A little about the Western Bay

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Upon walking into the room, you might notice two hidden yards, located in a separate room off the main layout room.  These yards are built on two levels.  Division One yard is on the lower level, and is a large stub-ended yard, while Division Two yard is on the upper level and is a through-yard. Each yard has an operating turntable to turn the locomotives around to head them back the way they arrived - headlight first!

The main layout room consists of four ‘L-girder’ benches laid out in the shape of a capital ‘E’.  The back of the ‘E’ butts up against the wall that conceals the hidden yards.

The mid and lower legs of the ‘E’ are peninsulas wide enough to handle our minimum 36” radius curves (that’s a 6-ft. diameter!) and the upper leg of the ‘E’ (the East end of the RR) is the stub-ended Denver yard.  This handles the narrow-gauge RR’s arrival and departing trains, as well as Standard Gauge trains.

The layouts lower (Division 1), merges with upper on the first peninsula (the Western portion of the RR) which is the one closest to where you entered the layout room.  The third peninsula is the dual-gauge yard designed to appear as if the ‘Standard Gauge’ trains continue out to the ‘rest of the country’ (accomplished with mirrors!). 

  The reason most Western Colorado Narrow Gauge railroads were built was to service the mines, industries, and towns for why the railroad was built.  They brought the freight out of the mountains and usually terminated at a dual-gauge freight yard where most of the goods were then trans-loaded to the standard gauge railroad which moved the freight out to the rest of the country. Conversely, it performed the same function in reverse order, bringing freight in from such cities as Chicago or New York to be trans-loaded back onto the narrow-gauge cars.