Lee Nicholas' Utah Colorado Western is a bridge route running from Denver to Salt Lake City in the 1960s. This HO scale railroad features fine running first generation diesels and gorgeous rocky mountain scenery with hand painted backdrops. This creates the feeling the UCW has real work to do. Both Lee and the UCW are famous for operation. In fact Lee is one of the co-founders of the operation group, Pro-Rail.

Operation with camaraderie is the ultimate goal of all the work Lee and his friends have done on the railroad. Because of that interest in operation every locomotive and car must run extremely well or be replaced. Lee wants nothing on the layout that is not up to his high standards.

Lee and his friends will demonstrate cheesecloth scenery and mountain carving, backdrop planning and painting and staging yard operation.

The staging yard called the "Mole" is really a fiddle yard where consists are changed during an operating session rather than being staged ahead of the session. This fiddle yard is the key to interchange and car movements on the UCW. Because it connects both ends of the layout it saves money and space, and makes operation more like the prototype.

The UCW is a Great Model Railroad because Lee and his friends have used their talents and ideas to continually improve everything on the layout.