Gael Troughton with model. Photo by Sal Manna.

                                                                                                                                                                By Sal Manna

The Valley Springs News, August 29, 2018

Model railroaders around the world can now feature an historic Calaveras County residence in their layouts.  The 1861-built Wildermuth House near Pardee Dam has been recreated as a HO scale model by Gael Troughton of Lodi.  The model is an exact 1:87 replica of the former home notably honored in the Historic Dozen listing by the Society for the Preservation of West Calaveras History. 

“I thought it was a pretty nifty building to do,” said Troughton, who owns Mokelumne River Models and has previously completed scale models of Gilroy’s Old City Hall as well as other historic edifices.  “I can’t preserve or restore an historic building but I sure as heck can make a model of it.”

The model, which measures 9” x 8½”, is available in the form of a ready-to-assemble kit that, as is typical, requires painting.  The original building was constructed of tuffaceous sandstone by Scottish stonemason William Watt for pioneer John Wildermuth.  In the 1920s, EBMUD purchased the area for the Pardee dam and reservoir.  The house suffered a fire in the 1940s that burned all its wooden features, but EBMUD restored the structure in the 1970s.   

With EBMUD’s approval, Troughton took innumerable photographs and measurements before employing a designer in Southern California to create digital drawings.  A 3-D printing company in New York then molded the kit’s 39 pieces using a nylon powder fused by a laser.  With extraordinary detail, every exterior element, from windows, doors, chimneys, stairways, porches and a cistern to each block of stone on the building, was duplicated.  Even the roof shingles, sourced from a company in Vermont, were specially laser-cut. 

“I wasn’t sure we could replicate the stone,” admitted Troughton, a former petroleum geologist and retired Apple photographer who has been a model railroader for some four decades, “but we did a test and proved it could be done.  The stone turned out awesome.” 

Photo courtesy Society for the Preservation of West Calaveras History.

Troughton estimated that more than 200 hours of labor were put into the project.  “But you don’t do something like this to get rich,” he said, adding that he expects to sell several kits.  “It has to be fun--and that’s what this was.”

The Wildermuth House model kit is available for $289, plus sales tax and shipping, from Mokelumne River Models (mokrivermodels.com) at PO Box 435, Woodbridge, CA 95258.