Home of the St. Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad, my model railroad layout project.
Updated February 20, 2026
Welcome to my site! You'll find all sorts of things here. If you like small layouts, I have several track plans with more always in development, as well as progress on my micro-layout, Piper Junction. I also have my blog, updated when I remember it exists. As well, I have all the notes on my layout development. If you want to leave a friendly note, see my guestbook on the contact page.
Developing my philosophy as I grow as a model builder, I am finding how much I enjoy small layouts. My goals have shifted to accomodate. Instead of representing the Rosetta Railroad in a traditional basement-empire layout, or even a more modest around-the-room layout, I've decided that smaller piecemeal layouts designed to bridge together are more my speed. Each one can be a standalone diorama, and it gives me license to build more standalone work. I hesitate to call this approach modular, however. To me, modular implies some standard of interconnectivity with some sort of standard.
While Free-moN and T-Trak are rather influential in my thought process as I build. Free-moN's height standards block out the vertically impaired (such as my fiancee and my little nephew) and its adherence to broad curves on its mainlines is prohibitive in the small space I work in. I find T-Trak limiting as well. The strict double-tracked mainline rule of T-Trak doesn't fit with my shortline philosophy, nor do I particularly enjoy the look or cost of Unitrack. Still, some participation in T-Trak will be diplomatically necessary for my participation with my local club, and there is certainly fun to be had there.
Overall, the design philosophy of smaller vignettes, slices of railroad life contained in themselves, appeal far more to me than a contiguous empire at this stage in my life. I'm still in an apartment and though I expect to buy in a few years, I don't expect that my first house will be my last. As well, mobility and selectability for shows and other travel allows me the liberty to bring what I want, where I want, when I want.
The Saint Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad is my fictional freelance model railroad. Its alt-history begins with its inception in 1870, when it was incorporated to move freight inland from the fictional Mississippi River city of Rosetta, MO and from the lead mines to the smelters in the fictional Leadville, MO, and up to Saint Louis. It interchanged with the Missouri Pacific out of Fredericktown, MO, and eventually would connect with the Frisco in Ste. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau.
The line was expanded in the late 1880s, saw its heyday from the recovery of the Panic of 1893 to the Stock Crash in 1929, and surivived the Great Depression. Nearly succumbing to the strain, the Rosetta Railroad lasted just long enough to become vital to the war effort, as the US Military demanded the products of Missouri's Lead Belt. The railroad came out of receivership in 1948, in time to be purchased by the Missouri Pacific to extract the last of the aging lead mines. The Rosetta Railroad continued to run its own corporate structure until 1949, and was shortly dieselized after being completely folded into the Missouri Pacific.
The former Rosetta Railroad spent twenty years as a branchline system, falling into disrepair, until its main line was abandoned after exactly 100 years in 1970. The line was partially revived in 1998 as a tourist railroad, and continues operations today, sometimes in cooperation with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, & Southern tourist railroad.
I'm freelancing not only the railroad, but also the county, and many of the cities and towns, otherwise I'd drive myself insane with trying to get everything perfectly accurate down to the last cobblestone on a back street. As it is, I already will be visiting several towns along the fictional route to better understand the architecture of the buildings at the time of the Great Depression.
