Great Northern Ry

My layout is a freelanced design loosely based on the Great Northern RR in Minnesota late '50s and '60s. The main yard is St. Cloud with additional towns of Hinkley and Elk River. I use the standard car cards and 4 position waybills along with a train order card. My operating session is laid back and consists of one east bound turn from Minneapolis (staging) to St. Cloud and one west bound turn from Duluth (staging) to St. Cloud. Operations consist of local and yard switching. I also have a mine branch run, along with passenger and reefer runs. I dispatch with verbal train orders. Jobs would be: 1)yard master (local pickups and delay, sort arrival and departures and turn locos on Turntable); 2) Road turn - (local pickups and drops at two towns); and 3) mine run (empties and loads) , reefer run, and passenger train.

I have recently added a connecting RR room to my Great Northern. It also consists of a helix and three decks. I describe it as the Burlington Northern connection. The Superior WI yard on the lower deck interchanges with the GN yard. It has an eight car barge, interchanges with CN and St Paul. And two local turns from Winnipeg thru 5 towns also using 4 step waybills and car cards with pictures. Not yet scenic.

   centralsuffolkog.com/gnrr.html

Layout Owner

Ron Engel

Location

St James, NY

Scale

HO

Layout Size

15 ft x 15 ft

Mainline Size

100 ft

Era

1950s/1960s

Crew Complement

3 - 6

Completion

Track: 100%
Scenery: 65%
Electrical: 100%

Control System

MRC

Communications System

Intercom system

Dispatching Method

Sequential

Car Forwarding

Car Cards/Waybills

Pets

None