"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.








November Update: I Got Nothin'

Layout progress was nonexistent in the last month, been too busy with other things and other side projects. So much that I updated the sidebar as "project on hold". Fingers crossed work will resume again later in December.

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Although not related, this was one of my side projects during the winter. Every year in December, we set up a small Department 56-esque village that has the usual 2-3 buildings. When the thought of adding a new building came up, I thought it would be more fun to BUILD one, rather than BUY one. Thus, the creation of the "Spruce Caboose Hobby & Craft" shop. I designed this building completely from the ground up, drawing architectural details and color scheme ideas from Disneyland's Main Street, in order to compliment the most outstanding building we have currently, the "Sweet Shop" candy shop.

Colorized front elevation drawing

When completed, the building will have miniature working model layouts in the display windows, with a fully detailed interior. 

The real deal, built completely from scratch out of styrene.
The "Sweet Shop" is coincidentally in the background.

More on this will be posted on my main blog when it's finished.

EDIT: Here's the link:


Spruce Caboose Hobby & Craft