N-Scale Layout
The N-scale layout is the primary layout at our club. It fills much of the 60×40 foot main room with a main line fifteen scale miles long (500 feet). We model a fictional main line (the Lehigh, Monongahela & Ohio) from Bound Brook, NJ to Cincinnati, OH. Once a month, we run the railroad prototypically. During the course of about two and a half hours, we run a full “day” of trains, with six mainline freights, six passenger trains, six local switching jobs, and numerous “extra” trains (autoracks, coal, ore, and whatever you’d like to run from your own collection). A dispatcher in the back office keeps the traffic moving and everyone has a great deal of fun.
Model railroads are never complete. There will always be more to do such as repairs, upgrading track, refurbishing electronics, and refurbishing scenery. This is a lifetime project.
Congested downtown Pittsburgh is a nightmare to drive in but rail service is usually on time
The cows come home
Row houses for Calypso Yard employees
Trains follow the waterlevel route below the high Westinghouse bridge coming into Pittsburg
Downtown Pittsburgh is a centerpoint of our layout with several mainlines crossing through this location
Patterson Quarry produces six to eight gondolas of outbound rock every day or so
Local runs line up in Martin Yard for their daily runs
Carolina Desk is one of two major industries in the Zanesville area
Ore train 552 eases into the summit with the crew ready to leap out if that old retaining wall lets go
An Amtrak train glides beneath the distant Westinghouse bridge while bound for Pittsburgh
A westbound manifest holds the siding at the railroads summit for a meet
A westbound extra pauses in Harris Glen to drop off helper engines who have assisted him up the hill
A priority train of orange juice tops the summit at Harris Glen
A New Haven freight crosses the high bridge at the lines summit
A century old bridge groans as a modern manifest train rumbles across it
Two freights meet at Red Rock while a third rumbles past on the low iron
Train 244 eases into the yard to swap out cars
The park in Pittsburgh and the One Sister Bridge in the background
The nuclear powerplant is located just around the bend from Champion Coal Mine
The Lackawanna Bridge shares two mainlines and arches over a peaceful town
