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UPDATED: July 24, 2024
The Whitehurst & Pine Ridge Railroad was disassembled in 2017 but is being rebuilt, similar in scope, to a much larger size (see track plan below). Following is an overview of progress since construction began in late December 2018. Portions of this story appeared in the March/April 2020 edition of Cowcatcher Magazine and have since been updated.
The new N-scale Whitehurst & Pine Ridge Railroad commenced construction on New Year’s Eve 2018 with the intent to be a more manageable operational layout with mainline running and branch line switching. It was to be in a comfortable setting suiting multiple operators, and a place where visitors could leisurely walk about and look around.
On a grander scale, the layout’s centerpiece would be the freelance Arkansas-based short line that is the last mile for the protolance Union Pacific from Dallas to Kansas City, and introduce the Kansas City Southern as a secondary mainline player.
Right down to DC block operations. Call it refreshed but old school.
Today, the layout consumes a little more than half of a 400-square-foot area, has two peninsulas and a 21-foot section along the wall that houses both ends of the railroad. With wide, comfortable aisles – the minimum of two 2.5 feet and the maximum at just shy of 4 feet – the W&PRR is roomy. Much of the layout can be seen from a 360-degree vantage point.
In all, it is about three times the footprint of the former layout, which offered limited accessibility for operations and viewing.
Since the first board was cut, the W&PRR has gone mostly according to plan. Temptations to reset and fill entirely much of the space that once was a two-car garage were ignored (and still are). The only immediate deviations were widening the north side of the layout to accommodate a large viaduct and expanding Kansas City’s Cypress Yard by less than a foot in width.
And with all rail spiked, the track plan has been altered only slightly from what was proposed (and discussed in a “lessons learned” presentation at the 2019 Lone Star Region/NMRA convention).
The W&PRR has been fully operational since 2022 and undergone an expansion to lower staging and in Kansas City (again). The mainline operating plan has been refined to focus more on the UP with support from the KCS. And, you might even seen the Burlington Northern in a cameo appearance.
And while the layout looks like a layout, there is so much more to do, and we’ll periodically chronicle updates in the Cowcatcher. We’ll offer insight into how some things came together, and others did not.
Let’s bring you up to speed, starting with construction and how the layout has progressed:
The months following the start of construction on New Year’s Eve 2018 held aspirations that each piece of lumber cut and track spiked would achieve the layout goal.
The original concept soon deviated: the peninsula planned for Shreveport and Sulphur Springs became Texarkana and Mt. Pleasant. Also, the plan for Fort Smith was to occupy one side of the second peninsula and Whitehurst and Pine Ridge to combine for the other was scrapped.
Track plans changed accordingly – Pine Ridge is now isolated on one side of the peninsula and Whitehurst occupies the other next to the Fort Smith interchange. .
As yards at the railroad’s terminuses bloomed, passing sidings in Texarkana and Fort Smith were refined, and industries in Whitehurst, Pine Ridge and Van Burn sprouted. The “bottoms” in Texarkana began to fill in with numerous rail customers.
Overall, the vision has been realized; it was punctuated on a cold November 2019 weeknight when a three-unit set of Union Pacific SD40-2s unceremoniously lashed up to a 10-car train in Dallas Yard and headed north to Kansas City after the main line was connected in Denson. The heavy powered lash-up was overkill for a short string of hoppers and box cars but it seemed so right.
Even sweeter that the motive power consist featured two new Kato SD40-2s, manufactured in 2019, paired with one built two decades previous. They synched perfectly (a Kato representative said the locomotives are built the exact same even though two decades of production separated them).
At least for Kato locomotives, which represent a sizable chunk of the motive power fleet, it was the realization that some existing equipment could co-mingle well with newer DC technology. Thus, a large overhaul of diesel power dating as far back as the 1990s could at least be temporarily shelved.
Friends and neighbors familiar with the old layout convened at a mini-open house over Super Bowl weekend for the W&PRR’s debut. It was nice that they were able to leisurely walk around and see the progress. They seemed to approve.
Since then, the W&PRR has made remarkable progress – track is finished (including two recent additions from the original plan), scenery is in place and train movements are working as anticipated via the RailOp dispatching system.
Like the original W&PRR, operations are based on analog technology. The main line from Kansas City to Dallas consists of 10 blocks (two in Dallas) operated on two cabs. The W&PRR in Whitehurst, Van Buren and Pine Ridge runs off of one cab; Texarkana off another.
Mainline meets are managed through passing sidings in Fort Smith and Texarkana using power-routing turnouts but they are seldom. While the layout can handle four operators, the perfect mix for now is three – a main line operator and trainmasters in Texarkana and the W&PRR. Trains only potentially interact with each other at interchanges in Fort Smith and Texarkana.
With its UP merger-era influence, the W&PRR is a unique study resulting from unintentional power acquisitions of GP30s. Four in various merger-era liveries are on the roster, still wearing their original dress. A more appropriate moniker for the “Arkansas Pine Route” may, in fact, be “Where GP30s Live Again.”
Remnants of the old W&PRR, even down to some pieces of track and turnouts, are scattered throughout.
Scenery, densely laden with conifers and deciduous trees native to the region, is about 95 percent done. At last count, the layout has about 1,000 trees, including about 600 pines. And there is still room for more (but not much).
