Rocky Mountain Central
and the
Colorado Pacific 
An HO and HOn3  layout by
Jerry Hoverson

Denver Colorado

Denver is the main yard and engine facilities for the Rocky Mountain Central.  The city of Denver is built using backdrops, flats and some full sized industries.  A normal operating session requires two full time yard operaters, one at the north end and one at the south end.  The north operator does most of the drills necessary to make up the train while the south operator handles motive power and cabooses while not helping the north end operator.

     

These shots show the North end of Denver.  There are 4 industries here for switching, Cogswell Cogs, the brown building, Western Talc, the red Campbells kit in the middle and Kingsfield Chemical, still in a cardboard mock-up state.  The fourth is on the other side of the mainline and has to be accessed through the yard.  This is simply a team track and can be seen against the left edge of the left photo or the right edge of the right photo.  In the right photo you can also see that the mainline stands out with a brown/gray mixed ballast, the yard is black and the industries are ballasted in gray.  This helps the operators visualize where they need to go.

    

These shots are overview shots of the yard, the left is looking south and the right is looking back north.  There are 6 classification tracks, 3 arrival/departure tracks, an industrial/passenger siding and two run around tracks for the switchers.  The engine facilities are at the south end of town.  Against the backdrop you can see the control panel and TV monitor for the hidden storage area behind the wall (Sulphur Springs, Alamosa, & Durango depending on which level your on) and a cardboard mock-up of what will be a scratch built Denver Union station.  

   

The roundhouse is kitbashed Heljan.  The center raised section has been cut down to allow the slope to simply continue and the length of each stall has been extended to house Challengers and Big Boys.  I also sliced the roundhouse off at the layout edge and put a section that includes 2 and 1/2 stalls on the other side.  This added with the tracks that extend from the pit to the layout edge give the impression that the roundhouse has 18 total stalls.  A good friend, and VP of the railroad scratch built the drive mechanism for the turntable.  It consists of the shaft the rests on bearings and is attached to a masonite disk below.  This disk is then sandwiched betwee to model aircraft tires, one stationary and the other under spring tension.  The sprung wheel is then rotated with a hankscraft motor using the speed control portion of an old regular DC throttle and a direction switch mounted on the control panel.  We originally had it controlled with a DCC decoder but the operators seemed to prefer the panel control.

        

These two shots show the interior detail and lighting.  Clear plexiglass was used along the layout edge so the interior can be viewed with the roof on.  Grant it when it is filled with locomotives you can't see very far, but it does give a neat effect.

        

South of Denver is the North Platte river.  Actually this scene shows three different crossings of the North Platte.  In the left picture you can see a northbound Rocky Mountain Central train coming from Pueblo, crossing an arched wooden Dinky Creek type of bridge enroute to the Denver yards.  The track in the middle uses a steal through plate bridge where the RMC proceeds from Kremmling to Sulphur Springs.  The farthest track, or the track on the right in the right photo, is the Colorado Pacific narrow gauge as it heads from Salida to Alamosa.  You can also see a little bit of the upper level as it comes out from Durango behind the wall before it splits for Farmington or Silverton.  The lights are the large size Christmas lights that I hung under the upper level and have on a dimmer to light the lower level.

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