Penn Central. More people modeling it than we realize!

[wd45]

I am modeling the 1970's, and while PC won't be the featured road, it will be a major part of my layout. My first train watching memories were standing at the front door of a small general store just outside of Knightstown, Indiana, watching PC freights fly by on the Indy-Richmond, IN line. I was 9 when Conrail took over PC, so I was too young to know anything about their bankruptcy or labor problems or bad track; I just was drawn to the green boxcars! lol As a small child, it seemed to me that everytime we traveled to Greenfield, Indianapolis, or eastward to Richmond, we would see at least one freight passing by (and every once in a while an Amtrak train, as well) and I would sit next to the car window (I always had to sit next to the window that looked towards the track), just looking for the big green cars with the "mating" worms. lol
We lived only about 2 miles from the line, plus about 2 miles from the old NKP New Castle-Rushville, IN branch (BTW, you want to talk about a line in bad shape! NEVER saw a PC freight go as slow as the N&W did on this one), plus Rushville sat on the Indy-Cincy B&O/Chessie line, and that was only about 15 minutes away, too. I liked to watch the trains on these lines, but for me, the PC was "the line".

God bless,
Mike

[Anonymous]

Interesting aspects, everybody. When I'm modeling, I don't ever think of what the state of the country or world was in that time. I just focus on how the railroads were doing.

Oh yeah, PC's ok, but I'll take Big Blue anyday![;)]

[chutton01]

QUOTE: Originally posted by csxengineer98

ROW full of weeds and the track all missalined?

Well, since this thread was bumped anyway, I seem to recall some article suggesting tacking thin styrene strips of short, random sizes under the road bed (actually, I believe it was between the road bed and the track, covered with 'dirty' weathered ballast) in alternating postions - this way, the model freight cars would rock back and forth slightly, modeling misaligned trackage.
Perhaps it was the same article were the author described putting thin carpet fibre weeds in the ROW (up and in the center of the track - in the center was shorter to clear the axles), and dirt and grasscover everywhere to model weedy, unkempt trackage (not sure if they also suggested dipping the track down a bit into a muddy patch (modeled with mini-wax stain over brown painted durham putty ground cover, or equivalent).
I plan to do some spur trackage this way (don't over do it though - no reason to have scale derailments)

Actually, if I wasn't interested in the present (I am not interested in the late 1970s/1980s, as that seems to me to be the peak era of railroad retrenchment ), I'd go with CNJ/PC in northern New Jersey during the 1969-1972 era - major corporations operating on shoestring budgets with no real idea of the future -definitely a gritty, interesting era.