Trackside Model Railroading visits Furukawa’s Sam Juan Scenic Line, it is an amazing S scale narrow layout. A double headed RGS mixed manifest makes its way over the grade as it heads towards Vance.
A double-headed RGS mixed manifest makes its way over the grade as it heads towards Vance.

Sam Juan Scenic Line
We tour Sam Furukawa’s version of the Rio Grande Southern this month. His layout models the RGS route from Ridgway in the north through Vance, Ophir, and south to Rico. Sam built the layout with the help of a few others and it is exquisitely scenicked. The layout is based in the 1940s. Sam runs mostly C and K Class locomotives on double-header trains. Sam’s layout is a good example of a railfanning layout, and he designed it with areas where he can run trains just to watch them climb the grades of the San Juan Mountains.

The image above is from the November 2016 main feature of Trackside Model Railroading. The Free Edition features the same two layouts as Trackside Model Railroading's Premium Edition, and Sam Furukawa’s version of the Rio Grande Southern is the main feature. The Free Edition is available until February 19th 2017 as a free download. After the 19th of February, you will need to buy the Premium Edition of the November 2016 issue in order to see Sam’s layout. If you are interested in model trains, we know you will love seeing and reading about this amazing layout. The full Premium Edition includes over 4 times more images and video.

The digital magazine downloads as a PDF and can be viewed on all computers and smart devices. On smartphones and tablets, it is best viewed with the device turned horizontally. Double-tapping the screen where you would like to see closer will allow an automatic zoom onto each column of text making it easy to read. To return to full screen, just double tap again to zoom back out to the default state. You can always pinch to zoom as well if you would like and again double tapping your screen will zoom you back out to the full page view after you are done.

Included are HD videos of some of the trains that we railfanned while visiting the Sam Juan Scenic Line. You can easily register or log in with your Facebook or Google account to get the downloads, if you don't have Facebook or a Google account you can manually setup your account here at: https://www.tracksidemodelrailroading.com/magazine/signup/.

Sam Juan Scenic Line in Sn3