What made you choose your rr company to model?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hello,

I choose the Burlington Northern because for one it ran by my home when I was growing up and still does somewhat( BNSF), always cool to model what you see daily.

And second because it was the first real nice locomotive paint scheme I got as a birthday gift when I was young. Atlas GP 38 High Nose.

And third, because my childhood friend was a Santa Fe modeler so I could not copy him.

He always said how much better Santa Fe was than BN, and then the BN gobbled up the Santa Fe, Im sure that ticked him off.

So is life. But that is what makes model railroading fun, everyone has there own interest.

It would be boring if everyone modeled the same company.

Mark

2

More a victim of circumstance than anything. Three Christmases ago on a whim, I picked up an Athearn 2-8-2 Mike on sale at a LHS. Turned out to be a New York Central model . I didn’t really know much about the NYC at that time, although I was familiar with the name. (I know a little more now but still have much to learn.)

Just started my layout this past May and decided to stick with the NYC theme. I only have two locomotives: A Mike and an S1 switcher - both NYC. I’m not entirely stuck on just one railroad. At some point, I may change my mind. That shouldn’t change my layout much - other than the paint scheme of my freight house. [:)]

Tom

3

I just thought, since it cam out a few years ago, that the Acela was so awsome looking. And once they got a model of it I knew that I had to do that.

4

I gre up near the UP mainline. My dad and grandpa were members of the AOS museum and the bigboy is parked there. I rode a challenger exscursion I have seen the 844 when it was numbered 8444 and I have taken both my children to see the Challenger on both of its trips to Texas.

5

i chose BN mainly because that was the first locomotive i got at a show so i just stuck with it. i have a bunch of different road name freight cars, but most of my loco’s are linked back to BN somehow.

my layout will hopefully be mainly BN/BNSF power with some NS. i love the black loco and just the look of the NS locos. i love the BNSF heritage 2 color scheme and BNSF is linked to BN.

6

grew up on the Milwaukee Road, still recall the f unit, livestock cars, etc

7

Needed some vintage lines for my '50s layout, my brother (and slightly larger financial contributor) suggested Chicago Burlington & Quincy, Great Northern, and Chicago NorthWestern. So, we model all 3 :slight_smile: It’ll be a farily large layout when complete. A late steam 4-8-4 GN passenger pulling slightly unprototypical Heavyweights in a later Empire Builder Scheme, deisel FT CBQ freight, and a deisel F7 CNW freight. It sure has taught me alot more about these lines, and that is definately part of the fun.

8

I like mountain railroading, and both Rio Grande and Southern Pacific ran through pretty spectacular scenery, and both had pretty spectacular steam locomotives. It was a pretty easy choice when I got serious–even though I live in California, I liked Rio Grande standard gauge steam, and grew up with SP cab-forwards. So I model a fictional California extension of the Rio Grande on which SP has trackage rights and get the best of both of my worlds.
Tom

9

I’m a fan of big steam and diesel power from the transition era, so I naturally gravitated to the Union Pacific.

Also when I was young I was extremely impressed when I saw a Santa Fe Warbonnet ABBA with 20 or more passenger cars roar thru Mundelein, Illinois.

Hence, I model the UP & ATSF mainlines. I also am a big fan of John Deere so I run a JD branch line.

10

Outside of the USA , Union Pacific is the best known, still retains its original name
and colour scheme, and my grand-daughter prefers the yellow and grey to all others!
kiwi from new zealand

11

When I join a model railroad club, I was going to model A.T.S.F., but majority
of the members were modeling that R.R…So I pick a railroad that came thru
the town where I live, and one that didn’t go bankrupt( Rock Island).
I decided on Chicago & Northwestern.

12

My great Grandaddy helped build the Virginian, and I love N&W steam too, so there was never any question which roads I would model.

13

The freelanced Borracho Spring RR is loosly based on the Arizona Copper Co mining RR and several RR photos documented in Gerald Best’s book “Mexican Narrow Gauge”. I wanted to try and catch some feel of a small tram line built before the sdvent of the auto still running thru a small desert town in the 50’s.

14

It chose me!

When I was younger, I liked the C&O trains I saw when visiting my grandparents in West Virginia.

When I got older, I liked the look of the C&NW colors on commuter cars, and thought that would be fun.

Passenger trains always appealed to me, so Amtrak was an option.

But when I went with my wife on her family’s fishing trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan, there were railroad tracks you had to cross to get from the cabins to the lake. And there was this huge building on a distant hilltop that turned out to be the old rockhouse for a copper mine. And there was this neat bridge connecting Houghton and Hancock: a double-deck lift bridge, tracks on the bottom, roadway on the top.

As I investigated everything, I learned more about it – the copper industry in the area, when trains ran, how local trolleys moved people from home to work and play, when the mines ran into trouble.

I started imagining what it would be like if the mines had continued to do well, and if the Great Lakes had been too perilous to move ore, so that the railroads really prospered, well into the 1960s.

So now my sketches and plans for the layout modules all center on the key elements of this region (the yard, the downtown warehouse area, the mine workings, a nearby timber town, and possibly a smelter for the mine). There have been a number of railroads that started and operated and failed in this area…the Soo Line was the last to actually operate trains there.

But in my plans, a company called the Keweenaw and Superior acquired control of a lot of little roads and became known as “the Copper Line” throughout the region of the UP, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.

And once I get the basement improvements done, and finish my son’s little layout (so we get all our modelling skills), I’ll start work on the yard module for the K&SRR.

15

My very first train set I ever got for Christmas was a Union Pacific set in N scale. I’ve always liked UP’s paint scheme.

16

Being the som of a railfan, I’m addicted to big steam. But my dad’s a 1960s LV/E-L fan, anmd I’m a 1930-1955 midwestern steam fan. Mostly, I’ve spent dozens of hours chasing and riding behind NKP steam (759, 765, 587), so that’s where my modeling interests lay. I model central Illinois because that’s where the NKP ran in my home state, and I’ve spent loads of time down there. And finally, since I have a deep love of history and decided to recearch and model this area prototypically, I’ve grown fond of the “unknown” railroads of the region, specifically the C&IM, TP&W and P&PU, all of which play major roles on my layout.

17

I have an affinity for steam. Unfortunately the only affordable steam available is either generic, USRA or US class 1stuff, No Canadian as our market is a small one. So after doing some reading and looking at what was available and what I liked I decided to go freelanced and based it on the local geography. The Musquodoboit, Eastern Shore & Sydney is based on the Sydney and Louisburg RR of Cape Breton but with a predominent C&O roster.

18

Well, the first loco I bought was an Athearn SP SD9, followed by an Amtrak SW7, then an EMD Demo GP60. The next two additions were an A/B set of Proto C-Liners in NYC paint - at this point, I decided that modelling a museum was the only way to justify my fleet! I’ve since been adding more locos, mainly those I like the look of. I do try to operate locos that are owned by real museums, like my FP7 in Milwaukee Road paint - this will eventally be numbered to match the real example owned by the Illinois RR Museum.

19

I grew up liking Chessie, I thought it was the coolest paint scheme. Then I started sub - contracting on CSX right of ways, and I liked them as well, so I model the merger!

20

I model the ATSF because I grew up along It’s tracks in rural Illinois. I knew more about it and it’s equipment.