Exhibitor Thursday: Mohegan Pequot HO Scale

Dan Delany's Brookside Farm Module on the club's layout.

Exhibitor Spotlight Name: Mohegan Pequot - HO Scale Years at the Show: 29 Display Style: Modular Layout Type: Model Railroad Club Size: 42'x72' Present Location: Young Building Past Location: Better Living Center Home Location: Ledyard, CT Website: MPRR Club Social Media:

Besides working to prepare the Tribute to Springfield layout, the other task keeping me busy in the run up to the final weekend in January is my role as the HO Module Coordinator with the Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club's HO modular layout.  We've been busy developing the plan for our club's display since the Monday after last year's show (seriously).  Our HO layout features over 300 linear feet of mainline spread across 80+ module sections and many of our projects each year are geared around being completed for the Railroad Hobby Show.  We have about 20 members who own modules and another dozen or so who help operate the layout each year.  All of these folks have many projects they want to build each year and it takes a fair amount of planning to make sure everything fits in our space during the show.

With such an active group, over the last 10 years or so, the club has completely re-built and expanded its HO modular layout.  Of the club's 82 module sections available for a show, all but one module is less than 10 years old!  At last year's show, we debuted 21 new module sections.  Most of these modules only had track at the time but each of these sections has been undergoing extensive construction activity over the last year and will all be greatly improved for the 2016 edition of the show.  Quite a few members have contributed to this effort and the layout has steadily improved over the last decade. 

At the Railroad Hobby Show, our 42'x72' layout is inside the Young Building and setup in a U-shape.  We try to keep traffic busy on our mainlines with six trains operating at a time on the double track mainline.  It takes a crew of about 30 people to keep this much traffic rolling over the 15 hours the show is open to the public.

This year we have a number of new modules which will be on display along with the continued improvements on the modules which debuted over the last couple of years.  The Tribute to Springfield layout will be setup on the end of one of the legs of the layout.  As a sneak peak, our layout plan is below.

To learn more about the club, visit the website at: www.mprr.org

The club's HO scale modular layout plan.