A 4th generation B&O man, I was introduced to Model Railroading in the mid 1960's. My Father worked as an Operator, and later Agent at East Salamanca NY for over 35 years. I worked many jobs on the RR starting as a trackman and retiring as an Engineer a few years ago. Now I volunteer at the Salamanca Rail Museum, greeting guests, and preparing exhibits and doing presentations for various groups.

We started our layout with a single sheet of plywood in 1968, and it has expanded and transformed into a 26'x 26' empire with over 75 locomotives and 500 cars. I had originally planned to model the B&O RR Buffalo Division as it appeared in 1952, but with the addition of 4 Son's the layout became more of a hybrid spanning the decades from the 1940's up into the 1990's. Each of my Son's have played a role in shaping the layout.  Currently we are running an average of 4 mainline trains, 2 eastbound, and 2 westbound with about 30 cars per train, and an occasional local freight or small passenger train mixed in. We have 3 yards, East Salamanca, Bradford Pa, and Rikers[Punxsutawney Pa]. ES and Rikers are classification yards, while Bradford is almost exclusively industrail switching. We use MRC Prodigy Advance for our DCC system, and maintain 5 throttles for operating sessions. We plan on installing a staging yard representing Buffalo from the north and Pittsburgh from the south with a steel mill dividing the two cities.