Comments on: I choo choo choose this post!

I choo choo choose this post!

jonson — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:31:59 -0800

Peter Feigenbaum is a model train enthusiast and Yale architecture student who designed & built a more realistic urban world for his train to go through. Full photo gallery here.

By: Eekacat

Eekacat — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:34:18 -0800

Whoah! That's freaking awesome! Living here in Colorado I see the inspiration for many model railroad buffs. This is a fantastic urban model. I love it!

By: wakko

wakko — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:35:45 -0800

This was super-awesome until I saw the guy's basement. That is a creepy fuckin' basement.

By: Keith Talent

Keith Talent — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:55:34 -0800

I was forced to be a model railroader by my my dad, fuck that was a stupid hobby. He's probably still disappointed that I had no interest other than staging giant raidroad disasters with the set he lovingly built. I never took to remote control planes either.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:55:59 -0800

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

By: pointilist

pointilist — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:58:07 -0800

wakko- it's good to see where his inspiration comes from.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:02:54 -0800

Awesome!

By: fenriq

fenriq — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:03:48 -0800

wakko, angelfire doesn't like hotlinking to their images. Which, of course, sucks. But I like the FPP link. Damned impressive stuff and I can bet money he has neither a big dog with a dangerous tail or a 15 month old child who would love nothing more than to shred that stuff apart.

By: Godbert

Godbert — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:08:06 -0800

Some of his buildings/scenes look incredible. I wonder how much of it is just good camera work, which can do a whole lot to make a small part of a model railroad look like a whole city, when actually seeing it in person will never give that impression. Still, it looks damn good.

By: wakko

wakko — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:14:25 -0800

Well, then, to hell with Angelfire.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:42:04 -0800

Jeez, wakko is right - what a pit. My bike shop/basement is immaculate by comparison.

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:42:36 -0800

Impressive.

By: ericb

ericb — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:56:12 -0800

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It's Raining Florence Henderson -- LOL. The exact same image was conjured up when I saw the photograph of that basement.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:07:48 -0800

He actually makes his own HO-scale graffiti. Wow. When I had my trains (I sold them for cash, I was an idiot) I was happy to have realistic looking trees.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:10:59 -0800

uh, wakko: "Don't like hotlinking" means that we only see a tiny patch that says "Image hosted by anglefire".

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:12:20 -0800

you have to link to the page that has a link to the image, or we can't see it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:13:31 -0800

er, okay it loaded after copy+pasting the URL. After all that trouble I was very underwhelmed.

By: wakko

wakko — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:22:40 -0800

be more whelmed.

By: maryh

maryh — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:23:58 -0800

Cool models. Really nicely shot photos. Profoundly disturbing basement. Hope he's freshened the place up a little since '95.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:26:11 -0800

Well now I want to see this "basement" but I can't find it on the guy's homepage.

By: Eekacat

Eekacat — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:27:52 -0800

Hey, I have a stone foundation basement where my wood shop is. It's not THAT creepy... As far as if this is good photography or a good diorama, it doesn't matter, it works.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:28:40 -0800

Found it. Ugh. Holy Crap.

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:28:41 -0800

Okay guys, you may not believe this, but I've been in that basement. It's not really that creepy, it's just a partially unfinished basement in an old (1850's-ish)Victorian house. The rest of the basement had a light green rug with a rumpus-room style fake rock pattern on it. I grew up two houses from there, and babysat Peter when I was in high school, back in the early 90's. He was just getting into model trains - his dad had a setup, and he had those wooden trains with magnets! Also his parents were trying to restore/decorate their house in a historically accurate style, so they had like the toilet with the overhead water tank and the pull chain, and whatnot.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:41:29 -0800

How exactly are people imagining a clean stone foundation basement would look?

By: HyperBlue

HyperBlue — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:43:47 -0800

It's a small world aubilenon, It's a small world aubilenon, It's a small world aubilenon, It's a small, small world.

