First of all, I love the title of his thread. Such an introspective would be of value to us all.
…now back to model railroading:
Most of my small empire is made up of trains of the three railroads that had yards in the city where I grew up. However it also has a lot of “Papa, can we buy this” and contributions by the spouse.
Philosophical discussions are great! I picked my loco b/c Ii’m modeling southern VA during the 1980s. My 1st loco came in a set and was one seen in the 1950s from Sante Fe. It was a suitable starter loco, but the couplers kept breaking off from the loco body, so I bought a NW loco. The one I got had six-axles, so I had to expand the layout to create a broader curve. In doing that, I made the layout appear more enjoyable to watch.
I was born (1947) and raised in Lima, Ohio, where they made a lot of steam engines, but “the [Lima] Loco[motive Works]” was across town and already shifting its product line from big engines to steam shovels, as we still called them. My real exposure to the trains was by hearing them from the Pennsy (I think; we never bothered with names) mainline and yard some two or three blocks from my bedroom window.
Nostalgia also entered in by way of a DT&I retail coal company siding way across town the other direction, right across the street from my granddad’s barber shop. Again it was more an aural experience, hearing the hoppers come in and get banged around and unloaded with small conveyors and manual shoveling, not unlike the sound of the fireman shifting fuel from tender to firebox.
By the time I was old enough for “an electric train,” it was a simple Marx set and a figure-8 of track. Much later I had the capital to start an N-scale layout when we lived in Montana. The layout grew into half a garage in northern California for about six years, and just as it was getting done, we moved back to Ohio with the trackwork all cut up and the buildings and rolling stock boxed away.
After some feeble rebuilding in a new setting in our basement, I let the layout go fallow until retiring a few years ago. New space, new configuration, new scale (HO), but still steam and short cars and trains; the plan is a little over half complete down to ballast and pine trees (an imaginary branch of the GN way up in the corner of northwest Montana and Idaho with an interchange to/from the Canadian Pacific).
But it’s slow going: bone marrow cancer prompted a stem cell transplant with months of recovery, followed by a flooded basement that’s only just now been restored, though of course the layout proper wasn’t harmed except as the salvage people tore out carpet underneath. I wasn’t allowed near any of it to direct the s
Michael, I too had some issues with water - although maybe not an outright flood, the sump pump failed during a major storm and all of one rooms floor got fully wet and maybe half of the train room floor. My wife and I were away for the weekend but immediately when we returned, we went into remediation mode as we had read you need to deal with things within a couple days time. We removed all the laminate flooring in the adjacent den room and all the carpet out from under the layout in the train room; I also cut out quite a bit of drywall too to be sure we got everything. In September I started replacing the cut out area’s with fresh drywall, and started mudding, taping and all that fun stuff. I’m just getting the last of it finished now - being realtively new to it, I’m not speedy Gonzales. We still need to put something back on the bare cement floors; this time going with vinyl tiles which can survive getting wet much better than carpet or laminate!
That is my worst nightmare. What have you done to prevent a recurrence of the problem?
Rich
I am a lone wolf modeler, meaning I can’t run a bunch of trains at the same time…as a layout that has multiple operators can.
I like to represent a realistic look to the layout, with realistic operations.
Single trains, and limited space by which to make things look realistic, confine me into modeling shortlines…no long trains for me. I like diesels and more modern rolling stock. Shortlines acquire of variety of secondhand locomotives, allowing a variation of roadnames and oddball pieces on the layout. I live in the midwest, so an abundance of mountainous verticle scenery is not really what I want to model, since I want to be able to study the topography first hand, not having to rely upon photos or extended field trips.
So its midwest/SE shortlines of about post-1985.
But picking a specific shortline to model is difficult, since the operations are too limited for my liking. A freelanced shortine gives me more freedom to develop the operations I want within the realistic visual presentation that I want.
If not that, I’d be modeling a logging railroad in the western US or Canada, with geared steam, sometime in the 1930’s to 1950’s
Well I started out to model a freelance mainline railroad in HO. But along the way I decided that HO was too small so I switched to O. Decided that was too big and switched to S where I have been since '93.
Then I decided that I didn’t like mainline all that much, but did like smaller steam locomotives and truss rod cars. I had read The Ma & Pa by George Hilton years earlier, so I decided that would be the line to model. I picked the early 50’s because passenger service was still operating. It also had a mix of small steam (4-4-0, 4-6-0, 0-6-0, 2-8-0) and small diesel switchers (SW1, NW2, SW9). The Ma & Pa (Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad) still had truss rod cars with archbar trucks (no longer allowed in interchange) and open platform cars with truss rods.
