RAILWAY COMPANY
The modeled portion is a main line starting in Chicago’s suburban Arrowhead Yard. The line skirts the western suburbs of Chicago and follows the Fox River north into Wisconsin. On the outskirts of Milwaukee the main splits into three branch lines that service Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison. The mainline run is 250 feet between the Port of Milwaukee and the Arrow Head Yard. The Mainline is dispatched using Direct Traffic Control with five intermediate passing sidings. Twenty-four sequenced trains and switch runs and roughly 6 extras are moved in a 24 hour period. Major industries include the Port Of Milwaukee, Miller Brewing, Champion Paper, Cargill, Kellogg’s, ADM, US Precision Glass, Wisconsin Electric and numerous quarries.
This line subsists mostly of on-line business with only a small amount of interchange traffic. The main line starts at the Lake Michigan. A carferry connection to Michigan is planned at the Port Of Milwaukee. North Island is the site of a coal trans-loading facility and Cargill grain, and an Exxon petrol-chemical plant. The line passes through Milwaukee Yard and engine facility then into West Allis. West Allis is the site of Miller Brewing, one of our biggest customers.
After passing through the stairs, the line enters Waukesha, the site of the Champion Paper Company and Red Wing Milling. This is also the site of a junction through the helix to Madison and St. Paul staging yard. There is also a connection to a Green Bay staging yard under West Allis. From Waukesha, the line will pass into the area once occupied by a former crawl space I had dug out in 1997.
The line follows the walls around the basement first coming to the town of Burlington, WI. At Burlington the line crosses the Soo Line and Milwaukee Road lines. There are two industries here. They are Nestle’s Chocolate and Suburban Propane. Arriving in Elgin you will notice a gravel pit on one side of the tracks and the United States Precision Glass Company on the other. USPG makes windows and windshields for the auto industry.
South of Elgin, the line crosses the massive Fox River Bridge. Arriving in the twin cities of St. Charles and Geneva you will see the ADM soybean plant, Barnetts plastics, and the two quarries of Fox River Stone. The last town on the line at present is Aurora. Aurora is the home of American Chemical and Potash. It is also the home of Dean Foods which receives reefers and distributes food for the Chicago area.
The layout ends here with a connection to a temporary staging yard that can be moved to the end of the track as I make progress with track and wiring down the branch. The staging yard is now in its third position. My imaginary railroad allows me to pick the best ideas from the real railroads; and, the large size allows me more variety of equipment than a small regional railroad.
Te main layout will be a free standing design in the big room and will have some kind of operating bridge to connect to the branch line. Both lines will be operated with the radio control walk-around throttles. The main layout will be set in the Chicago suburbs running from Joliet to Chicago.
The Main layout will have a large yard, piggyback yard and engine terminal as a focal point and hidden storage yards to supply aains to Arrowhead Yard. Arrowhead Yard is situated in Countryside, a suburb of Chicago. It is at the intersection with Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City and Dallas on the west and Boston, New York, Washington and Montreal in the east.
Thanks for visiting! Roger D. Kujawa - President
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