Brian Sheron’s Long Island Rail Road is a 27 x 48-foot HO scale model railroad that depicts Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the north shore of Long Island. He built the layout, featured in the August 2024 issue of Model Railroader, in three phases.
Brian started work on the model railroad in 1988 with the Port Jefferson Branch. This part of the layout includes Sunnyside Yard and Jamaica Station. In 2005 Brian added the City Terminal Zone, home to a “reasonable facsimile” of New York City and Pennsylvania Station. A decade later he built the Atlantic Branch, home to the Long Island City car float yard and Holban Yard.
The walk-in layout features an approximately 300-foot mainline run, 24” minimum radius curves, and a 3% maximum grade. Though Brian originally designed the model railroad to depict the diesel era (1964), he also has equipment that allows him to turn the clock back to the last days of the steam era in 1954.
