The HO scale Columbus and Carribean Rail Road

 
Click on all the images for a bigger image

The Columbus and Carribean Rail Road is a fee lance HO scale model layout based on American prototype equipment but set in an un-named Banana Republic somewhere in the world. The Bench work is built of mostly 75mm by 50mm pine building timber and the road bed is 18mm chip-board. A mixture of code 70 and code 100 track is used and most of the point work is rebuilt Shinohara, with some home made points.

The main line track is layed on cork, and all the track is ballasted with fine sand from various areas around South Australia. Most of the vegitation is made from home made coloured sawdusts and rubber foam materials. The "dirt" is fine dirt from areas of South Australia, held down with plastic paints of similar colour. The people in the paint shop thought it very strange me wanting paints matched to "dirt" samples.

The main line points are powered by slow motion motors and most of the yard points use the old twin-coil Tenshoda motors. Most of the layout has three aspect colour light signals, the only area where these are not operating is in the port area, where a major redevelopment was done recently. All the signals are made to work by a lot of TTL logic, and a twin T type detector of my own design.

A modified PMP112 command control system is used to control the locomotives, and a telephone style patch panel is used for loco selection. Ten walk-around throttles are provided, and a chordless system is planned for the future.


Lofty, the town at the top of the island benchwork


Lofty sits on top of Midway City and Midway Industrial
It has an oil terminal, a timber mill, a quary, meat works, and an old depot


The town of Columbus, on the top level, above part of the Port


More views of Columbus


The Station and engine terminal in Riverside, the "Capital City"


This is known as the Restaurant at the end of the Universe


This is Midway City, where the above Restaurant is located


More photos of Midway City


Overall views of Midway Industrial


Midway Industrial, on the other side of Midway city


The town of Junction is above the City of Riverside,
Junction was the site of a former "dual gauge" junction


The Port area, built at one end of the room and wraps around under Columbus


The layout is constructed with three levels, the lowest level is a "fiddle yard"


This is the work area just inside the entrance to the room
There was a narrow gauge layout over the work bench here that ran on
a section of dual gauge track to the top level of the island bench.


The CCRR crew, Phil, Ray, Ian, Graham, Ainslie


This is the 40 foot (12M) by 20 foot (6M) building that houses the CCRR
You may notice my other obsessions around the yard

Written by and Copyright, Phil Storr ©, : Last updated 9th January 2005