The Historical Grand Tour: San Diego Model Railroad Museum

As promised. I have once again gone to another archive that focuses primarily on the trains that ran throughout the United States. The archive was located in Balboa Park in San Diego. The museum is 28,000 square feet located on the bottom floor for of the San Diego History Center. The museum is the world's largest operating model railroad museum. This unique museum contains four enormous scale and model layouts, built by separate Model Railway clubs, which depict railroads of the Southwest in O, HO, and N scales. The term scale refers to the reduced size of a model in relation to the real life train. In addition, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum features a Toy Train Gallery with an interactive Lionel layout for children and state-of-the-art theater lighting.

The library at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum is quite neat and is filled with books. Years ago the librarian created a classification system to keep track of each of the different lines that ran across the country. Another amazing thing that I found while in the library was original train time tables given to visitors embarking on a train journey.

Model railroading has a very rich history in San Diego, specifically in Balboa Park. Its origins date back to the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition when legendary model railroader Minton Cronkite was asked by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company to build a replica of the AT&SF railroad system in the Ford Building, the present day Air and Space museum.

This display from the Exposition paved the way for other model railroad clubs to become involved in Balboa Park. The San Diego Model Railroad Club, founded in 1939, moved to different locations in Balboa Park until 1948 when they were offered a space in the House of Charm building. They stayed in the in the House of Charm until 1978 when the building was condemned due to fire. At the same time, the La Mesa Model Railroad Club was looking for a new location. As both clubs were in need of a space the idea to collaborate and create a museum where each club could build and create their own layouts was developed. The city of San Diego offered the clubs a space in the newly rebuilt Electric Building (present day Casa de Balboa) and the San Diego Model Railroad Museum was created.

In 1979 the San Diego Society of N Scale was invited to join the collaboration. By 1980 the collaborating clubs were in the museum space and working diligently to create their one of a kind layouts. They succeeded, and in 1982 opened their doors to Balboa Park visitors. In 1998 the San Diego 3-Railers joined the museum’s collaborating clubs.

To this day the museum remains the only American Alliance of Museums accredited model railroad museum.