I have a personal interest in supporting all of the local museum model railroad layouts, and will in time get around to spending time with all of them. But the busiest by far is the Twin City Model Railroad Museum (tcmrm.org). So I simply walked in one day in the fall of 2023 and said, “I’d like to volunteer”. I have been there pretty much weekly ever since.
TCMRM includes a G scale layout, but also includes every other scale all the way down to Z where the entire locomotive is about the size of just a coupler on G scale. The museum also includes several layouts of historical significance in model railroad, including Marx, 3-rail Marklin HO, Lionel, American Flyer, pre-war, and so forth. As a volunteer, I am slowly but surely learning maintenance of all of these.
TCMRM is probably most famous for its large O scale layout depicting the Twin Cities in the 1950’s. This is the center of attention in the museum’s very popular “Night Trains” showing around the holidays. The entire layout is lighted, and the museum lights are dimmed. The view is quite spectacular.
The museum has a Junior Engineer program where kids in the 10 to 15-year age range learn model railroad building. Every now and then I hear old guys mumbling about model railroading dying as a hobby. There is a waiting list to get into the Junior Engineer program. We see a lot of kids at the museum. I think the hobby will be around for a while longer.
What I love most about my activity as a volunteer is the interaction with so many other hobbyists. There are a number of G scale and garden railroad volunteers at the museum. But I also get to learn a little bit about every other scale. My G scale layout is outdoors. I would eventually love to have an indoor N scale layout. Once I throw out all my work related stuff and fully retire, I’d even have room for it!
