What made you choose your rr company to model?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
21

I grew up in eastern Ky.,mainly around the C & O;and actually lived in both Raceland and
Russell.(car shops and mainyard)and of course not to far from Huntington,WVa.
I tried modelling the C & O,but it was to hard for me to stay totally prototype. So I
decided to model a free-lance railroad. Coal hauling,set it the area of E.Ky.,and
western WVa. Time span in the 1950s-1960s era. I can run 4 axle locos that I like,
that might not have been in use on my favorite road. I’ve been doing this for over
40 years and still enjoy it.(wrong;I LOVE IT!)[:D][:D]

I model in “O” Sacle now,since about 1975,but started in HO. My very first
“train set” was an Athearn "Hustler eng;Western Pacific box,a flat;and a
Santa Fe caboose. (the Hustler had rubber band drive!)[:D]

22

I’ve been in and out of different roads, first C&O (I grew up near the old Pere Marquette line in Michigan), then the NYC (it served the Rouge steel mill in Dearborn which I wanted to model someday), then B&O (after having moved to Maryland and got my drivers license and done lots of serious railfanning on that road), now I might do some freelancing so I can model some of my favorite prototypes (incl. SD38-2’s) that were never used by ANY of those lines.

23

I chose BNSF (switched from former MoPac layout) for two reasons. First, though I had no attraction to ATSF or BN previously, I lived in a BNSF town immediately after the merger and quickly fell in love with the Heritage and Heritage II paint schemes. But more importantly, I lived in the area that I model (Saginaw, TX) and found that the industrial area along the Wichita Falls sub just above North Yard simply begged to be modeled. It has a great variety of industries in a very condensed about of real estate right along the main, including a Trinity Ind. plant that builds covered hoppers. I siimply had to be done.

Ron

24

My first rememberance of a train was a string Chessie System engines along Broadway in Buffalo, NY (Bison Yard?). Some 25 years later when I got back into the hobby, I saw an Athearn GP-35 at the LHS and the rest they say is history. For me, Chessie came first, then B&O, then C&O and WM. I started with the merger railroad and worked backwards.

I guess its the first one you see that always holds a special place.

25

Exposure to one railroad! When I was ages 3 to 12 we lived across from the Lehigh Valley mainline in Cranford, NJ. Since dad kew his son loved trains he would take the long way to Grandmoms house in Hazleton, Pa via Lehighton Pa., a major LV yard. Upon arrival at grandmoms in Hazleton there was the LV Hazleton branch. Then a visit to my other grandmom and she lived next to the LV’s banch in Jeddo, Pa.

I grew up thinking there were only two railroads. LV and a smaller rr named the CNJ.

26

BN for me. When I got back into RailRoading after 20 years out I was at a show I saw some BN rolling stock and liked the way they looked. I have since added UP and SF for
my interchange switching. I also do some MEC, BAR or any thing local to the state of Maine.

27

I purchase western railroad companies locos,mainly Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific.It may sound like a strange mix,maybe so,but I like unique locos and many of them were exclusively(or nearly) UP owned prototypes(like DDA40X’s,Veranda’s,etc).
You can get a good variety of models with UP colors and still be prototypical without investing in custom painting and so on.

Being canadian,I wanted a canadian company on my layout also.I chose CP for their colors but mainly because it would make sense to see a CP loco parked alongside a UP consist,being both western companies.I have no knowledge yet as to how it goes in the west parts of U.S. and Canada(I live in eastern Canada),but I suppose this is a familiar occurence.

28

I love the area I grew up in, and when I decided to model I thought a PRR route through the area would be good. During research I found out the valley I lived in did have it’s own line that was abandonded in the early '40’s. Because I prefer modern railroading over the steam era, I decided to bring that line (Kishacoquillas Valley Railroad) into the present day. It’s still a short line, but instead of 0-6-0’s and 2-4-0’s it has GP9’s and GP30’s, etc… I’ve changed the name to Indian Valley Railroad, mainly because I didn’t want to try and letter everything with Kishacoquillas!

You can check out the website in my signature.

29

Having grown up looking out my bedroom window being able to see Canadian Pacific’s Agincourt marshalling yard hump in action & having my dad take me to railfan from the parking lot in the yard when I was young, I rapidly grew fond of the CPR.
Another item that made me want to model the CPR is after reading about the history of the CPR & how it was an integral part of the history of Canada kinda makes it special to me.
After all, I AM CANADIAN!

Gordon

30

I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, a Canadian Pacific city if ever there was one. I lived but a block from the main line heading west so 2-10-4 Selkirks were a daily sight. Just at the end of steam, when I was 20, I moved to Vancouver and discovered the CP’s lines in southern British Columbia. Now, 50 years later, my fictional N Scale Klahowya Subdivision of the CPR is designed to reflect CP and GN/BN action in the fifties, sixties and seventies in the West Kootenay. it’s great what you can do with sufficient hidden staging tracks. Pay the pike a visit at http://homepage.mac.com/pblake/webpages/klahowya.html.

