The James River Branch Z Scale Model Railroad: The Plan

The Plan

The James River Branch presents a snippet of a fictitious Reading Railroad branchline, located somewhere in northeastern New Jersey, in late spring/early summer of 1975. The Reading is nearing the end of its life, about to be swallowed up—along with its sister line, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, among others—by Conrail. Wearing an outdated paint scheme, an aged GP7 is dragging a few rusty old freight cars around to the last surviving industries which, like the Reading, are about to evaporate.

Measuring a mere 15 by 36 inches, the layout is dominated by the town of Naughtright, which fills nearly half of its area. The balance of the layout is verdant countryside, featuring a farm, park, campground and river. The track plan is designed for continuous running only, with two short segments of visible track, as shown below.

There is considerably more hidden trackage: the quasi-figure-eight is joined by two helixes, as shown below. Although grades are steep (~4%) and curves are sharp (<6"), performance is not adversely affected.

Originally intended to be a "stopgap" layout to hold me over until I could return to an N scale basement empire, lately the James River Branch has become my primary modeling focus. It's already on its second incarnation, the first having been abandoned as unsatisfactory. For the current version, I'm attempting to raise the bar for fine Z scale modeling. I'm proud to say that one recent visitor thought at first it was HO, based on the photos.

Probably the most notable feature of the layout is handlaid Code 25 track, which includes a turnout. At present only a couple of structures and a small amount of scenery are complete. The structures are all heavily kitbashed; the passenger station, for instance, borders on being scratchbuilt.

This website features many articles detailing the layout's construction, from the base to the buildings, including track, scenery, rolling stock, detailing and animated effects. Below is an interactive map of the town of Naughtright; hover over a structure to see its name, and click on it to see the page on its construction.

Click on a structure for details.

Since the website is growing side-by-side with the \layout, there's always something new, so please stop back often. Feel free to contact me by clicking my name at the bottom of any page.

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