Niles Depot
Historical Society

The Niles Depot Historical Society is located in Niles (part of Fremont) in Northen California. It is housed in a 1904 Southern Pacific Depot. The depot contains a museum of railroad history in the San Fransisco Bay Area and two model railroad layouts. Please check out the depot's offical web site.

Here are a few pictures showing the depot and some portions of the model layouts:

	The Depot owns a former Western Pacific caboose. It is opened upon request during the depot's open houses.
	This picture is a digital composition: the freight house and trains are on the depot's HO layout, but the background comes from a picture I took in Yosemite National Park (Have a look a the original picture.
	The industrial area is almost complete (HO scale).
	This picture was taken in the same area. It has been touched up to remove some flash glare.
	After passing the industrial area, the line crosses a valley on a long and tall metal bridge. Here an evening (or short exposure time) train is led by five UP engines, pulling over fourty cars...
	I finally have a proof that the layout is haunted.!
	This picture was taken on the "old" layout.
	The club owns just a handfull of engines. Here is one of them, nick named "The Coffee Grinder " because of its noisy motor. For this shot, the engine was placed on the turn table located at one end of the Midland layout.
	Several of our members are big fans of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Engines painted in the "Black Widow" paint scheme are a common site on the layouts.
	Here are a couple of shots of Bachmann's Shay logging locomotive. I'm currently scratch-building a short caboose to go with it. You can see some pictures of the work in progress here.
	The Shay is pictured here along with a Rivarossi heisler. Unfortunately, due to the vast difference in gear ratios between these two engines, they cannot run together.
	Everett is applying a base coat of paint to the scenery using an airbrush.
	This area of the new layout used to be "the end of the line" but phase two of the new layout is now up and running, so the trains don't loop down the three turn helix anymore (the third loop is not visible from this angle). The caboose on the upper track is the end of the train being led by the BN engine.
	Here are a couple of pictures showing work in progress on phase two of the new layout. Note that sections of real rails are used as weight to hold the roadbed while the glue dries.
	Donell (right) is busy laying track on phase two extention while Pat looks on.
	This picture was taken on the N scale layout. The sea was added digitaly (taken from this picture).