Trackside Model Railroading visits Mike McGinley’s Southwestern Pacific and it is an amazing HO scale layout. Imaged here in 2006, while fishing the Cascade River, a patched Southern Pacific Geep No. 1480 is on point of the daily Union Pacific eastbound local.

Patched Southern Pacific Geep No. 1480 is on point of the daily eastbound local traveling along the Cascade River.

Mike McGinley’s Southwestern Pacific layout operates in multiple different timeframes between 1951 and 2006 in the Southwestern United States, including California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Trackside Model Railroading photographed the SWP operating in 2006, so all of Mike’s Southern Pacific units are under Union Pacific ownership. Mike painted the Cascade River after rivers he observed in Colorado. His layout is beautifully scenicked with high backgrounds and many detailed scenes of the American Southwest. These include the mountains, the red rocks and high deserts, and scenes along the river. On our tour of the SWP, you will see mostly patched SP units and some UP power in action.

The image above is from the October 2016 main feature of Trackside Model Railroading. The Free Lite Edition featuring Mike McGinley’s Southwestern Pacific layout is available until January 19th 2017 as a free download. After the 19th of January you will need to buy the Premium Edition of the October 2016 issue in order to see Mike’s layout. If you are interested in model trains, we know you will love seeing and reading about this amazing layout. The full Premium Edition includes almost 50 images of just this layout alone.

The digital magazine downloads as a PDF and can be viewed on all computers and smart devices. On smartphones and tablets, it is best viewed with the device turned horizontally. Double-tapping the screen where you would like to see closer will allow an automatic zoom onto each column of text making it easy to read. To return to full screen, just double tap again to zoom back out to the default state. You can always pinch to zoom as well if you would like and again double tapping your screen will zoom you back out to the full page view after you are done.

Included are HD videos of some of the trains that we railfanned while visiting the Southwestern Pacific (SWP) layout. You can easily register or log in with your Facebook or Google account to get the downloads, if you don't have Facebook or a Google account you can setup your account below.

Southwestern Pacific in HO Scale

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