New Year, New Layout
A brief update on what’s going on with the layout since the upper deck was removed in late 2024.
Blog
Frisco St. Louis Operations
St. Louis Terminal Facilities and Operations This is part of an April 1960 brochure prepared by the sales department of the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway Company, that documents primary and secondary yards, train handling, freight houses, team tracks, Frisco Transportation Company (trucking), and terminal switching lines. The section…
MoPac St. Louis Terminal Division
This is a digital scan of the pages from the 1973 revision of Missouri Pacific’s Industrial Track Numbers and Spotting Codes. The original is from the collection of noted author and Missouri Pacific modeler, Joe Collias. The scanned pages of the entire document are available here as a single downloadable…
Goodbye Car Float, Hello Doughboy
The car float that once occupied the left end of one section of the layout, has floated down river to a new home (off the layout). Silos and elevators and structures that make up the Pillsbury Milling plant now stand on the filled in bay
Yard Improvement
Our track building team recently completed a small project in Lindenwood Yard, designed to help improve traffic flow of trains passing through the yard property. The by-pass track, highlighted in yellow in the image, was extended beyond the crossover that links the two arrival & departure tracks. Previosuly, the by…
Take a Ride on the Railroad
You won’t pass “go” nor will you collect 200 dollars on this voyage, but the ride is free. For your location-based tour of the layout, click on the rail pass image below to start your journey. Enjoy the trip!
Coonskins & Buzzsaws
No model railroad layout claiming to represent Saint Louis in the nineteen-seventies would be complete without including the Saint Louis-San Francisco Railway (FRISCO) and the Missouri Pacific Lines (MOPAC). Because of their shape, Frisco’s emblem was know as the ‘Frisco coonskin‘ and Missouri Pacific’s logo of this era was commonly…
Here’s Your Sign
Saint Louis Lines adopted a new logo that we feel captures the spirit of the layout. My talented son (J7 Images) put it together for me.
Front End Fest
Locomotives for three of the many railroads operating on the Saint Louis Lines pose for the official layout photographer as a couple of commuters at the station seem unimpressed at the spectacle. Locomotive power from left to right: Missouri Pacific (MoPac) U23B #2254, St. Louis-San Francisco (Frisco) GP38 #638, and…