Home of the St. Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad, my model railroad layout project.
The Saint Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad is my fictional freelance model railroad. Its alt-history begins with its inception in 1866, 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 Iron Mountain Railway (later 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 officially abandoned in 1957, 90 years after it opened. The line was partially revived in 1997 as a tourist railroad, and continues operations today.
I'm freelancing not only the railroad, but also the county, and several 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.
Read more on the History page.
Burr County is a fictional county in Missouri between Ste. Genevieve and Perry Counties. It sits on the Mississippi River, with the fictional Rosetta, MO as its county seat, incorporated in 1836. Lead mining commenced early in the 1810s in nearby Leadville, and Burr County slowly grew in its fortunes. When the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Southern built its Belmont Branch in 1869, the citizens of Burr County were disappointed to see the railroad only coming as far east as Marble Hill.
Following the American Civil War, investor Lucas Garrett Rhodes saw potential in a connection from the county's lead mines and rich timber to St. Louis by river and rail. Rosetta, situated in a point just north of Tower Rock, would be the optimal connection point. Rhodes petitioned Burr County, the City of Rosetta, George Chalmers of the Chalmers Lead Mine Company, and Thurmann Yount of the Yount Logging Company to raise funds, and each of them bought a sixth-stake in the charter of the St. Louis, Leadville, and Rosetta Railroad, with Rhodes having a double share (one-third).
Ground broke in April of 1867 in Rosetta. A small yard and shop was built east of town to service the four Rogers-built 4-4-0s and the small fleet of boxcars, flatcars, and passenger coaches. The railroad reached Apple Creek, MO on December 3, 1868, and work ended for the season shortly after with the first snow of the winter.
On October 31st, 1870 the StLL&R laid its final spike on the main line from Rosetta to Fredericktown. The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, sharp, on September 1st, the inaugural train departed from Rosetta to St. Louis by way of the Iron Mountain Route. The No. 1 and No. 3 pulled four wooden coaches, a special business car and a gaily painted blue box car advertising the railroad. The business car was filled with important guests, including 4th District Representative Harrison E. Havens, Mayor of Rosetta William Montgomery, George Chalmers of Chalmers Lead Mine Company, County Commissioners Haywood Robson and Jewell Meredeth, and of course, Lucas Garrett Rhodes. Their wives and families also accompanied them, as did many local business owners. The train was crewed by engineers Finley Bell and Bartholomew McLachlan, firemen Jackson Jack and Lincoln Gleeson, conductor Joe Garfield, and brakemen Evan Nealy and Earle Gay.
The train stopped in De Soto for the night, then continued to arrive in St. Louis the next morning. The arrival was greeted by St. Louis Mayor Joseph Brown and the city council, where Rhodes treated them to ice-cold champagne wine aboard the specially-outfitted business car “Rosalee Rhodes”, named for Lucas' wife.
The railroad was an early success for the region. It ran a twice-daily passenger train from Rosetta to Fredericktown. Many of the workers at the lead mine took the train daily; the company would supplement their workers' pay with train tickets. On Tuesdays, a limited express passenger train carried a business coach and the week's pay from Rosetta to Yount to Leadville in the morning, and returned in the afternoon. The schedule would be inverted on Thursdays, running instead from Leadville to Yount to Rosetta and back, minus the paycar.
An early design for Rosetta, I abandoned this as the resin printer filled the space intended for the city. Rosetta deserves a bit more space to be modeled, anyways, and my skills in track planning have grown, but I still like this plan and some elements will be recycled into the future Rosetta section.
Originally, I'd designed this as an unrelated layout, but realized it would make an excellent Leadville. Trains go up the grade from the mainline junction in Leadville, around the horseshoe curve, and stop for water at the old ore crusher in Chalmers. Continuing on, the trains cross a cliff escarpment over a waterfall, then roll into Mine No. 1, where the train is watered, turned, and run around, ready to come back down the mountain.
The Leadville branch was built in 1899 to Mine No. 3, and extended in 1915 to the existing Mine No. 4. Naturally, it shouldn't have survived the drying up of Mine No. 4 in the late 1940s, but the postwar drop in scrap and commodity prices resulted in the tracks sitting and rusting, forgotten by all but the townsfolk of Leadville. The last train left Mine No. 4 in 1947, carrying a load of equipment sold to Doe Run Corporation. Railfans managed to capture footage of this event.
The turntable up at the mine is a rare survivor, too. Most small turntables fell derelict and were removed and filled in, but the Chalmers Mine turntable proved useful for turning the small locomotives needed to navigate the sharp curves up to the mine. In the modern day, passenger excursions run up to Leadville to see the historic mine site and mill, lovingly restored by the Chalmers Mine Historic Foundation. The turntable is operated on steam days, while the diesels tend to run around the trains.
Here's my benchwork plan for the Leadville branchline. It'll be all plywood box framing, 2"x2" dimensional structure, and pink foam for the scenic base. Homasote will sit underneath the trackbed to support the hand laid rails.
