September 2019 29My HO scale Rice Lake, Dallas &
Menomonie Ry. (RLD&M) is named
after a short line in northwestern
Wisconsin that was eventually absorbed
into the Soo Line around the turn of the
20th century. The line was known for
the blueberry bushes along its route,
hence its Blueberry Line nickname.
However, my layout portrays the
RLD&M in a “what could have been”
theme. Instead of a sleepy short line, my
RLD&M is a busy main on the Soo that
connects the Twin Cities with Duluth,
Minn. The time period is the steam-to-
diesel transition era in the early 1950s.
The multi-level layout occupies a
17 x 24-foot space with a 2 x 9-foot
extension for an interchange yard. It also
features a 100-foot-long mainline run.
It’s the most complete home layout that
I’ve built, but it’s certainly not the first.A lifetime of trains
For as long as I can remember, I’ve
liked trains. I have a photo of myself
at my first birthday with a pull-along
steam engine toy. When my older
brother’s interest in model trains waned,
I inherited first his American Flyer
and then his HO scale train layouts.
I preferred the realism of the HO trains,
especially the fact that the locomotives
had couplers on both ends for switching.
With sports and other activities dur-
ing high school, I didn’t spend much
time with the hobby during my teenage
years. Then when I was in college, I told
my steady girlfriend (now my wife)
about how much I missed the hobby and
my dreams of a house where I could
build a layout. That year, she bought me
a subscription to Model Railroader mag-
azine, and I’ve been back in the hobby
ever since.Planning the railroad
Back in the 1980s, I researched and
wrote a history of the RLD&M that
appeared in an issue of The SOO maga-
zine, published by the Soo Line
Historical & Technical Society. Several
years ago, my friend Arlyn Colby
expanded that research and published abook titled The Blueberry Line. The last
Soo Line train ran on the line in the
early 1960s. None of the prototype track-
age remains, but some of the old right-
of-way has been preserved as a recre-
ational trail.
Historical research led to an idea for a
model railroad, inspired by the Soo and
the RLD&M. While planning my layout,
I used many of the prototype town
names. The Ridgeland branch line on my
track plan is the most representative of
the prototype, modeling the branch that
ran from Ridgeland to Barron.
Following this theme, I kicked
around layout ideas for a few years after
we moved to a new home in Verona,
Wis., in 1986. I also spent time finishing
the basement layout room and set up
some preliminary benchwork, but noth-
ing permanent.
By then I’d also become involved in
the South Central Wisconsin Division of
the National Model Railroad Association
(NMRA). At a 1993 meeting, the divi-
sion announced that we would host the
1997 NMRA National Convention in
Madison, Wis. That announcement
proved to be the great motivator for me
to get to work. I really wanted my
RLD&M to be up and running as one of
the convention’s featured layout tours.
By the convention, I’d more than
reached my goal and had completed 90
percent of the layout. However, I made
many modifications to the railroad over
the next 20 years. These included,
expanding the West Minneapolis staging
yard, which I wrote about in the
February 2014 Model Railroader.❷ An Alco S-2 switches the Soo Line freight house while an Electro-Motive Division
F7 leads mail and express train ME-1 into West Minneapolis. Bob wrote about
adding this section to the layout in the February 2014 issue.