Jim Packer's Initial work began at his previous home, and when he decided to be serious about model railroading, he found a lot that would be satisfactory for his requirements and built a house with a basement (they said he couldn't have a basement in Texas, but they were wrong.) He was able to move one small section from the previous layout, thus continuing the Nevadun Railroad. The layout is set in September, 1948, as established by the photos in the Argo Gold Mill Museum.

The Nevadun Railroad is never done. The layout is built in a basement room 17' X 30' and is powered by a Digitrax DCC system. In the early days of construction, the layout was divided into blocks and can now be powered through standard DC when the toggles for blocks are selected to the left or DCC when the toggles are selected to the right. An automatic lighting system changes from day to night and back to day over about a seven-minute time frame and as night approached, structure and street lights come on sequentially and layout sound effects convert from day sounds to night sounds. A sunset appears behind the mountains in the West and then fades away. A full background supports the scenery.

The Nevadun Railroad is a freelance design, with no prototype, so motive power and rolling stock are generic, rather than historically accurate. All locomotives are steam, with the exception of the Burlington Northern Zephyr, which was built in 1934 and fits the time frame desired.

A few of the structures were built from kits when he first started model railroading, but most are scratchbuilt. Some of those were built from drawings in model magazines, while others were built with plans he drew from photographs or from his imagination. The Argo Gold Mill model was scratchbuilt, with plans drawn from nearly 200 photographs he took of the mill. Some of the rolling stock were kits while others were scratchbuilt, some to meet NMRA achievement program requirements, while other just save money.

Jim is Master Model Railroader #124 and holds all eleven AP certificates.


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