We are pleased to announce the WINNERS of our first ever Layout Design Contest!

The first prize winner of our contest is Jim Schenk with his submission entitled “Appleton Wisconsin”.  Jim’s plan is an adaptation of a John Armstrong plan called” The St Clair South West” and Jim’s version represents a segment of the C&NW’s trackage from Milwaukee to Green Bay that runs from Appleton Junction northward through Appleton and Kaukauna.  Featured on this layout are a busy harbor with car ferry service, a paper mill and a gravel quarry.

Second Place goes to Peter Faber for his layout “ Saesing Station” in his native village in Denmark.  The layout is a fantasy layout, but based on a real train station on a minor local railway the ”Hjoerring-Hoerby private railway  HHP”, that was opened on November 8. 1913, and sadly closed again, due to truck and bus traffic taking over, march 15. 1953.  The original station was a single track passing through station with one sidetrack, to hold the boxcars when the peat was loaded. The main cargo was peat, maize and passengers to the larger cities in both ends of the railway. In the peak year (1924/25) there were 141,000 passengers on the railroad, and 27,000 tons of cargo.  Saesing station, is set in the late 1940’s to approx 1955, that is the period around the closing of the railway,.  But in Peter’s world, the local community sees it as a good investment to let both regional and long distance trains pass through Saesing Station and therefore, the station has expanded to a local track (where the steamers  turn each time they arrive in Saesing) and a track for the larger trains going East - West. It’s Peter's intention to actually implement this “module” in a larger home layout