"Howdy Folks! Welcome to the little mining town of Rainbow Ridge, the gateway to Nature's Wonderland"

This is my documentation of my miniature re-creation of the long-gone Disneyland attraction: Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland. This is a selectively compressed model railroad, in On30 scale at 5' X 7.5' that has been in progress since September 2005. In May of 2016, I finally got the layout to a point where I declared it "finished".

I started the layout when I was a sophomore in high school with basic skills and over the years the layout has been improved and reworked in drastic ways to match my ever improving model making skills. In fact, since I started rebuilding the sections to better quality and standards, I've actually created a whole new layout, piece by piece.

This is a stand-by basis project without a deadline, so it tends to hit the back-burner a lot due to other things with higher priorities. But whenever I can, I'll give an update when there is something worth talking about. All of my updates since day one are here, which include photos, videos, and plenty of rambling notes and descriptions.








Visit the Nature's Wonderland model! At Walt Disney's Barn!

Last May, the model made another appearance at Fullerton Railroad days. While I had "retired" the model from visiting places and I was mentally calling the model "finished", there was a special circumstance for bringing the model out to the public again. Not only would the model be on display at Fullerton Railroad Days, it was incorporated into the Carolwood Pacific Society and Walt Disney's Barn booth.






But wait, there's more!

After a weekend run, on display next to Disneyland Railroad's C.K. Holliday, the model would travel up the 5 freeway to Griffith Park to it's new home-- Walt Disney's Barn! The barn crew has decided to have the model on"extended loan" right inside the place where Walt Disney built his Lilly Belle. Since the work is underway on restoring the original NWRR #1 to eventually be on display, having this model was a nice tie-in. Since I moved to Burbank from Fullerton, and the model was stored in Rancho Cucamonga, having the model just on the other side of the 134 is very convenient! Credit goes to Mark Eades, formerly of the OC Register, for getting the ball rolling on making all this happen.





Before the layout spent a weekend in Fullerton, I filmed and photographed as much as I could when it was the San Bernardino county area. Some of the footage is slowly trickling onto the web as I edit it. Eventually there will be an "ultimate" ride through video of the model. 

In that same photoshoot, I had some fun with the 8mm app, mimicking home movies of the 60's





 For more updates and photos, I've been updating the Facebook Page frequently. 

 You can see the model in person at Walt Disney's Barn-- open every 3rd Sunday!

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