This layout represents the Penn Central Railroad from Sunbury to Wilkes Barre, and Sunbury to Mt Carmel lower level, and Enola to Emporium, all in Pennsylvania, or to Buffalo New York, upper level, in October 1975 in HO Scale. The layout was built for operations and sessions are run monthly. Though the railroad, the locomotives, freight cars, and locations modeled follow the prototype, I’ve taken a freelance approach with the actual industries, locations of yards, and other such details that enhance and support operations.
The layout begins in South Wilkes Barre PA with six industries and two yards. There is a small support yard named Veronica in South Wilkes and a larger yard named Buttonwood. Veronica Yard supports the local industries served by Buttonwood. There is hidden staging under the helix to support D & H and Lehigh Valley interchange trains from Wilkes Barre. I also model a steel mill with its own yard. The mill is accessed via the Nanticoke Branch at milepost 47. The steel mill located here is not based on any actual steel mill. It is called Dickerson Steel. The portion of the mill modeled is the shipping and receiving areas. Both of these yards, Buttonwood and Dickerson, are manned during op sessions.
From Wilkes Barre, you travel westbound, (south) through various towns until Sunbury, with six industries. This is the location of the Helix which rises to the upper level which is the Harrisburg to Buffalo mainline. There is an interchange with the Reading RR Co. in Catawissa and a support yard in Sunbury for Penn Central business. From Sunbury the mainline enters the helix, which is called “Helix Hill”.
The helix ends at Northumberland. It is a five turn, two-percent, 33-inch radius single track helix. There is a “wye” at the top. There is a yard at Northumberland it is not manned but it is used for staging locals. From there the mainline runs to Ebenezer Yard in Buffalo NY, (much of this is double tracked), Emporium PA, or Enola Yard in PA. Yards in Buffalo and Enola are visible staging yards and contain nine and five pre-staged trains respectively. Buffalo supports two locals serving fifteen industries.
There is another lower-level layout, totally separate from the main layout. This represents the Mount Carmel Branch, from Sunbury PA to Mount Carmel PA. While both layouts have a tremendous amount of local switching, there is a concentration of switching along this branch line, with fifteen industries served by four locals. There are plans to add a couple of more industries.
This is an HO Scale layout consisting of a point-to-point run that has 400 feet of main line run, on the main layout and 82 feet on the Shamokin Secondary portion. I began building this version on October 25, 2020. Over the next month the old layout was removed. Construction of the new benchwork began after Thanksgiving and the first op session was held on April 25, 2021. My wife Emily helped where needed but this was mostly a solo project. Track used is code 100 flex track, mostly Shinohara and Peco commercial switches, laid on cork roadbed, or hardwood floor underlayment on a plywood and dimensional lumber base.
During an operation session approximately 600 freight cars and 85 locomotives are used. The freight cars include mostly plastic kits, about 70 brass freight cars, and many craftsman’s-type resin kits that I have built. Most are weathered, by me, with the addition of magnetic couplers and metal wheels, and nearly all are appropriate for rail equipment in use in 1975, I think there are seven cars that are not appropriate for 1975. Most industries are named after friends, relatives, James Bond characters, Punk rock bands, or ex U S Presidents. Off-line industries are named after signers of the Declaration of Independence, or in either situation real industries when I found information on them. We use Digitrax DCC to control the locomotives. Dispatching is accomplished with FRS radios. A crew of eleven is preferred for monthly op sessions but the layout can be organized to handle crews of varying sizes, with sessions generally lasting three and one-half hours. The layout is about 95% completed, with a small area of scenery to get done in the Mount Carmel area.