The Fresno Model Railroad Club
About Us
| The club consists of thirty some members who participate in one way or another. Some are beginners to the hobby and some veterans. We have a HO scale club layout in Selma at the Pioneer Village |
Train Depot. Upstairs is a permanent layout depicting railroading in California's Great Central Valley. Our Daylight Valley Lines railroad has been under construction by the members since 1980. The layout models the Fresno area along with the towns of Madera, Selma and Friant. Our goal is to present the public with a
1. Town of Selma
![]() 2. Train returning from Friant |
representative replica of the vital transportation system that has contributed so much to the growth of the World's Richest Agricultural Region. You can see all facets of the agricultural rail transportation network modeled, including beet loaders, packing sheds, retail grain outlets, fuel suppliers, wineries and refrigerator car icing facilities. The scenes tend to represent the line as it was in the 1950's and 60's. |
| Downstairs in the Depot is a modular HO layout measuring 12 feet by 20 feet with 2 mainline loops with sidings and a yard running down the middle of the loop. It is decorated with a Mission on one corner with a small city and rural area along the route. This is the layout that is transported to shows, where club members add their own individual modules to make it larger or alter the configuration of the layout as space permits. This layout is DCC only and during activities at Pioneer Village as well as Open House Saturday (4th Sat. of Month), we operate it for the public. The upstairs layout uses both DC and DCC and we are constantly working on scenery, track and electrical to improve and maintain the layout. There were several members who had an interest in "N" Scale, so a permanent "N" Scale layout was built on the bottom level of the Depot. It is DCC only. All track has been laid, but the scenery needs to be finished. | ![]() 3. Selma Depot circa 1900 |
![]() 4. Looking toward Selma |
The picture on the left along with the three pictures
above were used in a Selma newspaper article about our club.
The club layout was constructed when model trains were powered by Direct Current. A control panel was built in the adjoining room. A dispatcher sat at the control panel and operated the turnouts and the power to the blocks for the engineers. Several years ago, the club voted to change to Digital Command Control, so the control panel was altered to include both DC and DCC. |