Everett Junction

Welcome to the Burrlington Northern Cascade Division, an HO model railroad layout operated by Burr Stewart in Seattle, WA, USA. The layout is starting to have group operations take place on it, so this blog is a place where I can continue to post photos and updates on changes I'm making to the layout, photos, procedures, schedules, and so forth. If you have seen the layout or would like to attend a future operating session, please let me know by email or comment to this blog or join my groups.io group and I will maintain you on my email list for organizing future sessions.

Here is an attempt to post recent photos of the new Everett Junction area of the layout, completed in Jan-Feb 2017.:

The train shown moving through the picture is the "Jet Job", at switcher that delivered aircraft parts from all over North America to the Boeing 747 plant located uphill from Mukilteo. The spur from the mainline to the Boeing plant was on a 5% grade, and there was no run-around siding at the top, so the Jet Job would leave Bayside Yard in Everett, move southbound, locomotive-first, to Mukilteo along the mainline, back up the 5% grade caboose-first, exchange loads for empties, move back down the grade loco-first, and then move back along the mainline to Bayside caboose-first. Hence, in these still photos, you can't tell if the train is moving to the right (loaded) or to the left (empty). To run this properly on a HO layout, one should have a caboose equipped with a sound decoder and an air whistle, to blow for grade crossings from the right (left in this case!) end of the train.