Welcome to the Coastal Mountain Railroad's
home page. Formed in the early 1990's, Coastal Mountain Railroad is
an HO scale modular railroad whose members have interests in not only
many of the major east coast railroads but also several of the major
western railroads. Although not meant to represent a large
contemporary mainline such as CSX, the modeling does attempt to
capture an active branch-line set in New England or the Pacific
Northwest during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
In the early days of the club, the members
decided to follow some of the guidelines of the National Model
Railroad Association(NMRA). The first two tracks are set to the NMRA
standards but the club decided to move the third track back an extra
inch to create the appearance of a siding track instead of a three
track mainline. The club also decided to build turn-around loops and
an inside corner along with the straight modules to create a flexible
layout that can conform to any given space. Our minimum size layout
is 60 feet long by 4 feet wide. In that space, over two complete
scale mile of mainline track is easily created. We have no fixed club
layout and only run at public or private shows.
Like the real railroads, we adhere to a
schedule which has been created to move a variety of freight and
passenger traffic around the layout. We use local trains to service
the industries along the mainline and divisional freights to move
cars to and from our yards.
The Coastal Mountain Railroad is currently
using NCE/DCC to operate the layout. The systems allows us to control
each locomotive
independently of the other locomotives on
the same track. Each locomotive has a small computer chip installed
in it to allow this type of operation.
We operate both steam and diesels, and
when one of us has not been paying close attention to what we are
doing, you might just see one of our operating cranes coming to the
rescue. So come and enjoy the sights and sounds of the miniature
world of the Coastal Mountain Railroad.
