Building the Denver & Rio Grande

In this first program of Building the Denver & Rio Grande Narrow Gauge, we’ll cover the finishing of the basement railroad room to accommodate this very large HO Scale narrow gauge railroad. Then we’ll show you how we painted and blended our sky blue backdrop, and added artwork by our artist friend Pat Lemmerman.
br>Next, we’ll begin the benchwork construction and layout of track for our very large Durango Yard. We’ll also install a Walthers Turntable and scratch build the Durango Roundhouse. Our yard contains Dual gauge track and turnouts ala the 1930s in the real Durango- The dual gauge track required a dual gauge turntable as well!
br>The Los Animas River runs nearby, so we’ll show you how we added this important detail for the length of the entire yard.
br>The town of Durango will be roughed out, including a space for the Durango station– We’ll also add a reverse loop around the back of the roundhouse and some “swishes” to allow the dual gauge track to go from three rail to four rail, so both standard gauge and narrow gauge engines can use the turntable.
br>We’ll add the ash pit near where our coaling tower will be placed.
br>We’ll add scenery to blend the backdrop into the yard, including some beautiful Cottonwood trees along the river. At the end of the yard, we’ll build a small timber trestle to cross the river.
br>Finally, we’ll construct a control panel to hold the toggle switches that power our switch machines in the yard, and we’ll hook up a PTC Turntable controller for automatic alignment of our turntable to all those tracks.