Brighton Model Railway Club

Minty Colorado

By Andy Gibbs

Elevation 5324 feet

N scale approx 12ft by 8ft

Last updated 25 June 2008

D&RGW Ring Owner: Nathan Holmes Site owner: Andy Gibbs

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*** STOP PRESS after a false start in 2007 it looks like MINTY will be attending Trainwest 2009 ***

*** STOP PRESS see N SCALE RAILROADIING magazine for my article on constructing the Wilson McCarthy Business car. ***

Welcome to Minty, my N scale layout of the Denver and Rio Grande. Construction started in 2001 years ago and whilst the layout isn't yet finished it is about 95% complete.......do we ever finish our layouts? Please read on and I hope you enjoy your trip to Colorado.

The web pages are in the process of being updated, improved and changed around a bit. please use the navigation bar to get to the other pages. 

Why do the Rio Grande? Initially it was just a case of going into Victors of Islington (a now closed model shop) and asking them what they had, It was then a toss up between the Rio Grande and Southern Pacific. The Rio Grande won, both are easy colour schemes to reproduce, and unknown to me at the time they were of course the same company. The Rio Grande is a bit of a cult Railroad in the states, a bit like the S&DJR in the UK. It has amazing scenery ( saves having to build too many buildings! ), great locos and and a proud heritage of doing things just a little different.

Thanks to several excellent websites and a very knowledgeable band of Rio Grande fans worldwide, it is quite feasible to build a model of something thousands of miles away. The research is half the fun.

The layout is being built in my loft and is 12ft by 8ft shaped like a letter P so that it avoids the trap hatch and various roof joists. The layout is constructed from 9mm ply with removable timber legs. All the ply for the baseboards was pre-cut by the timber merchants so I just had a kit of parts to assemble. There are 8 boards each 4ft long by 22 inches wide. The 3 staging siding (fiddle yard) boards have solid tops, all the rest are open plan to allow for a maximum height of 22 inches of scenery. Yes you've guessed it that's how big the loft trap hatch is.

Exhibitions:- Minty was first exhibited at our club exhibition in November 2004 and also at  Crawley  Sussex Association of Model Railway Clubs show at Crawley in March 2005. In addition the layout has been to the NMRA show in Horsham November 2006 and will again be on show at our club's exhibition in November 2007.  We were going to Trainwest 2007 but have been asked to drop out due to a problem with hall space there, maybe there in 2009!

In March 2002, fellow club member Neil Bennett and I went to Denver, We had a great time railfanning in Colorado, on the Moffat tunnel line in the Rockies and on the Joint line between Denver and Colorado Springs as well as a cab ride over Sherman Hill courtesy of our guide for the week Russ Sharpe of EMD and the Union Pacific RR.

We met several people from the DRGW yahoo group who gave us a great tour of the yards in Denver and finding the remaining Rio Grande locos.

Just click here to go to our trip Way out West.

Minty track plan

PECO Code 55 track and electrofrog points have been used throughout. This is laid on Woodland Scenics foam track bed itself laid on the 9mm ply sub roadbed. The ply sub roadbed is removed when there are any bridges to avoid seeing a thick base.

Control will be from two panels, one to cover the staging sidings and mainline the other will control the passing loop and freight yard at Minty. Two Gaugemaster panel mounted controllers have been bought for this. Currently only one panel and controller is used.

The layout includes the Moffat Tunnel East Portal which is used to hide access to one end of the fiddle yard, many thanks to Eddie Stavleu for supplying drawings of the Portal. The other end of the fiddle yard is hidden by a road bridge conveying Interstate 70 across the lines.

Scenery is constructed mainly of polystyrene blocks carved to shape and then covered with toilet paper (clean!) which is glued to the polystyrene with a coloured PVA and water mix. Some Woodland Scenic rock moulds have also been used.  The scenery was then spray painted and weathered / highlighted using chalks and various paints. I'm pleased with the results.  The two railroad bridges over the gorge are from Micro Engineering.  All the water features have been made using Woodland Scenic Realistic Water and moving water effects.

The fiddle yard extends out on to the first scenic board and has a variety of sidings that stop under the Interstate bridge, these have a mirror at the end to reflect the lines of cars and disguise the fact that they don't go anywhere.

I am still painting the back scenes with a lot of help from Mike Dannemans superb article in the October 2004 Model Railroader, I cannot recommend this article highly enough.

The following pictures below show a tour of the layout and include some photos taken at the  Brighton MRC exhibition in November 2004.

An empty coal train waits the road as a loaded coal train enters the yard under the W 48th Ave bridge. The three Tunnel Motors then depart with the coal empties. The empty area next to the bridge will be filled by a model of Denver North Yard Control Tower.

Train #6 the Eastbound California Zephyr rolls down grade into Minty,  BMRC member and my wiring consultant Neil Bennett at the throttle.

This is an overall view of half the fiddle yard, plenty of room to get your fingers between the tracks, but you never have enough yard space.

The frontage of the layout - Brighton MRC exhibition 2004.

This shows the junction at Minty.....mainline to the left.

A pair of Tunnel Motors sandwiching an SD50 come of the branch with a manifest train.

A pair of Geeps cross the Beagle river.

An SD45 leads a GP30 and GP40 on a manifest westbound along the Canyon.

An Eastbound exits the Moffat Tunnel and some railfans capture the scene.

This photo has the new improved trees, 175 planted in one sitting and more to go!

North Yard, a trio of SD45's about to depart.           3 Tunnel Motors and their coal train access the yard.

I hope you enjoyed your trip to Minty. I will update the site as progress occurs. Further details of the layout can be found on the following pages.

    Here are some links to other Rio Grande, American Railroading and N scale sites you might be interested in:-