Ken Smith’s South Durham Ry. is an HO scale shelf layout that fills a 9′-6″ x 11′-0″ spare room. The freelanced model railroad depicts a North Carolina bridge line connecting the Southern Ry. (SOU), Seaboard Coast Line (SCL), and Durham Southern in the 1970s. Second-generation diesel power moves grain, plastic pellets, perishable fruit, and other freights through an industrial setting. The layout was featured in the October 2024 Model Railroader.
This is Ken’s fourth layout, not counting the S-gauge American Flyer toy trains his father gave him in 1959. Work began in 2019, after a move to a new home. Since Ken wanted to depict a single small town, the layout is flat, with all track 58″ above the floor. A duckunder allows entrance to the center of the around-the-walls layout.
Ken Smith’s South Durham Ry. mostly features bridge traffic from the SOU, SCL, and Durham Southern. However, an expansion into a second room is planned that will expand staging for those railroads, freeing up the current staging in a closet for local trains. This will allow Ken to add more local switching, increasing the number of operators the layout can support.
The layout is Digital Command Control operated with two Lenz throttles. It was built using Atlas code 83 flextrack on Homasote roadbed. The backdrops are from Backdrop Junction, and scenery includes ground foam, real dirt, and trees handmade from wire armatures.
