White Creek Railroad: Operations and Remote Control

Click on each image for a closer look!

The White Creek Railroad is a private 7.5-inch gauge miniature railway constructed by Russ and Mara Eldred and is located in a rural country setting in Western Michigan on approximately 120 acres of land. The track meanders through densely wooded hills and open fields, across marshy lowlands and nearly encompasses two picturesque lakes.

As mentioned in the story of the development of the railway on their website, by May 1, 2000 (over ten years ago) the railroad statistics included 5 miles of mainline with 6.5 miles total track, over 1000 feet of trestles, 190+ switches, bi-directional running with 30 passing sidings, 30 signal blocks, 27 industry spurs, 2 yards, and 9 junctions.

Many miniature railway enthusiasts build detailed scale models of complete train sets to pull with their locomotives. On very large miniature railways such as this one, a very popular event is to operate the railway just like a real one to operating orders and schedules. Trains travel from town to town and from rail yard to rail yard. Click here to read an interesting invitation for railway enthusiasts to join them on the White Creek Railroad at one of their operations of this type last May.

The video below (taken on the White Creek Railroad) was posted on September 29th, 2011 and shows how radio control can be used to operate miniature train sets such as the ones that we use in Roundhouse Park. Note that, just as is done on rail railroads, they use remote control helper locomotives located in mid-train or at the back of the train to help with the load.

Posting by Russ Milland