Enjoy
Paul
I grew up along the Delaware Division of the Erie/Erie Lackawanna; at that time the main line between Buffalo and NY City. Then, after college, my first “real” job landed me in Dayton, Ohio, in the mid to late 70’s. Lo and behold, the Chessie System, and, lo and behold, the Erie Lackawanna too! Then, a year’s stint in northwestern Indiana, and, lo and behold, the Erie Lackawanna! Ever since that time I have been a fan of both the EL and the Chessie System, having locomotives (and, as close as possible, rolling stock from that era), of both road’s liveries.
I was a Pennsylvania RR modeler for just about 35 years, although the layout was always in the planning stage because I could never commit to a PRR theme: east coast with GG1s? Horsehoe Curve with Js? Or Ohio with articulateds and 2-10-2s? Or the racetrack to Chicago? Moreover I saw no way I could get large pieces of plywood home in my small car. It was planning paralysis.
Anyway in the 1990s LifeLike suddenly became a quality product with their Proto2000 line and they soon came out with two C&NW SW1200s both carrying the very numbers of the switchers I saw every day on the C&NW line through my home town as a teen: 1124 and 1125. And in a flash I totally switched from Pennsy to North Western, modeling my old home town, based entirely on those particular two road numbers being available on plastic locomotives.
And at about that same time David Barrow introduced his domino style of benchwork and layout planning, and I discovered that Menards had “Handi-panel” pieces of plywood in Barrow’s 2’x4’ size. Rather suddenly I had more benchwork than I could comfortably wire.
Dave Nelson
I was a Pennsy steam nut forever, but that kinda faded out when I saw the Broadway Limited prices (lol), so I switched over to Norfolk Southern, but that also faded because everyone else was doing NS. I eventually ended up settling on my current railroads, the Wheeling and Lake Erie with their assorted EMD power (SD40-2, GP35s high and short hood, etc) and the freelanced Austinville and Dynamite City railroad (AVDC), also powered by a ragtag assortment of EMD power.
When people learn my age (early 70s) the first question they ask is why I don’t model steam so I explain to them that the first time I road on a train with steam power I was 6 weeks old,the second time I was 6 months old.The first time I saw a real steam locomotive I was in my 40s.
My whole modeling life like my real life has been around diesels.I prefer to model today so if you look at my layout(s) and a calender you will know what day I am modeling. [:)]
I model steam and electrics, and save for our time in Norway, never saw an electric loco in the states until I was in my late 20’s. I grew listening to my grandfater talk about steam, my mom talking about taking the train from Columbus, WI to Milwaukee and back for nursing school and breaks, and dad talking about the North Shore line.
When I went looking for a landscape that I could model, I stumbled over it. I was a field scout for Del Monte in the central Sands of Wisconsin and found by accident the old P-Line. There isn’t much left, there isn’t much written, but what I could find lent itself to the things I wanted to model, easy but rolling topography, sleepy small towns, interchange with 4 railroads and with one of them twice, and no future. The line died in 1946. It was a blank slate, but it was a blank slate that did have resonable points of departure that things could have been different. Soooo, steam survived, for a while and because it was always the back up power, and the electrics took over. I have 3x 40ton steeple cabs, with plans for an additional 4 or 5. I am saving for 2 EF1 AB box cab electrics, and I have my SBB krokodile which was appearently liscensed for manufacture to the ALCO, but never acted on. So while it is a duck out of water continentally, it fits at home with the rest of the electrics and the steam power.
I just have a bit of everything, because I’m from Chicago. I have UP and Chessie stuff right now, but I rode the Metra E8 units pretty regularly in the 1980s, I’d like to model those at some point.
I have GP30s and E/F units because I like how they look.
My interests are the midwest to the rockies, but I only have room for so much on my layout, I’m planning a scene on each 2x4 section, but we will see what actually happens 
It will probably be a whole lot of ‘whatever’ mixed with as much industry action as I can fit.
Being a child of the 90s I’ve only known steam in an excursion setting. But some early trips (including 4449 when I was eight) made me fall in love with steam locomotives as amazing and elegant feats of machinery. I liked the DRGW when I ran trains as a kid mostly because of its livery, and when I came back to the hobby about two years ago I settled on Colorado as a background because of that. But realizing I had to keep my ambitions modest, it was sort of chance finding a little short line that connects to the Rio Grande (the San Luis Central) and rarely gets modeled. I fixated on it because of its simplicity and their beautiful sole 2-8-0, which for the first 40 years of the railroad’s existence was their only locomotive. I’ve given up on ovals in favor of rural switching, which I find quite relaxing as an operational mode.