At the end of the peninsula housing Whitehurst and Pine Ridge is the signature Shelby Bluffs that greeted greeted visitors to the old layout. On the north side of the room is Van Buren, formerly Elaine, which served as a branchline terminus on the old W&PRR.
Elsewhere, the former Little Rock yard has been rebranded as part of Dallas Yard. The extension of the yard into North Dallas is a portion of the track plan for Monroe, which was at the back of the old layout. And most of lower staging on the old W&PRR is now underneath in Indiana City, which serves as staging and locomotive storage.
The layout is on one level, table-top and end points of the railroad parallel each other against the east wall of the room. Trains run to and from Dallas and Kansas City to two peninsulas that form a “U”.
The table-top is self-supporting, built from 1/2″ and 3/8” plywood and 1” x 4” soft pine lumber. Bench work is supported by 2” x 2” posts and assembled using wood screws. It’s sturdy enough to absorb shock since very little is backed by a wall.
Dallas and Kansas City are built on a 21-foot section along the east wall. Yards are separated by a slight drop in terrain; Kansas City sits about 3 inches lower than Dallas.
The mainline stretches over two peninsulas that are each close to 4 feet wide. On one peninsula is Texarkana, and Whitehurst and Pine Ridge are on either side of the other. Width isn’t an issue; each can be easily accessed.
Two cabinets that supported the former W&PRR are planted underneath the peninsulas and offer storage.
Underneath the top level is lower staging, which is built from plywood sitting on cross-supports. Staging runs about half the length of the layout from Kansas City to Indiana City.
Staging was lengthened in early 2024 from Indiana City to a slightly lower level that is Springfield and East Alton under the Carthage. The only operations in staging are from Kansas City to the power plant in Jefferson City, which is easily accessible under Fort Smith.
The layout’s scope is a protolance of UP’s route from Dallas to Kansas City. This iteration features mostly interchanging cars between UP and W&PRR in Fort Smith, AR, and Kansas City Southern in Texarkana, AR. The W&PRR operates in Van Buren, Whitehurst and Pine Ridge and serves nine customers. KCS, which plays a secondary role, serves seven customers on the Texas side of Texarkana.
The era has been stretched from the mid-1980s on the old W&PRR to the early 1990s, when UP is entering its final phase of mergers and acquisitions. Missouri Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Western Pacific power are routinely intermingled with UP’s fleet of four- and six-axle diesels. While the mergers haven’t been complete, Southern Pacific and St. Louis & Southwestern (Cotton Belt) leased power are occasionally utilized for manifest runs.
Depending on the mood, more modern equipment may appear on the layout.
The W&PRR, known as the Arkansas Pine Route, operates as a UP subsidiary on a former Missouri Pacific branch line in Arkansas, and depends on healthy cement and petroleum carloads to make a profit. And whatever motive power its mother road can spare.
Trains originate in Dallas and Kansas City and run through Mt. Pleasant, TX, Texarkana, AR, Pine Ridge, Whitehurst, Fort Smith, AR and Carthage, MO.
Interchanges in Texarkana (UP and KCS) and Fort Smith (UP and W&PRR) allow main line trains from either direction to drop off and pick up freight. The W&PRR services industries in Van Buren and Whitehurst on its own network, and has trackage rights on the UP to get to Pine Ridge.
All W&PRR freight destined for Kansas City and Dallas via UP is set on the interchange in Fort Smith (in early 2024, UP discontinued accepting KCS interchange cars).
In Texarkana, the KCS moves cars to interchange for either KCS road freights or UP trains.
The design is based on running 15- to 20-car trains on an 80-foot main line and minimizes switching on curves.
Union Pacific and KCS co-mingle in Dallas Yard and Kansas City’s Cypress Yard, sharing inbound and outbound trackage while maintaining separate classification yard tracks. The concept is loosely based on the Joint Agency yard operated by KCS and the Milwaukee Road from 1942 to 1985 at Kansas City’s Knoche and East yards.
Cypress serves inbound and outbound trains for both railroads but KCS has more than a cameo role with unit grain operations at the new Cargill elevator.
UP has the big stage on the main line with several manifest and unit trains to choose from.
From Dallas, trains leave the eight-track yard, which includes three arrival/departure tracks, and exit past East Dallas on one level until entering Westridge at the other end of the layout. A 2 percent downward grade at Westridge flows into Cypress Yard.
Cypress originally had three tracks but after a few trial runs it was expanded to six.
In 2024, Cypress underwent a second expansion that, with the addition of the Cargill grain elevator, shifted KCS’s role to more thru-train and unit grain service from Kansas City to Texarkana and Dallas. A Joint Agency arrival/departure track was designated and UP and KCS tracks were reassigned. A classification track was added for KCS, and two tracks were built for Cargill along a diverting line from Cypress for KCS trains bound for Springfield and East St. Louis.
UP’s Bartee Service Center anchors North Kansas City and access to an “off-stage” lower level via a long run at a 3 percent grade paralleling much of the top of the layout to Jefferson City, Indiana City, Springfield and East Alton.
The layout can accommodate up to four operators simultaneously – two main line jobs, switching Texarkana on the KCS and switching on the W&PRR. A fifth operator, switching Dallas Yard, is being considered.
Layouts are seldom finished, and it’s impossible to think that the W&PRR’s completion is imminent. Things change – the era has been stretched a little to include more modern power and, as of June 2024, W&PRR management toyed with unique paint designs for its locomotives.
So check back here or in the Cowcatcher for updates.
