Sierra Central

The Sierra Central Railroad depicts the Southern Pacific’s California Pacific or “Cal-P” line from Oakland to Sacramento and the Western Pacific from Sacramento through the Feather River Canyon to Keddie.

Signature scenes on the SP include the historic Davis depot, the Yolo Causeway, and the passenger station, locomotive shops, classification yard, and R Street industrial district in Sacramento. On the WP, you’ll find Marysville, Oroville, Table Mountain, the Honeymoon Tunnels in the Feather River Canyon, Keddie Yard, and the Spanish Creek trestle widely known as “Keddie Wye” as well as a branch line to Quincy.

Construction of the current layout began in 2001. It is a double-deck design with a loop to loop configuration for continuous running. Its 600-foot mainline uses code 83 flex track, and most turnouts are handlaid. The layout is designed to accommodate 25-car trains with a two main tracks on the lower deck and single track with passing sidings on the upper deck. Two staging yards each with 7 tracks and a classification yard with 12 tracks complete the railroad.

Mainline traffic is controlled by a Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) signal system operated by a dispatcher (or in an automatic ABS mode when there is no dispatcher). The system is implemented in JMRI Panel Pro (part of the open-source Java Model Railroad Interface suite), and we plan to integrate our authentic lever-type CTC machine, salvaged from the Western Pacific Railroad in Sacramento, to control the layout.

Operating sessions are held on the first Friday evening of every month starting at 7:00pm. Non-member guests are welcome, but slots are limited, so an RSVP is required.

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Location

Sacramento, CA

Scale

HO

Layout Size

30 ft x 20 ft

Mainline Size

600 ft

Era

Circa 1960

Crew Complement

14 - 18

Completion

Track: 100%
Scenery: 75%
Electrical: 100%

Control System

Digitrax - Duplex only

Wi-Fi Throttles

Yes

Communications System

Family radio system

Dispatching Method

CTC

Car Forwarding

Car Cards/Waybills

Pets

None