P
I am a free lancer and alway have been. My childhood memories have nothing to do with my modeling choices other than my fondness for F-units which were the most common motive power on the MoPac branchline along Saddle Creek Rd in Omaha not far from where we lived. The branchline is long gone now. Pictures have been what has inspired my choices. I remember a long time ago putting together a jigsaw puzzle with picture of an Armour Yellow UP passenger train, probably somewhere along their Portland branch since it was in the mountains with a lot greenery. I don’t know where else it could have come from. Anyway, when I got into the hobby in the late 1970s, the UP was my choice. Somewhere a long the line I saw a B/W picture of the Troy, NY Union Station in RMC with some heavyweight cars parked at one of the platforms. I thought the picture had a lot of character and got me thinking about modeling an eastern railroad. I couldn’t find one that had all the elements I wanted so I decided to do another freelance railroad which is a composite of several railroads which operated from the west shore of the Hudson and across northern New Jersey into New York State, most notably the NYOW and the Lackawanna. Had those two railroads merged it would have looked very much like my freelanced railroad.
LION was going to build a generic 70s - 80s ish commuter railroad, but when life-Like came out with thier R-15 and R-21 subway cars, I instantly converted my railroad to the NYC Subway, and have not looked back since.
I could get older or newer custom made HO scale equipment at about $400.00 per car, but that was just out of the question. Now I am running 10 eight car trains on my 14 miles of track.
Watch the closing doors on the express…
ROAR
I model what I remember as a kid- trains rolling past corn and bean fields in the midwest. Dad took my brother and I to see the N&W 611 when I was 10 when it came to town and that’s been my favorite locomotive ever since. I’ve done a ton of reasearch about it as well as the N&W so my layout is a freelanced N&W town/area somewhere around the Columbus OH area so I can have both flat(ter) lands and some mountaineous scenes.
I model an era I never saw in a place I have never lived. The Grand Trunk Western in June 1953. I am from the east coast, but my grandparents lived in the south Chicago suburbs, my Grandpa worked for the GTW from 1928-1968.
I model an era that was over before I was born because of a book that came out when I was a teenager, Evening before the Diesel, by Charles Foss. Seeing the GTW in steam just drew me in and the rest is history.
Because I was maybe 13 years old when I sold my Lionels and moved to HO. I bought an Athearn train set, with a Milwaukee GP9 because I thought the GP9 was cool and I liked the colors. When I went to college, my parents made me put the trains away. I carried them around with me for 40 years, moving the boxes from attics to basement.
Then I opened the boxes and started to resurrect my trains. Not really realizing that the engines were all going to end up as dummies, I stayed with the Milwaukee around 1960. Most of my old rolling stock is now operational, with Kadees and upgrades to metal wheels.
Why? Because a 13-year-old kid liked the colors, and 55 years later, he still does.
Although I’m only in the planning stages, waiting and dreaming of having a space in a house mainly, I do have an interest in modern railroads. When I first got into the hobby 10 or so years ago, I bought any and everything that was reasonably priced. Right away, I realized that this was a terrible idea and that I needed to focus on a specific era and railroad.
Growing up in western Wisconsin, I saw Union Pacific going through town every day. I’d sit in class in high school and listen for the train whistle and try to make sure I found a reason to get up to see what was leading the train. In college, I had an apartment feet from the Canadian Pacific line running south along the Mississippi. I’d drive home on the Wisconsin side and watch the BNSF.
This has all put me in a weird position for what direction I’d like to take a future railroad. I really like the modern era, but I also like the idea of keeping a fallen flag alive in a freelance setting. Thus, I’d like to incorporate Chicago & North Western into a layout. I would also like to incorporate the major railroads of today, but that is a bit far fetched as well. Freelance seems the best where I can create my own back story of how things work. I’m not a Union Pacific fan, rather I prefer BNSF, Norfolk Southern (something about the all black engine with a white front), and Canadian Pacific primarily. I really like gondolas, hoppers, and Railbox boxcars, too. So I’ll be looking at industries that fit those criteria.
Being that I don’t have a place to even think about building a layout, I can only look at the forums, browse the web, read the magazines, and dream. I’ll be going to my first show in several years in January, and I can’t wait to see what’s out there and hopefully find some inspiration and direction. Really, I’m just a lost modeler looking for inspiration and a home to build in. Hopefully that home will come in the next few months as my fiancee and I are begi