Baltic Street yard is a fictitious freight yard set in western Colorado Springs. Its’ position and route are based on a real railroad, the Colorado Midland Railway, that connected Colorado Springs to Leadville, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, and points west.  The real railroad unfortunately went bankrupt in 1923 and was scrapped.  This layout is what might have been in the 1950’s – 1970’s had the line been saved from the scrap dealers by the Santa Fe railroad.

Within Colorado Springs the Colorado Midland had its own freight yard which from its east end exchanged traffic with various railroads through its connection into the Santa Fe yard that still runs alongside S Sierra Madre Street. Connections included the Denver & Rio Grande ( DRGW), Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CBQ), Rock Island ( RI ), Colorado & Southern (CS ) and the Missouri Pacific ( Mopac). From the west end of the yard the line ran up Fountains Creek on a route that is now covered by Highway 24, the Midland Expressway.

Traffic is composed of freight coming from the east to be interchanged with the CMR for delivery westward and traffic coming off the CMR to be sent further east. East bound traffic included coal, lumber, metal ores for refining and stock. Westbound traffic was mining supplies, automobiles, empty hopper cars and boxcars of household goods. The yard has its own industries which receive and despatch freight cars.

The layout is designed for either DC or DCC operation and Arnold or Microtrains couplers.

These pictures show the process of beginning to create the layout. Initially the track was laid out on the baseboards to establish exactly what the layout would look like. The next stage was to work out how the various buildings that came from the old layout would fit into the new, followed by seeing what were the parts of the layout where we had nothing suitable and would have to assemble new buildings. Once this was done the baseboards were picked up from the floor and the legs made to support them at the desired operating height.