I can’t for the life of me figure out which issue this article was in. The index turned up no results. I remember it touched on how the Boston and Maine and Central Vermont shared track and I thought it was in Model Railroader. It’s not the similar aticle in a 2014 Trains.
As a bonus there was also a tidbit and photo of a Midwestern shortline (maybe off the CB&Q) in an issue I can’t quite remember or find. Anyone know that issue?
Thanks in advance if you can answer, this has been driving me crazy for the last few hours.
Using this MR online datatbase turned up a possibility. Maybe you’ve already seen this one.
Marty McGuirk wrote about an area where the CV and B&M shared facilities in the February 2000 Model Railroader. There was a related Iain Rice track plan in the same issue, as well as a layout design from Marty in Model Railroad Planning 2000.
Could the shortline off the Q been the old Illinois Midland (not to be confused with today’s Illinois & Midland) which was a 2 mile or so railroad that had just one locomotive, and relied on the Q to keep it running. There was an article and track plan in the 2004 issue of Model Railroad Planning. Sometimes the creative titles used in MRP make searching for MRP articles based on topic a challenge using the index on this website.
Another extremely interesting shortline off the Q was the Hooppole Yorktown & Tampico. There is a surprising amount on the internet about that railroad which for years used an elderly ex-CB&Q 0-6-0 as its power. There is even one remaining depot in Hooppole, easily mistaken for a large and luxurious outhouse. The ROW was hilarious because as this or that farmer would refuse to sell land to the railroad, they’d just cross the street like a dog checking all the area garbage cans. President Reagan grew up in Tampico which is where the HY&T interchanged with the Q. As he once said “We didn’t live on the wrong side of the tracks. But we sure could hear the whistle blow.”