The Club

      The GGRRC was stated in 1989 and draws most of its membership from the greater St. Louis area. Meetings are held once a month at member's homes. Membership is $10.00 per voting member a year.

The People

      Our club members come from all walks of life with different train interests. Some members like to scratch build, others run their trains right out of the box. Many members have layouts indoors or outdoors and sometimes both. Some members have no layouts at all, just track set up on the basement floor.

Community involvement

Community involvement is important part of our club. We currently maintain the Large Scale Railroad that is suspended from the ceiling in the crossover from the garage entrance to Children’s Hospital on Kingshighway in St. Louis. The GGRRC provides quarterly maintenance on the trains, which run 15 hours a day. We meet on the requested Saturday usually at 8:30 AM. Parking is free with a validated ticket obtained on the 2nd floor. We meet just outside the elevators on the second floor. The hospital maintenance department will have the large storage racks with all the cars and engines available, also tables set up for us to use as work benches. We clean each car and engine replacing worn wheels, light bulbs and at times more experienced member overhaul the engines. Experience is not required, as other members will share how to do the required repairs. One of the highlights of the day is conversing with the children and relatives and seeing how much they enjoy the trains. On these days they can get really close to the trains.

The Trains

      Big-Trains are commonly referred to as "G" gauge or Large Scale. Unlike HO scale, big-trains are not a consistent scale. Big trains are a variety of scales: 1:20.3, 1:22.5, 1:24, 1:29, and 1:32. What they all have in common is that they all run on the same width track. "G" gauge track is 45mm or roughly 1 3/4 inch between the rails. But don't let this be a problem. Big train enthusiasts run different scales on the same layout.