Visiting Lance Mindheim's HO Scale CSX Downtown Spur Miami Layout! 01.30.2017

First of all I want to especially thank model railroader Lance Mindheim for taking time out of his busy schedule to show me his layouts and workshop.

So, as seems to be evident by my latest Metrorail upload, I was up in Washington, DC for a Physics conference. Having met with Lance last week in Hialeah for local railfanning/recon, we were able to set aside a good hour this past Monday so this Miamian can finally see his masterpiece! Since he lives near the Maryland-DC line, it was as easy as a one seat Metro ride from Woodley Park to Glenmont on the Red line. This was my first time seeing some of the NEC up close as well as MARC and VRE equipment. (I must also add this is my first time ever seeing snow so it was a total win :D).

As a warm-up, we have the Los Angeles Junction railway. I don't know the whole story about it, but it is an awesome looking industrial switching layout. One highlight is that the tank cars you see would normally have to be spotted by grade of liquid, which can add hours to the operation.

And of course, a look (and ops!) of the CSX Downtown Spur.
The layout is an almost exact recreation of the Downtown Spur which used to be Seaboard Air Line's route to the Miami station, which was demolished after Amtrak took over and moved west. It follows the Miami River for a short distance, and parallels NW 20th St into the incorporated city. The once double track main became a single track spur but remains one of the most exotic pieces of railroad ever. The likes of myself, Mike Thornton, and others have been lucky enough to catch trains on various points in this spur.
The spur unfortunately lost about half of the customers as opposed to what was being modeled here. The era is set at roughly 2007, when the switchback spur to Miami Produce Center was still there. Now, the whole switchback is gone, Trujillo & Son doesn't receive much anymore, and the main customers left are CBI, Sun Gas, Family & Son, FP&T, and Miami Iron and Metal. Another dockside customer for the Miami RIver is proposed so we'll wait and see on that. It truly is a fun stretch of railroad to run on and the model is simply accurate. The only thing I can say that was completely off was the snow outside. :P

The train we will run in this video is Y322, collecting cars from F&S and Trujillo. Forgive my bad coupling skills, the DCC system in question is different. I don't know what's up with the headlights either. But it's all cool.

Hope you guys ENJOY... and Shoutout to Lance. Check his videos out on YouTube (search his name) and his website www.lancemindheim.com.

This scratches one item off my railfan bucket list :))

Видео Visiting Lance Mindheim's HO Scale CSX Downtown Spur Miami Layout! 01.30.2017 канала TolgaEastCoast