Clintons Bend is a continuous run layout set in the region of the real life town of Clinton, Iowa on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. The route is a busy one with a steady stream of passenger and freight traffic plying between the Great Lakes and the Far West.
The layout features three distinct areas separated by scenic breaks. Leaving the storage area the train passes through a cutting in some low wooded hills to cross first of all a girder bridge over a large floodway cut by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the early part of the last century as part of a flood relief scheme for the Mississippi basin. Immediately afterwards the line crosses over the Clinton River, a tributary of the Mississippi, via an earlier lattice girder bridge on to a low embankment. It is here there is a well known rail fan viewing area.
A scenic break takes the train out into the wide open spaces of the Mid West past grain silos and an agro-chemical depot each with their own sidings where full wagons are received and empty stock removed, A “Dari-King” diner and service station caters for the needs of road travellers and the local workers.
Passing through another scenic break, the trains enter the business and industrial area of “down town” Clintons Bend. It is here that a formerly independent short line brings in agricultural produce from the surrounding area. A lot of this is maize which goes to Corn Syrup International for processing. There is also a small depot at which the occasional local trains will stop. Then, under a road bridge over a shallow cutting the tracks re-enter the storage area.
