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THE AMARILLO RAILROAD MUSEUM, INC.

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The Layout
The Santa Fe Railway from Canadian, Texas, to Clovis, New Mexico, in HO-scale
From the inception of the organization as the Amarillo Model Railroad Association, our main goal has been the construction of a large HO-scale model railroad depicting the Santa Fe Railway's route across the Texas Panhandle. Once we purchased land and the building was near completion, we sought out the help of a professional model railroad designer. It was an interesting venture. The primary reason to use a professional was to garner their expertise and create a guidebook of sorts that laid out how the railroad would be built. We believed that this would enhance our ability to work on the layout and be more productive since we would not have to resort to getting members to agree on the trackplan and concepts.

Our first designer (who will remain nameless) provided us with a totally unacceptable, pencil-drawn spaghetti bowl that he was unwilling to modify. He had come highly recommended, but knew little about modern-day layout concepts, operations, or DCC(just to name a few shortcomings). Layout Design Elements? never heard of them! Although we paid the fellow handsomely for his efforts, we finally bit the bullet, and moved on to find a responsible designer.

To our good fortune, we found Byron Henderson (see links page). Byron knows his stuff, and working with our Layout Design Committee, constructed a wonderful two-level railroad for us using 3rd Planit. After many itterations we received the final plans in 2007, and began building the layout shortly thereafter.


Click here to read Byron Henderson's description and theory behind his design of the layout. >Layout Description


Framed by snow and a crystal clear West Texas sky, a Santa Fe local finishes up switching at Laketon, Texas, in the 1970s. Although Laketon, on the old Clinton-Oklahoma-Western (COW), won't be modeled on our layout, there is a cameo appearance of the line at Pampa, and it will generate a good amount of traffic to and from carbon black plants at Coltexo, and various small towns.
Photo by Virgil Young.


The staging yard on the lower level was our first track laying effort. From this point, trains will run toward the camera and emerge at Canadian, TX, to begin their trek west across the Panhandle. To the far back, the yard curves to the left, and an additional small staging yard and reverse loop.


A digital image of the lower level of our layout from the 3rd Planit program. This level will represent the railroad from Canadian through Amarillo and south to Zita before it enters a helix to the upper level. Trains will begin their journey at the staging yard located at the left of the image, proceed north into Canadian, follow the Canadain River valley through Miami and climb to Pampa through Hoover. The line then passes through Kingsmill, Cuyler, and Panhandle on its way to Amarillo. Junctions with branch lines at Pampa (C-O-W to Clinton, OK) and Panhandle (to Borger) add to the complexity of the operations. Coming into the Amarillo area, the line passes Dumas Junction (branch to the Dumas subdivision), and crosses the Rock Island and Ft. Worh and Denver (Burlington) tracks before passing the Amarillo depot and entering Junior Yard. South of Amarillo, the two track runs to Zita just before entering a helix taking the rails to the upper level.


Continuing on from the lower level, the railroad enter Canyon, TX after passing West Texas State University's Buffalo Stadium. At Canyon there is a simulated branch down to Lubbock that takes trains into an upper staging yard. Proceeding west down the mainline, the railroad passes Umbarger on it way to the major town of Hereford and its many industries. Then through Black, Friona, Bovina, crosses into New Mexico at the border towns of Farwell, TX and Texico, NM. Clovis is modeled off-stage as the upper level staging yard.