000 square foot ... 2,000 model freight and passenger cars and 107 locomotives ...

/leans back
..."Starting small, then..."

I'm curious about the international demographics of model railroading. When I look at the cool smaller stuff, not much of it is being produced by US companies so I assume their local market must be more vibrant than here in the US. I suspect its always been an old-man hobby. There are plenty of youngsters building things but you need to be able to devote a fair amount of income and more importantly permanent space which seems increasingly tough despite the monstrosity of modern domicile construction.

Its a commitment.

I really wanted to get geeked about it at the home level because my kids are kind of conceptually into it but after a while its just going whee-whee-whee around unless you are doing model operations or modeling, the latter of which I am enamored. I wanted to be able to do a loop with small operations in "N" which is the fairest middling scale between "small" and "featured." Using some of the fantastic CAD software that's out there I determined a pretty boring loop with a few stops for model operations would take up my whole workbench space and be kind of lame.

I tried to model the cement works near me. Even with additional "twee scaling" (4 cars = 1 car) it was gonna be four feet long, just that. I had four more stops I wanted to put in there.

Centralized places like this are dreams for operations folks who are train LARPers and those things get pretty deep. Dank larpers have switches salvaged from some long demolished rail company office in rooms filled with binders and telephones. I dunno if when I'm in my mid-50s I'll start seeing guys who look more like me or the guys who are that old now will be that much older.

To TFA: North Adams seems like an unusual place. Is it as small town and remote as google and demographics suggest, or...?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:57 PM on February 22, 2018


Well, it turns out virtual model railroads are a thing, too. Imagine the "extreme" possibilities of that.

Yeah, and I can see how that's appealing on a lot of levels. You can create a track plan, you can arrange buildings and scenery, and it sounds like there's a ton you can do to play around with logistics and operations. Unfortunately for me, the one thing missing is the one thing I'm really drawn to, which is the model building. I love building stuff, painting things, mixing and pouring clear acrylic for fake rivers, making fake trees, and so on. I think that's the big draw for most people, although I could be wrong. I had a subscription to Model Railroader magazine when I was a kid, and I remember about a million articles about model building, so that must be a big part of the draw for a lot of folks.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:20 PM on February 22, 2018


To TFA: North Adams seems like an unusual place. Is it as small town and remote as google and demographics suggest, or...?

I grew up in the town next door. It was a dying mill town in the northeast. It's about an hour's drive from Albany, NY, 3.5 hours drive from Boston. It's around 15,000 people who live there, but since the mills closed, and GE left Pittsfield, there's not a lot of jobs left. MassMOCA and the associated tourism has been pretty great- there are a few small restaurants, a nice boutique hotel ("The Porches") that have sprung up to support tourists and concertgoers in the summer. There's also a small state college (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts), which offers some additional economic opportunities.

It's not terribly small, and it's not terribly remote, but it's definitely taken it on the chin with the decline of northeast manufacturing and the rise of opiate abuse. Houses are cheap, and artist's lofts in well-lit but run down mill buildings are available.
posted by jenkinsEar at 5:48 PM on February 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I honestly thought Northlandz ("World's Largest Model Railroad") in Flemington NJ (75 min from NYC) had shut down because every time I've been past it there were no cars in the parking lot but it turns out the opening hours are relatively brief. Now there's a film about it. I have a vague memory of visiting at Christmas when it was housed in the guy's four basements. The place was mobbed and there probably weren't any emergency exits.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:16 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


VIDEO PROJECTION DOES NOT BELONG ON MODEL TRAIN LAYOUTS

/recently converted model train enthusiast

These people are total amateurs. New Money is ruining this hobby.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:25 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


We've known about rich people and model trains for a long time now.
posted by rhizome at 6:33 PM on February 22, 2018


We knew about rich people and model trains well before that.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:40 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


> VIDEO PROJECTION DOES NOT BELONG ON MODEL TRAIN LAYOUTS

I'd love for you to explain why this is the case by means of different rhetorical technique than all-caps yelling.

Bonus points if you can address shapes that haunt the dusks' above-noted remarks viz. the notable tendency among old white men of holding rules like this to be more important than historical accuracy.
posted by 7segment at 8:45 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


My favourite Gehry joke.
posted by deadwax at 8:59 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Needz moar L-Gauge pleez.
posted by e-man at 10:23 PM on February 22, 2018


North Adams is also home to Natural Bridge State Park (formerly Marble Arch S.P.) It's quite nice, with a narrow serpentine canyon that developed along fracture lines in the marble bed, the arch, and rocks showing gouges made by the advancing ice sheet. If you like geology, it's worth a trip.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:39 AM on February 23, 2018


As a 30-something, I get my model fix from building increasingly elaborate tracks covering the living room floor with my kids' BRIO train set. I have switches and everything! Only problem is my two-year old Godzilla child, who would rather stop through it then watch the choo choo go by.

... so this sounds awesome, is all I'm saying.
posted by lydhre at 7:19 AM on February 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


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