All about the community of model railroading and rail enthusiasm
Model Railroading
UPDATED: April 16, 2026
The Whitehurst & Pine Ridge Railroad was disassembled in 2017 but has been 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 model 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 a protolance Class I from Dallas to Kansas City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and introduce a Joint Agency concept with 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 layout 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 two expansions in Cypress Yard, totaling 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 Class I operations. And, you’ll be sure to see some fallen flags roads intermingling between each end of the railroad.
And while the layout looks like a layout, work is ongoing, 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 Mount Pleasant. Also, the plan was scrapped for Fort Smith occupying one side of the second peninsula and Whitehurst and Pine Ridge the other.
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, including two large grain operators.
Overall, the vision has been realized; it was punctuated on a cold November 2019 weeknight when three 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 20 years 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 2019 for a sneak peek at the W&PRR. 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, 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 a pair of DC cabs. The W&PRR in Whitehurst, Van Buren and Pine Ridge is controlled by a third cab; Texarkana on a fourth.
The layout can handle four operators – two on the main line and and one each in Texarkana and on the namesake Class II short line, W&PRR. Mainline trains only potentially interact at interchanges in Fort Smith and Texarkana. Meets are managed through passing sidings in each city using power-routing turnouts.
With a 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.” In 2025, two were painted in the W&PRR’s drab olive and white scheme.
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 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 visitors to the old layout. On the north side of the room is Van Buren, which served as a branch line terminus in Elaine 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 track in 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. Two 4-foot-wide peninsulas, known as “The Horseshoe” to operators, house cities and switching in between terminuses.
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 and cross-bracing. 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 side-by-side and separated by a 3-inch drop – Kansas City, framed by a scale brick wall, sits lower than Dallas.
Texarkana, AR, and Texarkana, TX, occupy one pennisula 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 layout 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 Jefferson City to Indiana City. The area was lengthened in early 2024 from Indiana City to a slightly lower level that is Springfield and East Alton, IL, under the Carthage.
Custom-made black curtains hide the benchwork under staging.
The layout’s scope is an adaptation of a prototype Class I’s route from Dallas to Kansas City. The W&PRR’s route deviates from the prototype’s by running from Dallas to Texarkana and through western Arkansas to Kansas City as opposed to traversing through Oklahoma and Kansas.
This iteration features the Class Is interchanging cars with the W&PRR in Fort Smith and Pine Ridge, AR, and Kansas City Southern Terminal Rwy. in Texarkana, AR. The namesake W&PRR, a Class II short line, operates in Van Buren, Whitehurst and Pine Ridge and serves nine customers. KCST switches six customers on the Texas side of Texarkana and one on the Arkansas side.
The era has been stretched from the mid-1980s on the old W&PRR to the early 1990s, when mergers and acquisitions were at their height. Missouri Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Western Pacific power are routinely intermingled with other four- and six-axle diesels. 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 operates on a branch line in Arkansas inspired by the ex-Missouri Pacific line serving Van Buren, Ozark and Greenwood, AR, near Fort Smith. The short line depends on healthy cement and petroleum carloads to make a profit. And whatever used motive power the market can spare.
Mainline trains originate in Dallas and Kansas City and run through Mount Pleasant, TX, Texarkana, AR, Pine Ridge, Whitehurst, Fort Smith, AR and Carthage, MO.
Interchanges in Texarkana and Fort Smith allow 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 main line to get to Pine Ridge.
All W&PRR freight destined for Kansas City and Dallas is set on the interchange in Fort Smith.
In Texarkana, the KCST moves cars to interchange for both Class I railroads.
The design is based on running 15- to 20-car trains on an 80-foot main line and minimizes switching on curves. Since May 2025, when operations became more refined, the average length of mainline trains is 16.6 cars.
The Class Is 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 one has dedicated unit grain operations at the Cargill elevator.
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 five in 2020.
In July 2024, Cypress underwent a second expansion that, with the addition of the Cargill grain elevator, shifted focus to more thru-train and unit grain service from Kansas City to Texarkana and Dallas. A Joint Agency arrival/departure track was designated and tracks were reassigned. A classification track was added and two tracks were built for Cargill along a diverting line from Cypress for trains bound for Springfield, MO, and East St. Louis.
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, IL, and East Alton, IL.
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 freight cars. In 2025, the W&PRR short line began establishing its identity with new locomotive paint schemes.
So check back here or in the Cowcatcher for updates.
