Indeed once you begin to appreciate the number of things you have to do well to have to a beautiful, smooth running home layout, the more desirable a custom supplier becomes. In my own case, though I'd been a Model Railroader for over thirty years, I'd never been able to master good track work or do sophisticated electronics or wiring. Lack of time or knowledge frustrated me every time. It wasn't until I put together the team that created Citibank Station in 1987 that even I had any realization of exactly how much I didn't know! And let me tell you, it's taken the equivalent of a five year immersion course in professional model railroading----being alternately the professor and the student----to have the knowledge and contacts that I have today. And you know what? Every day I learn something more! A new control system here. A new model builder there. And so the team that started out as five hardy souls at the beginning of Citibank Station has grown into a network of nearly fifty specialists: designers, craftspeople, model builders, theatrical and movie painters, carpenters, electronics designers, custom locomotive builders----all of us backed up by a growing network of manufacturers and wholesalers utterly unknown to me when we started doing this.
If it sounds like the re-invention of the wheel, it felt like it too. But, without stretching hyperbole too far, it has let some welcome fresh air into the musty old world of mainstream model railroading. Plaster scenery?....nuts to that old idea! When I worked on the 1964 New York World's Fair, we used Carved Styrofoam. "L-girder" bench work?........nuts again! After thirty five years on Broadway, keyed platforms (Broadway-style platforms built of one by six wood frames, plywood tops, and "keyed" so that they can only go together one way.) are the only way to go. All two hundred plus pounds of me can walk on one of our exhibits (and I do!). Light. Strong. Faster to build. Better for the customer. Better for the hobby!

As I'm sure you've discovered, the basic answer to almost any question about custom layouts is:"..it all depends........". That can be very frustrating for you as well as for me. Part of the problem has to do with shyness ("oh, god....this is so complicated!") and part of the problem has to do with the clash of desire and truth ("it's really going to cost that much......!"). So let me try to tell you as much as I can about DUNHAM STUDIOS and what we can do for you before stumbling over that fatal phrase.

As you know, I come to this business by way of the Broadway theater, where I have worked over the past forty-some years. When Citibank approached me to do a large scale "concept layout" for the 1987 Christmas season in N.Y.C., I jumped at the opportunity, partly because it tapped all my talents in equal measure, partly because it seemed at the time to be the quintessential "goof". but also because I could see Broadway dying right in front of me, and there was something in this that said, sort of like "Field of Dreams", "build it, and they will come...". Well, four years and 750,000 people later we began to feel that it was time to apply what we had learned from Citibank Station to an expanded participation in the model railroad business. As it happened, just about that time Citibank began a series of massive layoffs, propelling us into an advertising campaign in Model Railroader Magazine to capitalize on MODEL RAILROADER magazine's December 1990 eight page color spread on our first Citibank Station layout. Though the main thrust of the campaign was aimed at corporate clients, we found ourselves receiving serious inquiries from private parties. Subsequent advertising targeting upscale private clients established us as the sole players at the top of the custom market.

Does that mean we're expensive ? (Here we go !)

It all depends.

The simple fact is that we have a different standard of operation, and a different idea of what minimum standards are. We have learned from painful experience that so called "consumer grade" model railroad gear---from power packs to locomotives just don't cut it. We won't use them and we won't take short cuts in the areas of electronics and wiring or track and track components.
 
We won't ship a layout project till it's been up and running for at least a week---or more if necessary. Our layouts come with wiring harnesses to interconnect the sections and the sections are lap jointed or keyed where required. And because we build this way, if you happen to move, your layout can move with you. Our layouts are finished all the way to the floor, usually with handsome T-111 decorative grooved plywood, but we have done everything including from Cherrywood raised paneling to Knotty Pine. Our turnouts can be diode matrix controlled and our power supplies are specification grade. Dallee Electronics supplies the control and signaling equipment. Automatic train control, with two to three trains following each other on the same track, is commonplace to us. Likewise, automated dispatch loops. When it comes to Command Control, we prefer to specify NCE products. The scenery is executed by Broadway and Hollywood craftspeople, the structures by our own staff of expert modelers along with a number of famous model railroaders you have no doubt heard of. Scenic backgrounds are custom painted or computer generated to Broadway standards. Yes. It all depends! It all depends on what you'll settle for, and to a certain degree it depends on what you can afford. And remember, it is wiser to consider a slightly smaller layout than a poorly executed version of a "dream layout".

Let me try to define what your costs might be:

---------a simple layout with some elevated scenery, a few manual turnouts, a few simple structures, simple wiring, and a single power pack costs about $175.00 per sq.ft.