Stand By Me
Walthers'
National Model Railroad Build-Off
2025 Theme - Silver Screen Scenes
First Place
Eben Jordan
St. Albans Railroad Fellowship
"The All Time Train Dodge."
"Stand By Me's most iconic sequence sees Chambers, Lachance, Vern and Duchamp crossing over a train track on a bridge with a 100 feet vertical drop down to the water either side of it. There's no room for them to escape if a train comes hurtling towards them, which it inevitably does. Chambers and Duchamp are close enough to the end to get out safe and sound, but Gordie sticks with a struggling and rather portly Vern. They move agonizingly slow as the train speeds on the tracks ever closer to them ..."
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1548249/stand-by-mes-5-greatest-moments-ranked
Eben took three months to build this 2' x 1' diorama. He made it very tall to eliminate the illusion thant the boys could jump to safety. The terrain is plaster soaked paper towels over a cardboard lattice. There are 29 pine trees in the scene and 300 metric tons of stone. The backdrop is entirely hand painted.
All the track is hand laid.
The boys in the scene are from a little league baseball players set obtained from Walthers. Eben cut them apart, reposed them running, added the bed rolls, and repainted them.
Eben says, "I had a lot of fun creating my interpretation of the bridge crossing scene in Stand by Me. It was much more fulfilling than looking at a phone and pushing buttons. Making stuff is the best!
Thank you to everyone at Walthers model railroading for choosing my work. If you are a model railroader or are just thinking about it, check out Walthers, they have everything you need."
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