7: EC-11 uses all of the power in those locomotives to best
the 3.5% grade up to Kitt Point.
There are six main towns along the line, and a couple of minor
ones. Currently there are 47 industries on the railroad, with a
total capacity of 123 cars. East to west, the towns on the lay-
out are Harrisburg/Enola/Petersburg staging, Gap Junction,
Rockview, East Valley, West Valley, Annville (named for my wife
Ann), Lebanon, Summit, and Pittsburgh/Conway/Shire Oaks
staging. The town of Franklin is on the Cumberland branch, and
is home to the Altoona Brewing Company.
Design and Construction
In 1992 my family and I relocated from the east coast to the
midwest, which was favorable from a housing cost standpoint. I
Pennsylvania & Western RR - 5
7
8: EC-11 is at the apex of Horseshoe Curve and the locomotive
has just passed the park area.The gift shop and snack trailer at
the base of the curve are seeing a little business today.
decided to use this move as a way to get the full-basement lay-
out I’d always wanted. Unfortunately, I found that most of the
misguided owners of existing houses had wasted their base-
ments on family rooms, exercise rooms, and such.
I decided that I would need to build a basement, and it would
be one designed for a railroad. I specified nine-foot ceilings
and no support columns in the main room (this meant a HEAVY
steel beam). The stairs would descend into the center of the
room, and the layout would be around the walls. The laun-
dry room was designed on the first floor of the house, and we
added a full attic for storage.
The basement would be mine, all mine! I wanted to design
a layout for prototypical operation, that would run point-to-
point (or staging-to-staging) with a nice long run in between,
8
MRH-Mar 2014
