Clarion Model Railroad Club Layout Details

We started construction on our layout in June 1993. The layout is HO scale containing 530' of main line, plus another another 350' of track.  The track plan is a multi-grade multi-level design that features a single track mainline with numerous passing sidings. The plan is set in the 1975 to 1985 era and is a Prototypical design representing the local Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion railroad.

The HO layout depicts a shortline railroad with its main source of revenue being coal.  The railroad had three major coal tipples on line plus numerous other small coal dumps that moved from place to place throughout the railroads history.  Other industries online were Hanley Brick in Summerville and Owens Illinois Glass Plant and occasional Lumber for Rhea Lumber and Clarion Builder Supply and farm equipment for Rice Equipment.

The layout can be run as continuous loop (Conrail Lowgrade through Summerville) or point-to-point on the LEF&C mainline from Summerville to Clarion, PA.

The members are scratch building most of the structures to represent the various industries along the line as well as any of the local homes and farms.  Pictures of the actual area are displayed along the fascia of the layout so that visitors can compare the real thing with the modeled layout.

Once the railroad was far enough along, we starting holding regular operating sessions using the modified pin system (jump to article). The members have gotten away form having regularly scheduled operations as the layout was going through a rebuilding project that took way longer than expected (due to membership changes) but are planning on getting back to operations soon.

Some of the features of the layout are as follows:
25' by 75' layout room HO layout occupies a 25 x 34 area (the HO layout shares the room with a 20 x 8 N scale layout – a 15 x 25 Lionel/S gauge layout – plus a G gauge layout around the ceiling)
Over 800' of track on the HO layout

•  24" minimum radius on the main line

•  Number 6 minimum turnout size on the CR main line

•  Maximum gradient 4%

•  4 passing sidings (excluding the yards) on the LEF&C portion.

•  All HO Scale track is Atlas Nickel-Silver Code 100 for durability.

•  Turnouts are a mixture of Atlas code 100, and code 83 custom hand laid code 100 and a few Walthers/Shinohara Code 83. None of the turnouts have needed to be modified to be DCC friendly as so many on the forums state that need to be done!

•  Switch machines are all hand throw Caboose Industries units.

•  The bench work is a combination of L-girder and open grid design fabricated from 1x2 milled furring strips and drywall screws.  The subroadbed is 7/16” plywood or OSB strips covered with ½” Homasote.

•  The roadbed is made from 1/2" thick Homasote cut from 4' x 8' sheets into strips slightly wider than the track. For curving the Homasote strips, we decided not to use kerfs but went with just cutting the Homasote into angles blocks to form the curves.  The Homasote is usually 2” wider than the radius of the turn being built.  The Homasote strips are then glued to the sub-roadbed with white glue and then painted with an earth-toned or green flat latex paint to seal the Homasote.  The paint was usually purchased at the big-box stores on the mis-match  clearance rack.

•  The Layout is entirely DCC using the Digitrax Radio system.  The layout when first built used DC walk-around control and then went with the Keller Onboard analogue command control before going DCC in 2000.

•  A separate programming track is available and the members can reprogram engines without shutting down the layout.