Overview of Ken McCorry’s Conrail Railroad

This is Ken McCorry's massive Conrail layout. It's reported to be the largest home layout in the world. But that was not Ken's objective. He just wanted to build a railroad so he could recreate his favorite part of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. The layout follows the route of the old Pennsylvania Railroad from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Buffalo, New York. It takes a train about 45 minutes to run the full length of this HO railroad. That means the main line is 25 scale miles long. Adding to the operating interest is Keating Summit. It's 3% grade requires the use of helpers. Welcome, I'm Allen Keller. And this is Ken McCorry, the builder of the fabulous Conrail layout that you see. Ken, why did you build this layout over 1,500-feet long? Allen, I wanted to be able to run 40-car trains on a long main line run through many recognizable scenes. Upon first seeing this Conrail layout, it's a bit overwhelmed. This HO railroad has its own 32 x 80 foot building with a 24 x 32 foot addition. That's over 3,300 square feet. And if that weren't large enough, Ken has stacked the layout so in some places there are five levels. The highest and lowest levels serve as hidden staging. And most of the visible action is on levels three and four. For clarity, this plan shows only these two levels. We're going to follow a string of four ore cars around the layout. After traveling over 240 feet of hidden track, the train becomes visible at Sunbury.