The Lynden Spur is a 19' shelf layout recreating the final days of the Milwaukee Road in the tiny corner of the railroad in the Pacific Northwest, at the end of a five-mile spur to the small town of Lynden, off the Bellingham-Sumas line. The era is 1976-1982, in the final years of Milwaukee operation before abandonment in 1980 and the first couple years of Burlington Northern's subsequent ownership.

It is a minimalist layout, though fully sceniced: One train, a two-person crew. A half-dozen turnouts. Slow speeds and hand-throw switches. Teletype-printed switch lists based on actual traffic featuring inbound feed, farm equipment, and outbound frozen fruits and boxcars of dehydrated milk. The layout is sound/DCC operated with one locomotive at a time using an MRC DCC system. No one's in a hurry up here.

In another corner of the room, I'm starting work on a second shelf-type layout featuring BN's operations at Georgia-Pacific's Bellingham paper mill, also in the early 1980s when I when to college in Bellingham. This layout might not be operating at the time of the interchange, but if it is, one crew can operate both railroads.