Family Built Alaska Layout

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Hi! Tell us about yourself and how you got into model trains

My name is Jo A. Petit, I am a native of the state of Colorado, USA. My husband Brian and I fell in love with model trains as kids but growing up we were both fascinated with Marklin’s mini club, the new z-scale (Introduced in the 1970s). When we married in 1993, we simply dreamed of the day we could afford such a hobby.

We raised our 4 kids and fostered many teenagers and helped several young adults and a couple of single moms transition into homes they could afford. Living with us gave them the chance to save and prepare. We are not well off but we survive and help when and how we can.

My husband was a mobile journeyman heavy equipment mechanic for 30 years and recently changed careers into commercial appliances for fast food restaurants. (Mechanics is the same to him from giant dump trucks to tiny z trains, me not so much.) I have homeschooled all our children and fosters and currently 3 of our grandchildren, for near 40 years now.

I wrote and mapped historical trails books for 20 years and worked at a gold mine for 17 years at the same time, all while keeping up with the kids and their lessons. Needless to say our class rooms were all over the state. In 2010 I also opened a children’s community circus to give our very rural (5 block dirt road town surrounded by ranches).

Yes, I said a circus! You can learn more about that here if you are interested: https://www.facebook.com/CircusYourWay. Circus has been on hold since 2020’s madness but I am always here for any kids wishing to learn as well as our grandchildren.

Christmas 2020, our now adult children bought my husband the Marklin Christmas train and starter set. The rest of our kids bought everything you could think of to create the landscape and scenes for train layouts while we all watched a 1000 videos on techniques and layouts.

Though I have crafted my entire life, this was nothing I had ever done. I made our first train layout, of course Christmas themed, by the end of January 2021. (You can see the Christmas layout on one of my YouTube channels.

For the next year I spent all my free time creating small buildings and scenes for drop in pieces for layouts and individual stand alone displays. I even auctioned off my first commercial building in z, a 1870-90 print and publishing company. It sold for $565! A 4”x4” tiny building.

I then did commission pieces for 8 months to hone in on my skills. Many much smaller scale then z. I kind of surprised myself (and everyone else) it all seems to be so natural to me. I run a business fb page with our daughter and my sister, much of my commission work can be seen here.

My husband loves the trains and though I do too, I am myself totally drawn to the art and history of each piece, train and landscape, I have worked on. We collect and run strictly Marklin Mini Club z- scale.

Please describe your layout

I currently, just this week completed our second layout and a very ambitious layout it was! Including a 3 gallon acrylic resin poured ocean with marine life and water sports included!

Layout:

• Dimensions: 48”x30”
• Z-scale: 1:220 or 1/2”=9’
• Ocean: acrylic resin 12”x48”x2”

I call this layout the “Essence of Alaska.” I gave my husband a stack of brand new styrofoam sheets (6 – 48”x14”), a Marklin track extension set 8193 and we had bought several vintage trains over the year mostly steam but a couple of diesel engines also and for holidays our kids gifted us hard to find and vintage collector Marklin rolling stock, of all kinds.

“Essence of Alaska” based off of the muddy waters of Turnagain Arm in the Cook Inlet near Anchorage, Alaska, including Chugach State Park.

A few Artist privileges were taken with adding in puffins, Sea Otters and totem poles as they are not common in this area but they are Alaska and not unheard of here 🙂 and the track is not any specific route, except it does run along Turnagain arm today. Did you know that some Alaska trains still have Flag Stops? Because much of Alaska still has no roads where there are tracks for the back country folks. So no roads were included in the layout but there is a flag stop!

Included in the layout:

• Migrating caribou
• Bison
• 2 wolf packs
• Moose
• River otters
• Black bears
• Brown bears
• Snowy owls
• Hawks
• Golden eagles
• Bald eagles
• Salmon (red – river and silver – ocean)
• Orcas
• Belugas
• Humpback whale
• Salmon sharks
• Sea lions
• Sea otters
• Puffins
• 3 fishing kayaks
• 4 ocean kayaks
• Windsurfer
• Kitesurfer
• 4 totem poles
• 3 furnished cabins and scenes
• Guy camping with cooking pot/fire
• Couple camping near river
• Flag Stop
• Glacier
• Marsh
• Forests (5 types of trees)
• Lots of water falls
• Glacial river
• A bit of ocean on Turnagain arm

This Layout has 760 hours total in 7 months. Our son Tim made us a custom display coffee table (including lights) for our 29th wedding anniversary on Oct. 22.

Our youngest daughter and her husband bought me a 3d printer for Mother’s Day of 2022 and stuff I can not make by hand since z is so tiny, I printed and painted. These are the pieces that were 3d printed:

• All land and marine animals
• Water tower and look out tower
• Most of the furnishings in the cabins
• Kayaks

98% of this layout is scratch made including wind and kite surfers, cabins and out buildings, 550 trees, flowers, bushes, mountains (aluminum foils covered in drywall mud and water colored).

This layout and train is a gift for my husband for his combined birthday (May) and fathers day (June). Though I did not finish it by then, completed on Oct. 31, 2022 and placed in its permanent display. I Started in April of this year.

I have never been to Alaska or seen the ocean. I used tons of different kinds of video from Youtube for my inspiration and information, this is my playlist. It was from this playlist that I decided on a train route and area and then learned all I could about Alaska just to get the feel of this beautiful state.

To see a video of the Essence of Alaska you can go here on Youtube or here on FB.

How did you plan your layout?

My husband sat down with 2 of our grandkids (3 & 9 yrs of age) and they designed the track layout. I asked Brian if there was a particular place he wanted or time period and he simply said modern and the rest was up to me. He knows I need an actual place and it must have an actual running train today, to do modern.

I am as true as possible to the landscape, geology, geography, history and facts. I think that’s what makes this new challenge so fun and exciting to me. I use the dioramas and layouts to teach with too. So our new hobby gives my husband mechanical aspects as well as collecting trains and cars and for me combines my love of teaching, history and art, all in one. It has become our “happy place” to escape life’s roller coasters.

Describe your rolling stock

Running with z-scale vintage 1993 A-B-A Marklin 8819 diesel engines and various industrial cars including a crane. A passenger car was added because our grandkids said the worker guys for the loaders and crane needed a place to ride. In our layout, they ride in style!

The Passenger car and caboose I painted to match the Alaskan engine colors.

Advice for other people in the model train world?

I don’t know that I really have any advice but my process described in this interview might give folks a direction they may not have thought of for inspiration. And don’t forget to share with downline generations! Our children and grandchildren have been introduced to what some may call my new obsession! We even all met in Hugo, Colorado to see the Union Pacific “Big Boy” in 2021!