A 55 car train on the Williams Loop.

The layout is of mushroom design in a 28' X 52' basement. I designed it back in the mid '90's when I had put 2 mobile homes side by side, made a common roof that I had raised to a ceiling height of almost 9 feet. A divorce stopped the construction and when the divorce was final, I built my house to accommodate the design. The original was going to be UP's Sherman Hill, Cheyenne to Laramie. As I worked building the house, I keep seeing in my mind a picture of Williams Loop on a calendar I had seen with a lash up of UP locomotives. I started searching for all the info I could on the area and when I started construction of the layout, I changed a few things around on the plan to include Keddie Wye, Williams Loop, and Clio Trestle.
All visible track is ME code 55 with scratchbuilt, Atlas and ME turnouts. The helix is 9 1/2 turns that starts at 53" off the concrete floor goes to 90" off the floor to the staging yards that will hold 10, 100 car trains. The helix will also hold up to 5, 60 car trains. The way I have the helix set up, I can run loop to loop, contentious and to and from staging at both ends of the layout. The tracks enters at the bottom from Oroville and about midway up, the other end of the layout coming from Portola enters the helix. Minimum radius on the mainline is 24" and on the Keddie Wye Highline it is 15"
This is just a very basic track plan.


Over the next few days as I post pictures, I think most will be able to follow the track plan and understand it a lot better.
The layout is of mushroom design in a 28' X 52' basement. I designed it back in the mid '90's when I had put 2 mobile homes side by side, made a common roof that I had raised to a ceiling height of almost 9 feet. A divorce stopped the construction and when the divorce was final, I built my house to accommodate the design. The original was going to be UP's Sherman Hill, Cheyenne to Laramie. As I worked building the house, I keep seeing in my mind a picture of Williams Loop on a calendar I had seen with a lash up of UP locomotives. I started searching for all the info I could on the area and when I started construction of the layout, I changed a few things around on the plan to include Keddie Wye, Williams Loop, and Clio Trestle.
All visible track is ME code 55 with scratchbuilt, Atlas and ME turnouts. The helix is 9 1/2 turns that starts at 53" off the concrete floor goes to 90" off the floor to the staging yards that will hold 10, 100 car trains. The helix will also hold up to 5, 60 car trains. The way I have the helix set up, I can run loop to loop, contentious and to and from staging at both ends of the layout. The tracks enters at the bottom from Oroville and about midway up, the other end of the layout coming from Portola enters the helix. Minimum radius on the mainline is 24" and on the Keddie Wye Highline it is 15"
This is just a very basic track plan.


Over the next few days as I post pictures, I think most will be able to follow the track plan and understand it a lot better.
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