The Golden Gate Model Railroad is an HO Scale Model Train Layout located in the basement of the Randall Museum in San Francisco. The club built the layout starting in 1961. The club is no longer active, the layout has been donated to the Museum in 2015.
The Club was created in 1950 and originally began a layout in a storefront in the Ingleside district in San Francisco. In 1961 the building the club occupied was sold, and the Club was offered space in the basement of the Randall Museum, where it has been to this day.
Our layout is the result of more than fifty years’ effort to create a railroad in miniature with the communities it serves and combined with engineering and geographical features found on railroads in California. We have snowsheds on the high mountain line, various types of bridges spanning canyons on the Mountain Division and a narrow guage line. Our layout is HO scale and is contained in a room measuring 57 feet long by 38 feet wide. The mainline is about 600 feet long (nearly 10 scale miles), with an additional 200 feet or so of sidings and passing tracks (see the trackplan).
