Hot Bed Of Railway Activity For 150 Years

November 30, 2005

Fort Bend County, Texas, has been a hot bed of railroad activity for more than 150 years. These days a suburb of Houston, Fort Bend County is crossed by some of the most active rail lines in the US, including the former-SP “Sunset Route”. Living in various communities in this area, the members of the Fort Bend Model Railroad club are blessed both with the opportunity to see a lot of full-size trains in action, and to model railroads in N scale indoors as a way to seek relief from those long hot coastal-Texas summer days.

The Club has a large NTRAK layout composed on many modules, tied together by the theme of railroading in Fort Bend County in 1951. When all the modules are used, the layout is about 40 ft. x 24 ft. in size, with a center island with 9 12 ft. tracks used for staging.

Here’s the central piece of the module: the Imperial Sugar Factory and company-town buildings as they appeared in 1951. The reconstruction is based on extensive research and interviews.

Looking due west from the east end of the Sugar Land module (near the old crossing tower), some of the lower details of this module are visible. That’s the California Zephyr approaching in the distance.