The Mystery Marin County Milwaukee Road Electric Layout

Behold the majesty of electric railroading in the mountains!

Milwaukee Road box motors cross one of those epic Pacific Northwest chasms on the mystery layout.
Photo courtesy Interacting with Miniature Railroading

Milwaukee Road electric models have been offered in a number of scales over the years, but it's rare to see a Milwaukee Road electric layout. John Armstrong even offered a relatively compact Milwaukee Road electric track plan in his out-of-print Creative Layout Design. This prototype offers some really model-genic features: spectacular scenery, powerhouse motive, power, and occasional appearances by steam and diesel power.  Milwaukee Road even MU'd Little Joe electrics with GP- and SD40s in the 70s! 

So it caught my attention when I stumbled on this Milwaukee Road electric layout on the Interacting with Miniature Railroading blog. Unfortunately, IWMR didn't tell us about the owner or offer a track plan.  The layout is apparently located in Marin County, California.  Would be awesome to know more about this model railroad.

This layout gets me wondering: the Great Northern and the Virginian also had electric lines in the mountains of the US--so are there any GN or VGN electric layouts hidden away out there? As much as American model railroaders love their Applachian coal haulers, I'm surprised we've never seen a VGN electric layout. There was that VGN track plan in one of Kalmbach's planning annuals 15 or so years ago . . . did that layout ever get up and running?

But meanwhile, click through and get to beholding some of that majesty.