Jeff Brauer's Midwest Terminal is a generic walk in, U shaped switching layout representing an industrial area branch line in a big Midwestern city (rotating between Chicago, St. Paul, KC or others with different locomotives for each session).

Operations start from DIRTY (Downtown Industrial Rail Transfer Yard) and operators always begin their shifts “just after” the transfer trains from two major railroads have dropped off that day’s cuts of cars. One operator will classify in the yard and switch adjacent industries, including grain elevators, concrete plant, gravel pit and steel mill, while the other takes cars for various industries along the branch, including brewery, pipe manufacturer, cold storage, logistics center, newsprint supplier, Ethanol Terminal, Propane distributor, lumber, rail/truck transfer tracks and others. The branch operations are usually split into 3 distinct runs.

One side of the layout is a 7 track yard while the other is loosely based on the track patterns of the famous N scale Kingsbury Branch by Bill Denton, adapted to Atlas Code 55 N Scale track. The layout room is hard flooring with a 4 foot aisle. The layout area is 16' x 7.5' with a height of 33-36” which makes operating a potential “roll around” layout for maximum comfort.

Operations require 2 Engineers. Control is by MRC Prodigy and locomotives have DCC and sound. Turnouts are hand thrown. Uncoupling is manual with picks.