Hello,

Welcome and thank you for visiting my Centralia Terminal Railroad home page.  I was born and raised in Centralia WA, so my railroading interests are mainly western WA.  This will be my sixth layout in 38 years. 

A little history about how this layout came about.  I have a friend that lives in Washington D.C. that sent me a file from the ICC submitted May 26, 1930.

The primary purpose of the Centralia Terminal Railroad was to transport logs from timberlands controlled by the Milwaukee Railroad, to the mill of the Western Cross Arm & Manufacturing Company at Centralia WA, and to transport the shingles and finished lumber produced at that mill to the Milwaukee Railroad for shipment over its lines. The timberlands were at and near the esterly terminus of the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway.  (This would have been in the area of Mossyrock WA).

Part of the deal to be able to buy the Milwaukee timber was that it had to be shipped over the Milwaukee Railroad to and from the mill.  Milwaukee was to build a connection from their line to the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade Railway in Chehalis WA.  A connection with the Milwaukee's Willapa Harbor branch would also be built from Blakeslee Jct. (NW of Centralia), easterly towards the mill, approximately 3.2 miles.

The three big railroad in the northwest at the time (NP, GN, OWR&N) successfully fought this with the ICC.  The application was denied on July 14, 1930.

Centralia Terminal Railroad 1970 - ?.

I have decided to design my new layout around the Centralia Terminal Railroad in the 1970's as if they were still in operation.

I layout plan is for three levels, following the BN mainline from Seattle WA to Portland OR., and the Milwaukee from Tacoma WA to Portland OR. The lower level will be staging for Seattle, Tacoma and Portland.  The middle level will be the Centralia and Chehalis area as if the Centralia Terminal Railroad took over operations from the BN.  The upper level will be the Longview and Vancouver WA areas.  I have used XTRAK cad to design the layout.

I have built a new room in my shop for this layout.  Total area is about 450 sq ft.  At this time I have most of the insulation and some of the sheet rock installed. Of course now that summer is finally here in the Northwest it will be a little while before i can get back to this project.

Please check back for more updates and hopefully some pictures from the layout's progress.

Thank you,

Phil 7-9-2010