AM Tours

10am - 2pm

Larry Romaine’s Tupelo & Logan Railroad

The Tupelo & Logan Railroad is my freelanced N scale model railroad. The Tupelo & Logan Railroad is a regional railroad serving the industrial great lakes region to the southeast with connections to western railroads in Memphis. My layout which occupies about 600 sq ft, depicts a subdivision in the Appalachian mountains. Maximum speed in this area in 35 mph for freights and 55 for Amtrak. The layout is DCC with an automatic block signal system utilizing Azatrax products. There are over 15 industries on the layout and I am in the process of setting up operations.

City: Blairsville
Scale/Gauge: N
Lawrence Romaine

While visiting our home layout tour in the Blairsville area, consider stopping in to see the model train layout of the TriState Model Railroaders at the Mineral Bluff Depot, in Mineral Bluff, GA. They will be open 10:00am-1:00pm. (It’s Free!) For more information, visit their website using the link below.

TriState Model Railroaders

PM Tours

1pm - 5pm

Don Oltmann’s Conrail – South Jersey

History: The rail lines in South Jersey were built out in the mid 19th century, in large part to connect metropolitan Philadelphia with the shore towns from Atlantic City through Cape May. The completion of the Delaware River Bridge in 1928 eroded much of the passenger traffic causing the creation of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in 1933 and a consolidation of duplicate routes. The creation of Conrail in 1976 allowed a further consolidation. Set in the 1990s, my model railroad follows an alternate history with different lines being kept and discarded. Route description: The railroad starts at Pavonia yard in Camden and follows the old West Jersey and Seashore through Gloucester City, Woodbury, Vineland and Millville. The passenger route to Atlantic City diverges at Newfield and follows a WJ&S line abandoned in 1941. There is one branch from Woodbury to Paulsboro with interchanges to two shortlines, the Winchester and Western at Millville and SLRS at Paulsboro. Traffic and Industry: South Jersey is primarily a consuming region with goods and raw materials being delivered. The region does have sand mine, agriculture and petroleum refining the support outbound loads. Specific traffic and commodities were generally derived from a sample of actual traffic handled by Conrail. Industries modeled include a bakery, paper warehouse, beverage distributor, building supply, glass factory, power plant, food distributor, auto ramp, intermodal ramp, transload facility, refinery, and a model manufacturer. Operating the Layout: The layout is equipped with NCE DCC. Control of train movement is planned to be “verbal track warrants”. Car movement is controlled by a home-grown waybilling system using table based block and train assignment tables. Description of operations - Freight: Freight traffic arrives on a trio of road trains from “points west”. There are a pair of Conrail merchandise freights, one from Conway PA (Pittsburgh) and one from Allentown PA as well as a combined multilevel and intermodal train from Harrisburg PA. There is also a unit coal train serving the electric generating station in Vineland. The inbound traffic is classified at Pavonia and dispatched to serving yards at Millville and Paulsboro for local delivery. Passenger: All service is between Philadelphia and Atlantic City operates in push-pull mode. Amtrak operates non-stop trains into and out of Atlantic City. One train carries a through sleeper and diner from Chicago. New Jersey Transit operate commuter service between Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Equipment: The locomotive fleet follows standard Conrail practice and models from the era. High HP four and six axles on the road trains, Low HP four axles on the yard and local jobs. Cabooses are still used (because I like them and the operating complexity that comes with!). Freight car type and road are (more or less) appropriate for the commodities and era.

City: Lawrenceville
Scale/Gauge: HO
Donald Oltmann

John Wilson’s Saint Louis Gateway

The St. Louis Gateway is an N-scale layout representing operations on the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA) around SH Interlocking and Madison Yard during the late 1980s. The operations simulate traffic patterns through a major interlocking tower, SH Interlocking in Madison lL. During an operating session, the SH Tower operator will control the movement of about 50 trains from 5 different mainlines. About half of these movements are switching transfers from many different railroads in the St. Louis area (5 staging yards.)

City: Lilburn
Scale/Gauge: N
John Wilson

Milt Burge’s Southern New England Central

This is a fictitious railroad that runs east-west in MA. The railroad is interchanged with four railroads, New York Central, New Haven, Maine Central, and Rutland, that bring cars to Palmer Junction which are staged to enter Beacon Park Yard. Beacon Park Yard stages cars for six branches, Milford Branch has two industries, Webster Branch has four industries, Jamesville Branch has one industry and team track, Saxonville Branch has two industries and team track, Warren Branch East, Pudister Village has four industries and Warren Branch West has three industries. Then there are eight trains that take the cars to the 18 industries and team tracks within those branches plus the engine facility. Operating Sessions can have seven operators to handle all positions. We have a total of 20 trains that take about three hours to complete. Positions on operating session; 1) Interchange yard. 2) Beacon Park. 1) Dispatcher. 3) operators

City: Snellville
Scale/Gauge: HO
Milt Burge