John Ruh & Route 66?

Hytec · Jan 10, 2006

I just read a newspaper article about John Ruh of Edgebrook, IL, describing his layout that is based on scenes along the old Route 66. The article and accompanying photos make what he has done sound outstanding. I wish I could see more of his workmanship.

Does anyone know John, and if he would be willing to post some photos on TB?

(I also posted this on the HO forum.)

BoxcabE50 · Jan 10, 2006

Don't recognize his name. But the proposed topic sounds very interesting!

Boxcab E50

BALOU LINE · Jan 11, 2006

I couldn't find anypictures on the web but here's the article from the Chicago Tribune.

`Mother Road' goes mini
Hobbyist gets his kicks by re-creating historic Route 66 in his basement

By John Biemer
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 11, 2005

John Ruh leans into the basement room where the washer and dryer used to be. "Let me show you the light on the Mojave," he says enthusiastically. "Watch this."

He flips on the switch and holds up a photograph of the California desert. That stark scene is replicated in miniature on a ledge above the storage shelves: An intricate diorama of tan rugged mountains, sparse brush, train tracks and tiny 1950s-era automobiles on historic Route 66. The walls behind have been painted sky blue with a few thin white clouds.

"That looks almost like you're there," Ruh says. "The 3-D effect. Isn't it beautiful?"

Over the last eight years, John Ruh, 58, has converted almost the entire basement of his Edgebrook home into a shrine to Route 66--the "Main Street of America" that travelers once took from Chicago to California--and the westward train tracks the highway paralleled. It is a labor of love that began after his oldest son graduated from high school and freed up the space that had been his hangout.

"I didn't actually envision this being like this," says Ruh, a small-business consultant. "It just sort of happened."

Ruh's affection for trains comes in part from his heritage. From 1937 to 1956, his grandfather, John T. Ruh, was the bartender for The Little Nugget, the plush bar car of the "City of Los Angeles," a luxury streamliner. As they rode the rails from Los Angeles to Chicago, some of the era's biggest stars, like Bing Crosby and Jimmy Durante, dropped in for drinks and autographed black-and-white photos that hang on the grandson's basement walls.

Ruh first looped a train around the Christmas tree when his son, now 26, was 3. It didn't run that well, but it led to bigger tabletop efforts and eventually the basement project that started eight years ago.

The interest in Route 66 developed later in life, when he took a trip down the old "Mother Road," which was first commissioned in 1926, decertified in 1977 and stretched about 2,400 miles through three time zones.

It appealed to Ruh on many levels--his love of history, Americana and Chicago--as well as his appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit of the small-town residents along the way who came up with gimmicks like teepee-shaped hotel rooms to get people to stop and spend money.

"I just fell in love with Route 66," he says. "And I started taking trips and taking pictures. And I've just started building, little by little."

Most of the railroad tracks--which can accommodate six toy trains operating at once--and the mini-"Mother Road" hug the walls of his basement, which is about 36 by 40 feet. A mockup of a CTA train rounding the Chicago Loop hangs from the ceiling. They don't take up the entire basement--there is still space for a pool table, bookshelves, storage and a treadmill--but it's close. The washer and dryer had to be moved upstairs.

Ruh's Route 66 begins, as the real one did, in Chicago with a facade of the Art Institute. It continues through Illinois farmland--with a green plastic doormat modified to appear like even rows of corn. The road goes by the Skyview Drive-in Theater in Litchfield, Ill., where toy cars line up before a tiny television screen showing a Route 66 documentary.

"People say you can't hear anything," Ruh jokes, noting the film's lack of accompanying sound. "Well, you have to be in the cars to hear anything."

It continues over the Chain of Rocks Bridge to St. Louis and the Gateway Arch, through Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, home to tiny versions of the Cadillac Ranch and Amarillo's Big Texan restaurant, where anyone who eats a 72-ounce steak in an hour gets it free. Then it's on to New Mexico and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest in Arizona and all the way to the Santa Monica Pier, jutting out to the Pacific Ocean.

Some of the sites along Ruh's model are set pieces that can be purchased in hobby shops. Others have been fashioned from scratch by a Chicago artist, Michael Erzen, inspired by Ruh's photos.

The mountains are made with stretched chicken wire over wooden forms, plaster bandages and Sculpey, a bakeable clay. Erzen also uses balsa wood, foam core, Styrofoam and patching plaster.

No detail is too precise--from the furnace that has been decorated to look like a Texas oil refinery to the audio recording of a train conductor barking out "All aboard!" above the ambient noise of bustling Union Station.

How much time has Ruh spent on this hobby? "Over 2,000 hours," he estimates.

How much money? "I'd rather not say."

How does his wife, Darlene, feel about it? "She's pretty tolerant," he says, and a gracious host when he's showing off his hobby. "It started as a two-week project. She said, `When's it going to be done?' I said, `Never.'"

Erzen and Ruh are consulting now on how to bring the red hills of Oklahoma to life.

"I think eventually we'll run out of space," Erzen says, "but we'll see how that happens, because he's always thinking of new things."

"I enjoy it a lot," Erzen says. "I wish I could do more of it. Finding the John Ruhs of the world is a challenging thing to do."

John Weiss, author of "Traveling the New, Historic Route 66 of Illinois" and a tour leader along the historic road, says he's never seen anything quite like Ruh's basement display, which he visited recently with a group of other aficionados.

Weiss says he appreciates that Ruh opens his doors to lots of visitors--who in turn may be inspired to hit the real road themselves.

"He whets their appetite with his whimsical display," Weiss says. "We need more of that. It's fun."

"I love to bring kids over," Ruh says. "Kids love this house. Their eyes light up."
Click to expand...

ak-milw · Jan 11, 2006

I think he hangs out on www.modelrailroadforums.com .

Log in or Sign up

John Ruh & Route 66?

Hytec TrainBoard Member

BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

BALOU LINE TrainBoard Member

ak-milw TrainBoard Member

Share This Page

About TrainBoard

Useful Links

Places To Go: