Picture of Spur 3 at Red Deer, Greatland Sugar Refinery. Red Deer Spur 1 and 2 are the other side of the Freight Office.
Layout Description
The layout is a dogbone configuration. The two legs are laid together so that the Mainline appears as a double track mainline. It folds over itself several times as it winds around a 20 X 22 foot room. The loops at the end of the doglegs are reverse loops, allowing trains to use crossovers as passing sidings throughout the layout, without any out-of-phase problems. One end has a triple track and the other end has a double track reverse loop. Each track reverses independently.
Daily Operations
Freight trains remain overnight at Broken Bow, Benning, Garrison, Destin, Dos Vias, Red Deer, and Nimrod. Passenger trains remain overnight at Calgary and Lake Ellie Lane
There are two round trip passenger trains daily from Calgary to Broken Bow and two round trip passenger trains daily from Lake Ellie Lane to Calgary.
Several trains arrive and leave Broken bow each day for various destinations. Red Deer and Nimrod have three freights a day, Once daily a switcher takes two boxcars to Lake Ellie Lane from Nimrod and returns the two from the day before to Nimrod. Garrison, and Blaser have two freights a day. Bouden, Destin, Dos Vias, Benning, and Blaser have daily freight service.
Operation of the above is completely automatic, controlled by RailRoad & Co. Train Controller program using a time table. The fast clock is four to one and takes about an hour and twenty minutes of real time to complete. The railroad is also capable of manual control and any range of the combination of the two.
The following pages are a tour around the railroad. You will notice that I am in the process of landscaping and some of the locations are complete, some partly complete, and some in the raw. As I complete sections, I will repost those pictures.