The Wind River Railroad is an HO railroad Owned by Ron R. He resides in Denver, CO with the layout in the specially built "Train Room" in the basement. The railroad occupies a 340 square foot room, and is 14.5 feet long on the west side, 12.5 feet on the east side, 22.5 feet on the north side and has a 16 foot peninsula branching from the east wall.

This railroad is a freelanced branchline railroad that is mostly operated by steam locomotives owned by the Wind River Railroad Company. The locale of the line is Colorado/Utah and a bit of Kansas thrown in to the mix. The RR is modeled in the late 1930's to 1971 when Rio Grande introduced their SD40-T2 or "Tunnel Motor". Being in this time period, trains always ran with a caboose at the rear. This is a rule that Ron enforces on the railroad. He is always saying, "NO FRED's." A FRED is a Flashing Rear End Device. If you have seen a modern day train there is a red light that flashes on the rear near the coupler, these lights are called FRED's.

Being that this is a branch line, trains are not very long. All freight trains that leave the yard have 4-6 cars on them with a single 2-8-0, 0-8-0, 0-6-0, or 2-10-0 and of course that caboose as mentioned before. Due to the size of the sidings on the railroad, all freight cars are limited to a maximum size of a scale 40'. The line is actually fairly long for a branchline railroad, at 250 feet or 4 scale miles, an unlimited number of trains can be run at any given time on a train orders based system. Since the layout is so large, and there are huge mountains to be built, some areas of the layout are still in the "Plywood Prairie" stage. While much of the scenery has been done, such as the penninsula, Leadville, Denver North Yard, and Denver South Yard, we have a long way to go before you will be able to view the layout in a famous magazine such as "Model Railroader" or "Model Railroading."

The layout is proudly operated using Lenz DCC. DCC stands for Digital Command Control. This is the ONLY way to run a professional railroad. We operate on a train orders bases system and run any number of freights with a passenger train or two thrown in to slow the freights down. We have the potential to run 20-30 different trains in a two hour block of operating time. The freights typically are all locals, however once in a while there will be a through freight usually making 2 laps and terminating. All locals are built in the Denver South Yard. Once built, they proceed to the industries off of the main at, Denver North Yard, New Castle, Richfield, Tennessee Pass, and Leadville. They perform their switching tasks and proceed back to the Denver South Yard or terminate at one of these locations. Terminating freights will either return light or will get a new set of train orders and proceed to continue switching duites until returning to the Denver South Yard. Passenger trains originate from the Denver South Yard as well, however they proceed directly to Denver Union Station for passenger pick-up. They will then make 3 other station stops at Leadville, Minturn, and Danville before returning to Denver Union Station. Station stops are 30 real seconds in length, and passenger trains are on a tight schedule. All passenger trains have the right-of-way over any freight. Westbound passenger trains have right-of-way over eastbound passenger trains.

We hope you enjoy the Wind River Railroad. Please look at our pictures while you are here! The layout is furthered along by people who are very interested in seeing this layout grow to fulfill Ron's dreams of a great model railroad. We need more people that are interested! This is NOT A CLUB. We are a "Group of Engineers that get together to have fun"! There are NO REQUIREMENTS! No dues, no requirements to bring locos, or rolling stock. No requrements to bring buildings. The only thing that we ask, is if you own a LENZ DCC sytem please bring your controller. THAT IS ALL! We get together on the first Monday night and third Saturday night each month from 6:30pm to 9:00pm to have fun. You can view our current schedule HERE!

We are open to people that are interested in seeing the layout, or lending their modeling experience, so send us an E-MAIL.

THANKS FOR VISITING THE WIND RIVER RAILROAD!! PLEASE COME BACK!!