Planning Model Railroad Layout of the Utah Colorado Western
MRA EditorsDescription
In Part 4 of Allen Keller’s series on the Utah Colorado Western (UCW), learn what was behind modeler Lee Nicholas’ design and inspiration for planning his model railroad layout. Many modelers who operate freelanced railroads have created elaborate fictional stories for why and where their layout is located, and how it operates the way it does…
In the case of the UCW, Lee explains that when coming east from Salt Lake, his railroad had planned to hook up with the Denver and Salt Lake in Craig, Colorado, but the D&RGW had beaten him to the punch. Consequently, he chose a more northerly route around Craig and down into Denver. The rationale and backstory are what enthused Lee and his team when planning the layout.
He continues that the other roads with which he interchanges—the D&RGW, the WP and SP—are all competitors of his and are fighting for their cut of traffic revenue. On the UCW, Denver and Salt Lake City are not modeled, but are represented by hidden storage. And in the age-old tradition of never finishing a layout, just a year and a half ago Lee tore out about 75% of his layout—mainly storage tracks—to create an active staging area to keep his yard operator busier during ops sessions.
It’s a great example of how even mature, complete layouts can undergo major changes to improve processes and practices, as well as introduce new or improved technology. Don’t be afraid to try it! Here are more tips on model railroad layout design.
Your freelance railroad, the Utah Colorado Western, is set in the Rocky Mountains. Is it part of the D&RGW, the Southern Pacific, or the Western Pacific? Nope, not part of any of those. It's just in competition with 'em. All right, and how do they all tie together? Well, we go in from Salt Lake, we go into Denver. And back when we were going east from Salt Lake, we were gonna hook up with the Denver and Salt Lake in Craig, Colorado. And, of course, the Rio Grande, you know, linked up with the Denver and Salt Lake before we did, so we went north of Craig and found a way down into Denver. And basically, that's the route. And all fictitious, this is a fictitious freelanced railroad that you've given a physical location between Denver and Salt Lake. That's correct. And Denver and Salt Lake is the hidden staging yard, or each end of the hidden staging yard, so you don't model those two? Nope. We don't. This is the fourth or fifth version of the UCW? Oh, probably. Yeah. I've lost track. Does that mean, Lee, that you've perfected your vision now? I think so. I think so. There not gonna be any more changes? Well, I'm not gonna say that. At least for a year there won't be any changes. Yeah, about a year and a half ago, you told me you tore out about 75% of the railroad, and it's all back and it looks like you haven't done anything, haven't changed anything. It looks like it's all back. Why would you do that? Because we like to operate. And I don't like to operate on unfinished scenery. And so we put emphasis on that, and it took us about a year to get it back to where we had our first op session. And we've worked, an hour a night's my motto, to get there. And usually on Saturdays, I'll put in some time. But just stay with it, and we've got a lot of new techniques and things that we've tried, and it's worked out very well. But why did you tear out so much though? You found out you didn't like the track arrangement or what? It was mainly the storage tracks that we had. We had, what we call, a mole operation, and we had an operator sit underneath one of the peninsulas. That's the staging area? That's the staging yard. And that worked out well for us, but we found out the operator was just flipping waybills, he wasn't really staging trains. And so we come up with another concept and a new mole or a new fiddle yard, active staging as we call it, and we've reconfigured the layout to handle that. And it's proven itself out very well.
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