Live Steam Trip

Fellow railfan and speeder club member Fred Hoeser invited me to Hudson on Sunday, August 14th, 2011 to see the 1" scale train he had purchased.  I took railfans Joe Lewis and Ron Donaldson with me as they had never seen the St. Croix Live Steam layout.   http://www.stcroixrr.org/   To say they were impressed with the setup and amount of trackage would be an understatement!!  Here is Fred with his new Rock Island train, 1" scale.  Ready to ride behind are Joe and Ron.

Let's take a little ride:

 

Note the block signal.  The entire line has ABS signalling and even allows opposing train action as there are sidings along the line.  We had to wait here for a green signal.

Here's Joe riding behind steam on the same track we are on (the reason we had the red block).

Fred offered to let me run his train.  This engine has a sound system (sounds great as power is applied) with a bell and whistle.  It even has dynamic brakes.  His engine runs on 2 batteries and when the brakes are applied, the motors run in reverse--just like the real trains!!!!

There are 3 sizes of trains here.  Fred's is the middle size.  The largest is 1 1/2" scale.  We took a ride on this train, owned by the club and any member can use it:

A few shots along this line:

A large roundhouse is located in the center of the property where members can store and work on their equipment.  Here is a shot of the top of it.  A new 2-story car barn for members cars is being constructed in the back left:

 

Here's a few shots from inside the roundhouse:

 

 

After leaving the St. Croix Railroad we stopped at Rick Ohlf's gigantic N-gauge layout that he is constructing with the help of friend Don Shultz.  Rick says there is 2300 feet of track here and Don says it will have 15,000 trees when completed!!

After leaving here, we stopped in at Baldwin to see Jeff Ellefson's HO model railroad.  He is modelling LaCrosse to the Twin Cities with the BN and Milwaukee mainlines.  This is a really neat operational railroad and here are a few pix of his double deck setup.  Here's Jeff beside his creation:

 A great way to spend a nice Sunday in August!!