AM Tours

Brian Glock’s Sugar Valley & Sweetwater Railroad (SV&S)

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Select this Layout for Printing

The Marietta Southern represents a fictional, free-lanced railroad purchased by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway and incorporated into its Georgia operations. Designed to loosely resemble North Georgia & the Western & Atlantic line from Atlanta to Chattanooga, it features NC&StL & Seaboard Airline equipment and other southeastern railroads that my sons have an interest in, such as B&O, RF&P and others. The line features a single track main with two passing sidings and a diamond lift-out crossover, along with a yard, various servicing facilities, and industrial switching. Having been originally built by Stephen Sprinkle & Scott Kelley, the railroad “went into receivership" back in 2018 due to a pending move and was facing abandonment. “Tarrant Family Lines” procured the line and various assets of the railroad, relocated it to our basement, and have been rolling back the scenery and structures to the glorious transition era of 1948-1952. The MSRR provides a manageable layout with an enjoyable combination of continuous running and operational switching, highlighting coal drags, mixed freight, and heavyweight and streamlined passenger trains in both countryside and industrial settings (kids, be sure to look for the silver-back gorillas along the way…)

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The layout depicts the PRR Middle Division with horseshoe curve, Altoona yard, and station. It is set up for freight and passenger operations. The era is the fall of 1945 to 1959.

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The Alpine Central Railroad is an HO/HOn3 layout occupying three rooms with the 2nd room double decked and the 3rd under construction. The layout has been revised for operations and expanded over the past 10 months. The setting is Colorado with mines and bridges loosely based on the Old South Park Line with corresponding towns. A large amount of dual gauge mainline has been added. JMRI is used for dispatching from an office created in a mockup steam locomotive cab. JMRI cell phone or Digitrax Simplex throttles are used. The track in the first room is hand layed and the 2nd and 3rd rooms are MicroEngineering. Locomotives are Blackstone and brass for narrow gauge Bachmann for std gauge. Seven AP awards were earned with the layout including Prototype Modeler. An onboard video control system is currently being installed to allow remote location operation.

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All structures are hand built, most from kits with some kitbashing and a few scratch built. The double bridge over the river is an unusual feature. The industries in Chama Junction are mostly located along the front of the layout on both sides of the river; basic infrastructure like dairy, oilwell supply, fuel, feed & seed and a freight depot. The junction house serves the passenger traffic, and you can see that an open top tour bus awaits incoming passengers. Just across the river is a section house for MOW crew, and some of their rolling stock is near the junction house. Toward the rear of the layout you see a coal mine beneath the mountain, an additional small freight depot, the newspaper and post office, an engine yard with shops, a sand tower and maintenance facilities, a general store, law office and residential area. Like all layouts, this one isn’t finished. There is always more scenery work to be done, rolling stock and locomotives to letter and weather, and lots of small details. Several of my locomotives are "deadrail", meaning that they carry their own battery power supply, and are controlled by radio throttles.