By: jonson

jonson — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:56:07 -0800

THAT is amazing. What I love about Metafilter in one perfect example.

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:59:23 -0800

Me too jonson.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 18:12:10 -0800

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 18:26:06 -0800

My basement kind of looks like that, except that we've painted the walls white. Our house is about 100 years old. The photograph does make it look pretty creepy, though.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 18:43:58 -0800

It's a giant "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood" Urban Warfare Playset!

By: kalimac

kalimac — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 18:52:45 -0800

I've been in a lot of basements about as old as this guy's house - not too unusual. They tend to look like poo, but so would we all, if we'd been around a hundred and fifty years. The Philly shots, I must admit, got me a little choked up. I've been taking the R8 past North Philly station since I was a wee thing, and he captured the beauty of urban blight so well.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:08:46 -0800

That shot from under the El is incredible.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:15:13 -0800

I'm just praying that my 8yr old doesn't see this stuff. Jesus Christ, he'll have me working from now 'til Christmas putting something like that together! "Sorry kiddo, Dads not playing on the internet tonight."

By: Godbert

Godbert — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:34:04 -0800

Looking at it again (at all the pictures this time), even if the layout is compressed a lot, it doesn't matter; this guy knows how to make a scene, and he certainly is skilled at painting up buildings and stuff. I wish I had that sort of talent.

By: marxchivist

marxchivist — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:42:26 -0800

It's kind of frightening, but if I had the money and the space, I could see myself doing this. Nice post, thanks.

By: artifarce

artifarce — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:17:23 -0800

I grew up in a Train Household, both chasing down old New Haven rail lines, and the models. That and a fondness for little toys in general explain the visceral pull these pictures have over me. Great link, thank you!

By: Rothko

Rothko — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:24:15 -0800

He's got Philly down all the way to the desolation and graffitos.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 02:47:26 -0800

I say we break into his basement and tag one of his building.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 03:43:49 -0800

Playing With Trains is a great book on this subject.

By: Sk4n

Sk4n — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 05:58:26 -0800

That's my morning commute through the south Bronx on the metronorth. Amazing stuff.

By: illovich

illovich — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 06:46:58 -0800

That's pretty much what a pre-WWII basement with stone walls looks like. I've been in hundreds of them. They weren't built to be pretty, they were built to house the furnace and a big pile of coal to feed said furnace. Haven't you ever seen an old house before? I'm really surprised by the number of people who think that that type of basement is restricted to the homes of transvestite serial killers. My guess is that there must be a lot of areas where you either can't have basements at all or it's all new construction with the "cleaner" basements that are sort of finished even when unfinished. It's all about the water table, in the end.

By: jalexei

jalexei — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 07:36:06 -0800

Amazing stuff. And as a resident of Boston, I can't say I looked twice at the condition of the basement.

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 08:58:02 -0800

Great post. thanks.

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:09:36 -0800

jalexei: yeah, the basement's in Winchester.

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 21:15:28 -0800

Model trains are boring but the reaction to the basement is fascinating. Why are people creeped out by this? More and more I'm convinced that the devil pentagrams and band graffiti that were on the wall of my (much, much creepier) fieldstone basement when I bought the house probably knocked $50,000 off my purchase price.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 06:05:50 -0800

Excellent post. The attention to detail and follow-through represented here is astounding.

By: raedyn

raedyn — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:14:27 -0800

I always thought model railraods were super cool, but never had the money to pursure the hobby. And now that I might be able to scrape together the cash - I've got a two year old. Ha! Awesome post.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 16:39:53 -0800

Thank God for the model trains, you know? If they didn't have the model trains they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big trains.

By: jlkr

jlkr — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 20:04:33 -0800

That's a great train set up. The basement? it's a basement. I've had worse (houses built in 189x and 192x) and better. We set up a hologram table in the basement of one house. The one in the pic is dry, and it's got a concrete floor. What else do you really need in a basement that's only there because the builders needed someplace to put the furnace and the coal room and the root cellar?