31

I model the New Haven. Why?

Probably because, like most New Englanders, I am a tad parochial in what I like and dislike. The old poster that shows the Bostonian’s view of the world which shows Boston up front and Worcester (about 50 miles west) about on par with Los Angeles is not that far off. IOW, if it ain’t local, I ain’t interested.

Keeping that in mind, I would want to model southern New England (where I’m from) in some era, and I live right next to the NEC, A.K.A. the New Haven’s Shore Line Route.

That leaves me with the past or the present. The past has a grand memory around here. The old RR’s had class and style, multiple paint schemes running in the same train, so many different makes and models it makes your head spin. They had fast first class passenger trains, mile-long freights, and locals all over the place. In the past, New Engand was the industrial heartland of the USA, and the RR’s moved the goods.

Today, the industry went south, west and overseas. The only long frieght trains around here are Autoracks, an occasional stack job / TOFC, and some general freight, and none of that is anywhere near me (it’s in Worcester). The only freight I see are a once a day local freight. For passengers, I get the Acela, the Regional jobs, and the MBTA commuter fleet.

In 1953, there were a dozen mainline freights between Boston and New York City on the Shore Line. Today, there are zero. In the 1960’s, there were multiple sleepers available to New York or Washington, D.C. Today, there are zero.

In short, I don’t model the present beause it is intolerably dull, so that means I must model the past. That translates into the New Haven, as they owned the rails out here from 1893 to 1969. After that, it’s been a downhill slide ever since.

Paul A. Cutler III

Weather Or No Go New Haven

32

I would have to Choose CP because CP is one of the reasons Canada is what it is today and because i grew watching Canadian Pacific to CPRail System to Canadian Pacific Railway again and always found there paint scheme was really nice to show its Canadian Background

33

I grew up by C&NW. I still like it, but don’ t model it (yet?). I live by an old Pere Marquette line, which I massage into my layout. However, my love has always been Pennsylvania, both state and railroad. That’s what I model.

34

I model an independent short line that interchanges with the C.N.R. (because I worked for them), the C.P.R. (just because they are there) and the O.N.R. (since part of the name of my line comes from an incident that happened at Washagami, Ontario - a C.N. siding not too far from North Bay (home of the O.N.R.). So, I guess you could say that my “Washagami & Northland” was directly influenced by that incident.[:D]
Norman

35

The first time I saw a UP loco was an SD90MAC parked in Chicago. We were driving by. I said, Oh man Union Pacific is my new favorite railroad!! Then I saw UP steam, and I was hooked!

36

I started with an Atlas train set. I chose one with an S2 switcher painted for the Burlington route. It was the Blackbird scheme and I thought it looked good. I also imagined modelling the wooded hills of New England, incorrectly assuming that the RR was named for Burlington VT. So dim witty here eventually figured out where the Burlington route was from, joined the BRHS and have never looked back. Now I am firmly modelling the mid west!!

37

Back when I was a pup, one of the model rail mags had an Athearn ad for their rotary plow and it was in Great Northern markings.

Ever since then, “Freight Goes Great, When It Goes Great Northern!” [:D]

The RMC series back in the late 80’s on modern rail logging ops, got me hooked on them. And, the “Fundy Nothern” articles have always helped this along, as the theme is similar.

38

My Grandmother, My Grandmother, My Grandmother. Love her to death!

She hates to fly and always took cross-country trips by rail via Amtrak. She always told me about her experiences and promissed to take me with her when I turned 10 (I was 3 at the time).

She kept her promise and i was drawn to Amtrak and how it operated. I also appreciated the diversity of its equipment. I’ve always had an attraction for the utility of passenger service.

Anyway, my countless experiences have led to my modeling Amtrak. Because the space I have is limited and the different equipment needed to represent different regions of the USA, I had no room for the large number of freight equipment. When my layout expands, i will begin to model CSX, NFS, Conrail, and BNSF. I’ll also consider UP as well. Basically all the host railroads that the trains I’ve taken will influence what rr company I model, but it all revolves around Amtrak.

39

I grew up next to EL’s PVL. in NJ.[:D]

40

Mostly locality. I model a proto-freelance version of the short line that was the only railroad in the immediate vicinity of where I grew up. I say “proto-freelance” because this line (the Washington & Old Dominion) swtiched from steam - to electric - to diesel. Since my interest is steam, I choose to imagine that the switch to electric never occurred and operate realistic small steam (the line actually did have two small consolidations for some years).

I also have sessions in which all the motive power is from one of my two favorite Class I roads (N&W and Western Maryland). The N&W is very believable: the W&OD line was very nearly purchased (when owned by a predecessor company) by the predecessor company of the N&W. The WM is more of a stretch but the Gould interests did consider an extension to the Washington market.