LCRR herald

Louisiana Central Railroad Company



Track Plan

The railroad will be housed in a 24' x 36' brick building, the interior of which was recently constructed and completed.  Except for a small workshop and restroom; the layout itself will command the entire interior space.  The building has central air and heat, and is well insulated.  Walls and ceiling are of gypsum board, and the floor is covered by a high-grade, tightly woven commercial carpet.  This will provide a comfortable and quiet atmosphere for the railroad.

Shown is the most recent version of the track plan.  The mainline is represented by the red lines; the passing sidings, yards and industrial trackage are in green; and the logging operation is rendered in blue.  The cyan-colored track belongs to the connecting railroad; the Illinois Central (running across the right side of the plan), and the pink is the Texas and Pacific (shown entering the Monterey yard at the bottom).  The dashed lines outside the plan represent hidden staging trackage located behind the scenery at each location.  This particular scheme yields a 136' mainline...equal to 2.24 scale miles.

LCRR track plan

The railroad line begins at Monterey, the town at the lower left.  It proceeds northeasterly and goes through Oneida, Whitcomb, Maynard, then Willis (located in the right-hand peninsula).  The line continues to hidden trackage at the right, representing its continuation to the town of Bude.

One particularly noteworthy feature on this plan is the loads-in/empties-out configuration at the bottom right.  This will service two industries at the Willis end -- a plywood plant, and pulpwood loading yard.  The plywood plant will ship plywood in boxcars and wood chips in special hoppers.  The Monterey end will receive the pulpwood and chips at a paper products plant.  The woodrack (pulpwood) and woodchip hopper cars will be used in the loads-in/empties-out scheme.

The logging operation will be featured on an upper elevation at the center and top.  The line will wind down, cross the Little River on joint trackage, then terminate at the mill, which will feature a log pond for unloading the freshly cut timber.

2/24/2007 Note:  The plan continues to evolve...fine tuning and tweaking is in progress.  Elevations have changed since the prior version posted here.  Several sidings have been adjusted, and the mainline itself has shifted in a place or two.

11/15/2008 Note:  More refinements and tweaking.  A few industries have swapped locations, and the LC staging tracks have been curved a bit to allow better access.  I'm trying to eliminate difficult to reach areas where possible, or at least to minimize those areas.

9/18/2010 Note:  And yet more refinements and tweaking.  I've renamed the town of Whittier to Whitcomb, and I've been firming up the decisions as to what industries and structures will go where, and modifying the spaces and trackage arrangements accordingly.  This evolution of space planning will likely continue up until the point when the trackage and each industry is actually constructed.  I've updated the published plans so you're seeing the latest drawing.  Building construction is finished, so this will likely be the version that will see construction.

3/29/2011 Note:  Squeezed another yard track into the Willis yard, tweaked the industry positions further, added a bit of abandoned trackage to the Spencer operation and lengthened several of the staging tracks.

Click here to view the Adobe PDF version of this plan, which allows you to zoom and pan for a better view.  The latest version now has the 12"x12" grid imprinted.  Also, here is a PDF file for a slightly older version of the plan.

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© 2006-2011 Jack C. Shall - All rights reserved. Last update: 9 Apr 2011