The CR

The CR&B Story

The CR&B railroad is a fictitious line that runs from Bena to Lamont and Arvin. These are real places in the San Joaquin Valley and the Southern Pacific line from Bakersfield to Los Angeles over the Tehachapi mountains. Bena is in actuality just a siding with a bulk commodity plant on line. But in my world in a room behind the garage, it is a city that serves as the gateway from the Southern Pacific to the southern San Joaquin valley. Thus the CR&B railroad has its connection there with both Santa Fe and Southern Pacific. Lamont and Arvin are agricultural towns and generate seasonal traffic of perishable goods that travel via mechanical Reefer. Another major product is raw cement that is quarried near Arvin and processed in Arvin, which is located at the end of the line. Products shipped in include covered hoppers of feed, fertilizer; tank cars of petroleum products, insulated box cars of beer, and flat/boxcar loads of lumber to name a few. The CR&B also operates a charter excursion train powered by a steam engine on loan from Westside Locomotive Works. Three CR&B restored Harriman cars are used for the passengers. Excursions are also allowed to run from the Southern Pacific as long as the equipment meets CR&B requirements and standards.

Layout

Important! Move the pointer over the above Diagram. When it turns to a "hand" there is a picture to be seen by clicking on it.

Thumbnails for these same photos are at the bottom of the page.

I made some changes to the lower level as seen above. First drawing is how it was originally, second in white, shows current.

The Southern Pacific Santa Fe portion of the layout consists of the bottom level for the storage and interchange tracks and the top level where the line makes one loop around the room. The bottom and top are connected by a helix that is a 3% grade, Freight trains are approximately 30 cars long with 2 or 3 powered engines. There are 3 sidings, Bena on the top level, Ilmon located on the helix, and Bakersfield on the bottom. The bottom level has 11 storage tracks, 5 of which can hold 2 - 30+ car freight trains each. I use DCC from CVP which works great. Engines are equipped with Digitrax 163 decoders. The signals are scratch built approach lit searchlights and operate as the prototype did. I build my own signal detection circuits, etc.

The CR&B portion is mainly on the top level and goes from Bena to Arvin. They have trackage rights to the lower level which is where the interchange is, and the cement plant

All the plaster scenery work is done and is painted. What is left to do is the fine detail work that takes awhile for me to do. Some has been done, and as you can see in the photos, some has not.

The equipment is set in the late 1960's to middle 1970's. This means no stack trains, no Amtrak because in my world it does not exist, and general freight traffic that greatly out numbers TOFC.

The track diagram is not to scale as far as the size of the room and the bench work, but track location is about right to location.

Thumbnails for photo's from layout diagram above.

Click on image for larger one, hit browser "back" to return.