The Transportation Museum of the World featuring
the Miniature World of Trains (TMOTW-MWOT) will attract visitors
from around the country and the world. The appeal will be for all
people of all ages, "an educational family experience", but mostly,
to feature what serious model railroading and scale model buildings
on a very large scale.
The building,
when completed after rehabilitation, will have the largest area
dedicated to the model railroad, with large portions in the “free
areas” featuring a railroad history and model railroad history
museum, green technologies overview and project sponsors.
The building will be under refurbishing for
approximately six months to upgrade the building infrastructure to
state of the art heating and cooling, lighting, lighting
effects, using green materials and a state of the art sound
systems. During this time the layout is being built in a separate
facility nearby.
The featured element of TMOTW-MWOT will be
an HO Scale version of USA railroad and Transportation systems
displaying city and town infrastructure. PHASES I through V will
take up approximately 70,000 square feet of floor space. It will feature
both current
prototype transportation and steam railroading from the past.
Structures that are currently in existence, “what if” buildings such
as the old Greenville Depot (which was torn down in the late 1980’s
but will be featured on the layout as a “fantasy” preservation
project of the City and County Of Greenville, State Of South
Carolina, Norfolk Southern Railroad and Amtrak) and planned city and
town infrastructure changes will be displayed on the layout as well.
We will even display future Transportation systems such as MagLev.
The MWOT operating systems will feature
digitally controlled model trains and vehicles, sound and lighting
effects, thousands of building structures (many of which will be
built from scratch), tens of thousands of trees (many of which will be hand
made) and hundreds of thousands of miniature people and animals.
The layouts will be configured so that it
can operate automatically in a “show” mode, and in manual
“operational” mode for train running sessions for pre-qualified
model railroaders. Also, we will be adding a feature to allow some
guests to operate a train on the layout.
The model railroad will feature railroad and Transportation models
from highlighted regions of the USA including the Northeast Corridor
from New York City to the port of Miami (featuring North Carolina
from the Spencer Shops to Greenville and Charleston, South
Carolina), Pennsylvania to Chicago, Chicago to Cheyenne Wyoming
(including North Platte, Nebraska), Cheyenne, Wyoming to Pueblo,
Colorado (including Denver and the Front Range of the Rocky
Mountains), the Colorado Rockies (Denver to Salt Lake City, Utah),
and Salt Lake City to the West Coast of California to the Port Of
Long Beach.
Phase I, to be built starting in mid 2012
through early 2013, will feature the East Coast with high speed rail
and commuter rail as well as product Transportation from both ends
of the East Coast. South Carolina and North Carolina will be
featured heavily in this section which will include, for example,
the Florida Juice Train to New York, the Spencer Shops, Upstate
South Carolina industries such as BMW and GE and the world famous
Saluda Grade.
As of November 1, 2010, volunteers began
making model structures for some city scenes and continue to do so
today.
We will have a railroad artifact
collection and railroad historical information for viewing in our
museum plus the Transportation Museum featuring the history of
Transportation using static and interactive display and one to one
prototype vehicles and equipment.
The railroad museum will display railroad artifacts from railroads
and museums across the United States. It will feature the
history of the Upstate of South Carolina which will include signals,
signs, keys, locks, photos, tools, towels, passes, timetables,
lanterns, etc. We will be able to offer presentations to visiting
clubs, railroad groups, church groups, school classes, service
organizations and retirement homes.
Our 7000 square foot in meeting rooms/assembly area is large enough to
handle two bus groups in a single visit.
