Clairmont, Lewiston & Western Railroad

An HO Scale Model Railroad by
John Rahenkamp

      Welcome to the Clairmont, Lewiston and Western Railroad, an HO scale model railroad built by John Rahenkamp. This 'online' handbook is provided to you as an informational guide for future reference to help orient you to the railroad. We hope that the information contained herein provides you with some background about the railroad, as well as some basic operational information to help familiarize you with how the railroad operates.

      Specific instructions also appear in the Rule Book. Periodic updates are made to the Rule Book and Bulletins are posted to draw attention to those updates. Crew memebers should check back frequently for updates.

      Monthly operating sessions on the C.L.& W. are on a 'invitational basis' only. Regular crew members receive emails confirming the date of the next session. If you are a visitor to this site and are interested in joining the crew, you should contact John directly at Jrahenkamp@aol.com.

      The C.L.& W. is an operations oriented layout which is 95% complete with scenery and mostly scratchbuilt buildings that occupies a basement room that is roughly 60' x 24'. A crew of 15-20 operators brings the railroad to life once a month, running a schedule of 50 trains, inlcuding 20 passenger runs that include name trains and locals, 13 through frieghts, 7 wayfreights and 10 local transfer or interchange freights.

      The C.L.& W. is actually three railroads on one layout; The Central Railroad of New Jersey, from Jersey City, NJ to Lehighton, Pa., the Lehigh Valley Railroad, from the interchange near Sommerville, NJ to Sayre Yard, and the Clairmont, Lewiston and Western Railroad, a ficticious railroad roughly modeled after the Rahway Valley Railroad.

      John has written a brief history of the C.L.& W. concept, the layout, and the relavance of the prototypes. To read more about how John developed the concept for his layout, see the page titled C.L.& W. History.

      After reading how the railroad came to be, enjoy some photo's of the current layout. These pictures were taken in early 2008 by Rick Schintzler who did an amazing job of capturing the flavor of John's layout. To see Rick's photo's, see the Photo Gallery.

      The Clairmont, Lewiston and Western Railroad is an operations oriented railroad! We operate monthly with a crew of anywhere between 15 - 20 operators. To understand a little about how the railroad operates, see the "Introduction to Operations on the C.L. & W." page.