Milwaukee Road in Wisconsin -- 1950's

[ak-milw]

I am posting my Milwaukee Road layout that I have been working on since 2005. It is a 2 foot wide shelf layout around the walls with a peninsula. The layout will cover a 24 foot square when completed. It runs from Tunnel City, Wisconsin in the northwest to Portage Wisconsin in the southeast. The first pictures of the layout are a little fuzzy, they were taken with a regular camera and scanned, after that the pics with be better with a digital camera. It will take me awhile to get what I have done so far posted after that I will continue as I build. I am building this one section, one scene at a time. The track plan is based on the Milwaukee ROW in this area. most of the buildings and scenes are scratchbuilt  from old pictures I have found and talking to people. I hope you will enjoy the tour as much as I have building it, I will try to give a little history as I go.

[gfoyle01]

I'm looking forward to following your work.  I am considering a shelf layout myself.  Thanks for sharing.
Roy Clarke
Danvers MA

[jerseymercantile]

I, for one am looking forward to following the complete story of you layout.
From inception to what you have done lately will be quite a story based on what you have been putting out recently.
Jack

[ak-milw]

Well I guess I'll get started.
I started the layout in the rail yard in Portage Wis. The section is 2' wide and 14' long and took a little over 2 years to build. It is also in another room from the main layout. The majority of the structures are scratchbuilt with a few kits. the first pic's are of the south end of the yard.

Here you see some maintainance buildings, the back of the caboose supply building and a few industries the were on the edge of the yard.




The next is the south end pumping station, the yard had five water towers at one time.

[ak-milw]

Next we move to the other side of the Caboose supply house. Here they cleaned and restocked the caboose for their next run.



Just north of the supply house was the bunk house, It had bunks, lockers and showers, a place to rest on a layover. The building was built using Milw. plans



in the background you can see the Freeland steel tank CO.  That went belly up in the 60's and the United Cigar Co. that is no longer around.

[ak-milw]

Here  is an over view of the yard.



Now we will move up to the north end of the yard to see the large a-frame hoist and the north water tower.



and the north pumping station.

[ak-milw]

Here is a view of the engine house. It was built using Milw. plans

[GPdemayo]

Nice work Andy!

I'll be watching for more posts - remember we love pictures!

[ACL1504]

Andy,

Ditto to what Greg said and I'll be watching as well.

Tom

[ak-milw]

Well you asked for it guy's I have eight years of pictures.

As I stated before the layout is in two rooms. The next section I built is 2' by 3' and is the town of Tunnel City and is the location of Milwaukee's first tunnel west. The CNW also had a tunnel here but in the 1970's the tunnel collapsed and was never reopened. They just joined to the Milw. tracks and rented their tunnel. The tunnel hides the wall opening between the two rooms. The only picture I can find of this section is a completed one.



A couple of interesting facts, the town of Tunnel City was named before the railroad ever got there, The CNW ran a single track main but had a two track tunnel and the Milw. had a double track main buy only a single track tunnel.

[Bntrainmaster]

Andy,
Looking very nice. Thanks for sharing!!!!!
I'll keep watching.

[ak-milw]

Leaving Tunnel City heading East is a section that is only 8 inches wide and about a foot long. I had to get around my electrical box. From pictures I found there was a tractor repair shop in a quanset hut and a small brick building, I never found out what was in there. I made the brick building from some Walters kit scraps and the hut is a kit from Rix.







this was the only crossing in town.

[ak-milw]

The next section is between the towns of Tunnel City and the repair yard in Tomah. It measures 5' by 2' it will contain a farm and a small hunting cabin. First picture is the benchwork, foamboard and the backdrop with clouds.



here the track and trackbed are on and roughing in some hills.



the hills are all carved up, a few rock molds and everything gets a base coat of paint.

[ak-milw]

After the brown dried I painted on some green and painted the backdrop.



here is a closer look at the backdrop.



this is the spot the cabin will occupy, the tooth picks will grow into trees.



and here is the scene, cabin from a Faller kit, the jeep is ia Rocco military model redone and the LP are from Preiser.

[barrymk]

Some nice detailing Andy and inspired use of odd spaces.