Trolleyville visits Bill Everett's
Premier Model Traction Empire
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Trolleyville had the opportunity to visit Bill Everett's O-scale Traction layout on Friday, August 25th at the same time that his custom painted Hartland Locomotive Works Large Scale Birney car was delivered. Custom Traxx had custom painted, detailed and lettered the car as Santa Barbara & Suburban 45. Santa Barbara had trolley service only until the summer of 1929. Bill has had two layouts in his home over the years. The first Layout, which was in the garage, was featured in the March 1973 of Model Railroader magazine, which included a foldout section with photos of many of the cars that Bill had built. The current layout was constructed in the 'dormer' built for his sons and was featured in the August 1983 issue Model Railroader, including a cover photo, shown below left. the overall plan for the 25' by 16' layout is also shown below right.

Bill and Betty Everett are shown on the front porch of their home with the Hartland Birney.

Bill has built over 700 models of electric cars. He also has cars manufactured by Corgi, Northwest Short Line and St Petersburg Tram. Of these cars, most are unpowered. The majority of the 150 cars that are powered are still on his layout.

Bill fabricates, (scratch builds) most of the cars out of card stock (manila file folders). He coats the material with Duco Cement and uses a punch to create rivets. He has donated about 300 cars to Orange Empire Railway Museum, another 117 to the California State Railway Museum in Sacramento, CA, 65 to the Los Angeles Heritage Foundation and another 6 to the Goleta Depot.

Bill and his wife Betty are sort of the Santa Barbara "Brady Bunch". Bill was a widower with three small children when he met Betty, a widow with four older children. They met, got the seven kids together and when the kids got along, the rest followed. His current residence, which houses the current layout, is on a former walnut grove and one walnut tree still stands in his front yard along with an ex-Los Angeles City street light. The current layout is in the "dormer" that he built for his two sons.

Bill was both a Santa Barbara city policeman and a member of the California Highway Patrol. He used model building as therapy after a typical day on the force. He became a historian, attempting to get information on all railroads operating west of the Rocky Mountains. Each year, he would devote the entire one month vacation to touring the west and gathering information on railroads. He is the recognized expert on Santa Barbara streetcars, even though they quit when he was only four years old. He finally retired in 1979 and has continued to build streetcar models. See column 2 for pictures of individual models.