- Size: 12′ x 12′
- Scale: N
- Minimum Radius: 15″
- Minimum Aisle Width: 27″
- Designed by Dan Bourque
The Cumberland Mine Railroad, built by U.S. Steel, is a coal hauler unlike any other. Built in 1975 to Class 1 standards, the 17-mile railroad is a hallmark of late 20th century engineering from start to finish, complete with a large, modern flood loader at one end and a similarly modern rapid-discharge dumper at the other. What makes the Cumberland Mine Railroad unique is that despite being surrounded on all four sides by lines of the former Monongahela Railway, The Cumberland Mine Railroad was completely isolated, miles from touching any other railroad. This makes it a great subject for those who want to model a railroad in its entirety (and not have to worry about staging).
The Layout Because of the large loading and unloading facilities at either end, long trains, and the limited amount of switching required, this railroad lends itself very well to N scale. My goal was to fit all the major features of the railroad into a bedroom on a single deck. This meant heavy attention to both ends of the railroad with a lot of selective compression in between. The line begins at the Monongahela River coal dock near Alicia, PA. From there it climbs gently and turns through beautiful rolling hills and farm country before arriving at the Cumberland Mine near Kirby, PA. Both ends of the line are marked with long sidings that can hold an entire train, and the middle is marked by bridges and highway overpasses, some of which are more like tunnels under the roads. There isn’t a single public grade crossing on the line, and while there isn’t any industry besides the mine (what would it link to anyway?), there is a single stub siding near Garrards Fort that looks like it might be used to load ties and supplies for the railroad, and an elevated dock near Mapletown that looks like it’s used for loading gravel on the mainline into a single hopper for this purpose–while I would be compressing much of the middle, I wanted to show all these features of the mainline. This layout is built in three scenes: the dock, the mine and the middle. The Cumberland Mine Railroad conveniently put its small engine and car shop facility high on a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River adjacent to the rail-to-barge dock. I imagine this whole area would be a great scene to model with the tracks up high and the steep bluff dropping off toward the river where a barge awaits its next load of coal. As an added bonus, there are gray stone cliffs above the tracks turning an otherwise dull scene into a scenic feature of the layout. From Alicia, the track rounds a bend (just like in real life) and climbs along the wall. Rather than hide this track completely, I recommend a low backdrop for the scenery in front of the track with the larger sky-and-hill backdrop on the wall behind these tracks–it would give the scene depth while making the hidden track accessible. This hidden track also creates the feel of distance between scenes. 
The middle scene is highly compressed, but it has enough of the common scenic features to give the sense of running through southwestern PA. To get the track orientation correct with respect to the hillside, and to increase the impression of distance between scenes, I ran the tracks to the far side of the peninsula first. This is normally a bad idea as crews find it harder to follow their trains, but with only one train to worry about and a short peninsula, I judged it a worthwhile compromise. As stated before, I wanted to include the two smaller MOW loading facilities for operation. As a bonus, I was able to include a few bridges including the bridge over Whiteley Creek that sits just a few yards from a beautiful little covered bridge on Roberts Run Road. The transitions through backdrops are hidden by one of the highway underpass tunnels on the Mapletown side and a steep hillside and trees cover the other end. The track climbs just high enough to cross over the Alicia-Mapletown track, and then it dives toward Kirby at a little over 3% grade. If you want to decrease this grade, you could just do a crossover behind the scenes at the base of the peninsula instead of an overpass. . . it’s not like you’re going to have a cornfield meet at the crossing only running one train. . .
Kirby marks the start of the third scene, Cumberland Mine. I used the I-79 overpass (another tunnel-like affair) to hide the transition out of the closet. The line between I-79 and the mine is significantly compressed, but there’s not much noteworthy between them except for a couple of buildings at Kirby. Cumberland Mine is modeled nearly to scale, at least the parts adjacent to the railroad which ends directly behind two large concrete silos. I’ve used the silos to hide a transition through the backdrop to meet up with the tail tracks for the dumper at Alicia which turns the entire layout into a continuous running loop for those days when you just want to run trains. You could also use this to produce an “empties in, loads out” operation for the mine and vice-versa for the dumper, though in reality, a single set of cars was used. Because it’s just a single-deck layout with no staging, construction would be super straightforward. Also, because the railroad ran basically one train, it would be an easy layout for DC operation, though the wireless walk-around throttles offered by DCC would aid the operator as they jumped around the layout room to follow the train.
Operations The crew for the Cumberland Mine Railroad was based in Alicia near the dumper/barge end of the railroad. From 1975-1997, the only power on the road was SD38-2 #1 (bought new and shipped in by barge) in a really sharp two-tone blue USS paint scheme. Cars were matching blue Ortner 5-bay rapid discharge hoppers, and no cabooses were needed. The SD38-2 faced the dumper end of the railroad. After leaving Alicia to pick up its train of empty rapid-discharge cars (I counted 65 in a train on GoogleEarth–this layout will accommodate about 28), the crew (often a single engineer) would head long-hood first toward the mine. After traversing the railroad, the train would pull under the flood loader, use the short tail track to route the SD38-2 around the train, then pull the train slowly through the loading process. After all cars were loaded, the train would head back home to Alicia and run the train straight through the dumper (the locomotive just went right through) where the cars would be stopped one at a time and dumped, a process that took about 55 seconds per car. After unloading the train, the locomotive would tie back up again at Alicia. Watch this great 6-minute video of loading and unloading in action and other scenes from the Cumberland Mine Railroad!
In 1997, the Cumberland Mine Railroad received a second SD38-2 (a used engine from the Yankeetown Dock facility) and later an SD40R. With multiple locomotives, trains were run with a single locomotive at each end thus eliminating the run-around moves. Hoppers were also upgraded to more modern designs, though many of the Ortners seem to have remained on the property (where else would they go?). GoogleEarth also shows some empties left at the dumper, so for variety, you could vary the length of the train based on the mine’s demands that day. Finally, you could run an occasional work train, loading the single gravel hopper at Mapletown and picking up some ties at Garrards Fort before plying the rest of the rails.
You can also learn more about the Cumberland Mine Railroad in Stephen Timko’s book, The Monongahela Railway in Color, Vol 2.
Things I Like About This Plan
- Models an entire railroad in a bedroom
- Large loader and barge facility modeled near scale
- Some great scenery
- Continuous running option
Things I Don’t Like About This Plan
- Very little variety in operations
- Significant compression
- Lots of hidden run
- Tight-ish aisles
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