Ted Stephens

Ohio and Little Kanawha

The Ohio & Little Kanawha Railroad is a freelance 1950s West Virginia coal hauling railroad. It takes you on a journey through the rolling hills of West Virginia, through small towns and big cities.

This HO scale railroad features 250 feet of mostly hand laid single and double track mainline. All turnouts and track are scratch built using Fast Tracks assembly fixtures. Operations are designed around the layout’s two yards, four towns and two large and one small coal mine. Both local switching jobs and long mainline runs characterize the operations scheme. The layout features many scratch built and contest winning craftsman structures. Scenery is almost 100% complete.

The layout is built in a 750 square foot room of an industrial building. The main layout room is 50 x 15 with a branch in an adjacent room. Construction is single level.

With a Yard Master and 4 crews, a typical ops session lasts about 4 hours.

Operation and Control:

• NCE-DCC with wireless throttles
• Car forwarding by car cards and waybills
• Dispatching via pseudo-CTC with trackside telephones
• Manual uncoupling using picks
• All mainline engines are equipped with sound decoders

Here is a link to the TSG video tour:

Modified 11/24/2023