Well, kids...
I went, I saw... I was impressed with the layout. The club has done a very good job of recreating scenes from around the Twin Cities area (circa the 1950s) in 1:48th scale.
Let me share a few shots I took of the layout...
The scene that greets you as you walk into the layout area, a multitude of bridges spanning the Mississippi River. In the forefront is the Milwaukee Road Shortline Bridge, the next is the Northern Pacific North Coast Bridge, behind that is the Ford Dam (or St. Anthony Falls... fellow Twin Cities people can verify as to which it is), then the iconic Stone Arch Bridge built by the Great Northern (which still stands today, although the tracks were removed in the 70s or 80s and it is now utilized as a bike/walking path over the Mississippi River) and the bridge in the background is the Third Avenue Bridge.
Here's another shot of the same scene that jdl56 shared in his posting above. Here is one of the TCRT (Twin Cities Rapid Transi) PCC cars (and there were two more in the carbarn that I didn't take a shot of) on the layout. I believe the carbarn (to the right, out of the view of the camera) is supposed to represent the TCRT Como Shops and that large red building is supposed to be the Metropolitan Building (which was demolished in 1963 in an "urban renewal" project).
This complex represents the Northern Pacific Como Car Shops... which became Bandana Square, where the layout is located.
The two images, above, are of the Mississippi Street Roundhouse and Midway Yard area. According to one of the club members, all but a couple of the steamers in the shot are owned by the club. Only one or two are privately owned. Today, this is the home turf of the Minnesota Commercial Railway.
A DM&IR (Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range) Yellowstone sits in Midway Yard awaiting it's next call to duty. Behind it is a Union Pacific Big Boy. (No, Big Boys never made it to the Twin Cities, but neither did the Yellowstones... as far as I know. But this is THEIR club layout and if they want to run Big Boys in Minnesota...)
I saw this unique bit of Minnesota railroading sitting on a storage shelf under the layout, and one of the club members was kind enough to show it to me. It's a scratchbuilt model of a Baldwin-Lima-Hamlton DT66-2000 center cab switchers that was operated by the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern. A very well-built model (at least in my opinion).
One of the Nicknames for Minneapolis is "The Mill City," for all the flour mills that lined the shores of the Mississippi River. Here, resting next to one of the mills on the layout, is a Milwaukee Road RS unit and ribbed-sided caboose. (Hey, I'm a Milwaukee Road man, had to include the obligatory Milwaukee Road equipment shot!)
I don't want this posting to get too long, so I'll conitnue in part two...