why do you model that railroad?

[RMax1]

I have always modeled something. Armor mostly when I was a kid. I've always liked trains and never new about kits until one day I walked into a toy story and they had Athearn blue boxes. I started collecting and building Amtrak cars from there. Still build and run Amtraks.

RMax

[Anonymous]

Availability of appropriate top quality products, large quantity of available information, beauty of the prototype location, the size of the prototype (small locos and stock) suits my circumstances.

The downside is distance from my location (it is in another country) and the language barrier of 99% of the available information is different from my native tongue.

However I have managed to overcome these difficulties and my layout has won awards for its realism.[:)]

http://www.altezeitgruppe.com

[CFournier]

I was raised in Montreal in the province of Quebec and lived near a Canadian Pacific yard in Outremont. In the fifties and early sixties there was no fences so we could go in the yard and watch trains being made up. This yard is now a Quebec and Gatineau RR yard where one can see boxcars, hoppers, tankcars and autoracks. CP intermodal passes through the yard also. I am only fifty years old but I can remember riding trolleybuses and tramways in Montreal. We have a very nice railroad museum near Montreal in Delson with lots of big steam and early diesels that i visit each year with my son (5 Years old). But being raised near the CPrr and CN does'nt mean that I have to model those lines. I visited the southwestern states twice in the 90's and realy loved the scenery in Arizona, Utah, California and Colorado. I decided to model this landscape and choose the Western Pacific because it is less modeled than the SP, ATSF or UP, and praticaly unknown here in eastern Canada. I could have modeled coastal Maine that I love or a Vermont branchline. But the WP and a desert setting is so different of what I see around here that it gives a special feeling to my layout and I realy like the WP paint schemes.
Chris

[twhite]

It's a complex answer. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California near the SP Donner Pass line (or as it's fondly referred to: The "Hill"). Fell in love with big cab-forward articulateds as a kid, then as I grew older, I fell in love with photographs of the Rio Grande steam locos. When I decided to get serious in my '20's, I wanted to model both Rio Grande and SP, but they never ran on common trackage, at least back then. So I created a fictional Rio Grande California extension that crossed the Sierras midway between the Donner Pass line and WP's Feather River canyon, but kept certain aspects of Rio Grande's Tennessee Pass and Moffat lines as well (the Rockies are a totally DIFFERENT kind of mountain range than the Sierra). First layout was single-tracked and never really quite worked, so I tore it out and went with a double-track non-parallel main somewhat like the Donner Pass route between Roseville and Colfax, CA. But now I can watch my big Rio Grande L-131's hauling freight and passing SP AC-6's hauling reefer blocks, because the California Extension is set in the busy 1940's, and SP has trackage rights when the Donner Pass line gets too clogged. So it's the best of both worlds for me, I get my two FAVORITE mountain railroads all in one nice trans-Sierra package. Oh, and by the way, there is NO plan to dieselize the California Extension in the near future. Steam rules!
Tom

[CFournier]

Tom,
I like your answer. My layout is under construction and it will take liberties from the prototype railroad: My WP will end it's tracks in Monterey so I can model Cannery Row and the denizens of Steinbeck' novels. It will go to Portola and up the Feather River Canyon (if I can model a small portion of it...) and end in the desert where I plan to model a dry desert scene that resembles Moab, Utah! ...Great expectations...
Chris.

[Anonymous]

The C&O to me without a dought the epitome of a coal hauling RailRoad. I had no prior experience with this RR/grew up beside a Pennsylvania main/moved west and watched many a UP freight.But the first picture of The Allegheny I was hooked.For all the people it employed in the mostly under developed areas of WV and KY,and gave them the chance to better themselves and their family's.For all the idea's and innovations associated with streamlined passenger service.For resisting the diesel till it no longer could.And for # 490 the streamlined turbine.I wish I could of stood there just once,And see with my own eye's What now I can only Imagine.

[Anonymous]

I model what I can get to within a 1-hr drive and see in real life. The former B&O Old Main Line (now CSX) is within a mile of my house.

When I was 12, I lived near Detroit, Michigan, so I modeled NYC and C&O. When my family moved near Baltimore MD, I was near the B&O. As soon as I got my drivers license I started going to all the B&O hotspots (Brunswick, Harpers Ferry, Cumberland) so that became my road of choice, with a 'dash' of WM thrown in.

Fast forward to 1988: When I'd been away from the hobby for 15 years, I went back to B&O modeling. But it was never quite the same, I couldn't figure out why.... meanwhile, my wife asked me to do a MRR presentation to our kids' homeschooling co-op. OK, I thought, the kids will probably be bored unless I show them models of stuff they see every day, so I bought a few Kato diesels painted in CSX colors and... *BINGO* ...THAT's what I needed to put the excitement back into model railroading! I decided to embrace the present, have bought a dozen CSX model locos so far, and have been enjoying it with nearly the same intensity as during my later teenage years.

IMHO, modeling and railfanning go together like ham and cheese (or crabs and beer, if you live in Maryland[swg]).

[Anonymous]

I grew up around the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, Chicago and Northwestern, Milwaukee Road, Soo Line, Duluth Mesabi and Iron Range and a short line south of Minneapolis called the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern. As a kid, I liked the Northern Pacific's North Coast Limited and the N.P.'s slogan "Northern Pacific, really terrific, that' what everyone who rides it, says"! I like the Northern Pacific look of their steam locos and the overall black with yellowish gold trim on the diesels. Since I am proud of the fact I live "Up North", the first Northern Trans-continental and the second overall transcontinental monikers are neat aspects of this line. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the Mesabi Road. The DMIR was what Minnesota was all about, when the Iron Range helped make America out of Steel. Minnesota has always been a part of the strong backbone of this country and the railroads which were a part of Minnesota's heritage rank high on my list of interests.

Wow, I oughta run for politics!

[Big_Boy_4005]

I model that railroad because it is "alive", and because it is local and easy to study. It has lots of action, and infinate possibilities. Because it is local, my friends can relate to it, and will enjoy operating it when complete.

So what railroad is it you ask? Does it really matter?[swg]

[PistolPete]

I model BN with interchanges with UP and SF not a real location so I do what I want with the setup. Why these lines, well I went to a train show after 15+ years out of the hobby I bought a new BN SD40-2 and a few BN cars because the colors and logos really were the best I saw that day. I expanded to UP and SF because of their location in the west. I also model some local Maine RR, like MEC, and B&A. I have not completed my switching/interchange layout but I plan to operate Western RR and NorthEastern RR at different times.

[Anonymous]

trains rule