Railway Historical
and Modeling Society
Layout Photos
Operations
Steve, Matt and Bill are working the area between Mazon, Illinois and Verona. There must be 2 trains in this area, as I don't run with 3 people crews. This looks like an East bound grain train heading to Chicago through a wooded area of Illinois. The forest is compliments of Frank Hughes great scenery work.
Bud and Frank are working the Verona grain CoOp. Looks like Frank is enjoying the activity.
Here is Steve dispatching the layout by using JMRI Decoder Pro Panels. The monitor on the right is an older Mac desktop computer that displays the layout schematic. The crossovers and all turnouts on the layout can be controlled by clicking on them with the computer mouse. Detection on the layout is accomplished with Team Digital components that send information to the JMRI Panel via a rr-CirKits Locobuffer USB. The monitor on the left is fed information from the Mac computer and it shows the staging tracks.
Bill, Keith, and Bud are working as a team on local trains and through trains at Streator, Illinois. There was once a very large glass factory here but now there is a smaller plastic bottle factory operation. Still a busy place.
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The signal bridge is BLMA as are the concrete grade crossings. The crossovers are controlled by the dispatcher, seen in the previous picture. But sidings are controlled by the local operators. You can see information about the fascia controls for sidings here.
Frank remembers when this was just plywood and now it has scenery and we are running trains in Operation Sessions.