"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.








Progress Report: 11/30/06

My N.W.R.R. project is slow but there has been some progress since my last update. I rebuilt the entire top half of Cascade Peak because I thought it could be better and look more like the real one (There were some inaccuracies) The tender was rebuilt for the train, again, there were some inaccuracies.

Progress Report: 9/25/06

September 25, 2006 marks one year of construction on the Nature's Wonderland Model. Exactly one year ago, I bought my HO Flex-Track and began construction on a clean and flat piece of masonite. It's not a complete year of work (I don't work on it every single day ) but it's been a year since I started.

Progress Report: 7/26/06

I figured out how to make animation .gif on my digital camera, so here is a demonstration of Balancing Rock Canyon.

Progress Report: 6/30/06

Some scenery in Beaver Valley.



The start of Balancing rock canyon. I know, it's hard to tell where the rocks are but they are there. They will stand out better when I detail them more and paint them. The rocks do move, through a cable system. There's the stationary rock attached to the base of the layout, and a moving rock on top attached to the stationary rock by a spring ,(I tried a hinge, but it would get jammed too much, and a spring "wiggles" more. ). The cable pulls the moving rock down and the spring pulls it back into position! All the cables go to one point under the desert scene and a longer cable is attached to the point and goes to the train controller next to Cascade peak where it is controlled.




The start of Rainbow Caverns. Every thing still needs painting. The red is a "test color" I tried on the rocks that glows under a black-light.



This is what is taking so long. Adding the Pack mules (Highlighted in Green). I rebuilt the back section of Cascade peak to add the cliff. So it's more like building two rides in one. Cascade peak also has it's base coat of paint.