Austin Railroads

One of the key design elements of the AMRS modular layout is downtown Austin, Texas. We aren't modelling an exact point in time; the track plan is roughly based on the 1935 arrangement (see the CAD drawing at the bottom of the page), though the buildings and rolling stock will mostly reflect the time period between 1950 and 1975.

At our July 18, 2020 meeting, President Riley Triggs gave a presentation about the railroads in downtown Austin during that time frame:

Here are the materials that Riley used in the presentation:

  Presentation Slides (27MB)
  Austin Railroad Pictures ca. 1981 (204MB) by Gary Phelps
  The Katy Yard at Austin (16MB) from Prototype Modeler, January 1983
  SP Operations in Central Texas, Part 1 (3MB)       Part 2 (3MB) from SP Mainline, Spring 2019
  Street Running in Austin (1MB) from Model Railroader, February 1969

And other links that were referenced:

•   J. Parker Lamb Photo Collection
•   John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library
•   Portal to Texas History
•   Texas Railroad History
•   Valuation Maps from the National Archives

Club Vice President David Petersen has also drafted a scale drawing of downtown Austin in around 1935. (North is up; SP (TNO) trackage in green, Katy trackage in purple, Mopac (IGN) trackage in blue.)

For more information about our modular Downtown Austin Expansion, including the track plan, click here.