Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific’s
RACINE AND SOUTHWESTERN
ERA 1955
The old Racine and Southwestern was originally conceived by business men in Racine Wisconsin as a means to get goods to and from the Southwest, particularly Kansas City. Like many other railroad adventures, they began construction but ran out of money and were purchased by the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad, who completed the line to the Milwaukee’s Chicago/Omaha mainline at Kittredge Illinois. I have taken a slightly different approach to modeling the “Southwestern” as I am modeling from Sturtevant Junction, where the Southwestern crossed the Chicago-Milwaukee mainline, east into the City of Racine and ending at Lake Michigan. I twisted history to fit my purpose and modeling interests. Racine has an active Car Ferry operation which helps to anchor the Kansas City traffic and also to bypass some of the congestion of Chicago. Inbound traffic from the North, West and South come from a 6 track staging yard, cross the C&M mainline, pass Johnson Wax, cross the Chicago and Northwestern at Waxdale Junction, leave “wax cars” at the interchange, pass Badger Stone and come to Taylor Street Yard. There the inbound traffic is broken down into the various switching districts or patrols as I call them. There is a patrol for: J.I. Case / City / Harbor / Car Ferry. Other Milwaukee jobs are: Sturtevant Patrols / Stone train / J Wax operator / and I use an agent-dispatcher to control movement, although 2/3rds of the railroad is in yard limits. Once upon a time (before the agent-dispatcher) we wound up with 5 headlights all in the same place at the same time. You gotta love DCC. All patrols return to Taylor Street with traffic heading North, South and West. The Taylor Street operator builds trains for return to Sturtevant.
The Chicago and Northwestern has a presence on the layout, coming from a four track staging yard, up to Waxdale Junction where “wax cars” are set out and picked up. The C&NW proceeds to Racine and works two jobs in Racine. There is the yard job, with industries to work and then there is a run over Milwaukee rails to the “Hill Job”. Once the C&NW has finished all work the train is taken back to staging.
My operating philosophy centers on the crew enjoying themselves while at the same time bringing to life what I have built. The railroad has been operational since 2004 in one stage or another. The C&NW section was finished in 2010. The railroad has taken on “a life of its own” which has caused me grow along with it. Does it work? Well during a three to four hour operating session, nine people are working and most of the time you can hear the muted sound systems of the H10-44s rumbling along, so I would say that it is working.
Stephen Holbert
