Did a Real Railroad Influence Anything on Your Layout?

Yes, the steam locomotive servicing facility, and the reefer icing platform.

Not really.

Yes,numerous buildings,engines and cars.

Mikey

Yes, I am trying to stick to one road name (BNSF) for engines and most rolling stock. I try to purchase only that road name. We live near a couple of different sets of tracks operated by the real rail road. We lived about 4 blocks from one of them for about 35 years, until we moved in 2013. Living near the real railroad and seeing these trains everyday is what led to choosing this road name.

As a model railroader, I like to think that a real Railroad influenced everything on my layout.   However, I know it is stretch for some of the "selectively compressed" things and a lot of fantasy industry names.

Everything from buildings to engines to rolling stock to names of places. It is a history lesson.

Indeed!  That's why there will never, ever be a Daylight Cab Forward on my layout, and why I will unapologetically bemoan and harp on those that do. 

Don't do fantasy themes when it comes to scale equipment, although for my non-scale collection it's a free for all.

Yes. N and W. Born in Bluefield, W Va, moved to Suffolk, Va, and school in Blacksburg (near Christiansburg), and a grandparent from Roanoke who worked for awhile for N and W.

N and W and the successor thereto has been nearby my entire life and along the main road between these locations (US 460).

We tend to use local names and usually the N and W has been nearby.

But I have to admit, there is a lure to western scenery and railroads.

No, but real places did.  The restaurant where I met my wife, places I have lived or worked, other places of some importance to me.

Not exact copies, but representations of them.  Most look nothing at all like the real thing, but the names have survived.

It is first a toy train.

No, I can't say they did. Lionel since 1947 was the biggest influence.

I know many of you dream of the day you can build your dream model railroad.  I’ve literally laid awake at night thinking of massive UP steamers battling the Wastach Mountains or Sherman Hill-in miniature of course!

Some of the scenes on my layout will include scratch built steamers, such as a 2-8-8-0 Bull Moose pulling 40-50 car trains at prototypical speeds through vast western scenery.  East and West bound coal trains will pass each other at Hermoso Tunnel.  A 2-10-2, scratch built, will head a long PFE train into a yard complete with a massive PFE loading facility.

A huge coal station will dominate the Cheyenne engine facility as Challengers and Big Boys await their turn for service.  The wash rack will be busy as an FEF-1 glides through.  A massive full circle roundhouse, complete with a ‘back shop’ will hold more steamers.   A small switcher moves slowly about the yard, assembling the next departing train.

Steam still dominates the UP passenger fleet.  At the station, new streamline cars are slowly replacing the TTG grey Heavy Weights pulled by aging 4-8-2s.

So, yeah, it's influenced my design and the dream will be a reality...

Most definitely, from NP passenger, SP daylight, Alaska passenger, to stories of WP and SF, and growing up through SP&S, NP and GN to the merger making BN followed by BNSF, and UP running just miles away along the Columbia have shaped my current possessions, and will run my layout exactly as they did when growing up or seeing in recent years. Thus the UP coal, BN freight, BNSF grain trains, SP PFE, CSX Tropicana train, with NP, SP, SF,Alaska and B&O passengers running my shelf and a passenger loop of main layout.

It's all influenced by real railroads. Even though I run old electric trains and not scale models now, had it not been for real trains there would be no O gauge or any other gauge trains. Toy or scale!!

Growing up where I did, you couldn't escape the Raritan River Railroad. During the 70's and 80's I watched as they shuffled cars at Hercules, moved lumber at Clayton's, drilled in Parlin and South River, shifted hoppers at a Wonderbread factory. I was lucky enough to turn the swing bridge in South River a few times. I have two engines and a caboose that I run when I get tired of my NYC stuff. One day, if I get the room I'd like to do a compressed version of Parlin, South River - with a swing bridge - and probably the South Amboy shops.

Both my dad and his dad worked for railroads, and their literature was around the

houses.  I lived on depot lane in a tiny tank town and hung out at the station and

did all the things that give modern RR's fits, except I did not get out on the trestle,

nor did I, as a friend's dad did, hop trains to go visit relatives.

My models are impacted, though, by western roads, The Great Western, the Colorado

Midland, and the D&RGW, and its narrow gauge (which last I do not yet model).  My

scratch built water towers are modeled off the stone based ones at Gunnison on

the Denver, South Park, and Pacific.  There are many more real railroad influences in

my modeling.

Yes my great grandfather worked for the B&O and retired and tracks goes by in front of my house 1000 feet away it was B&O then merged to Chessie in the 70's and 80's when growing up. 

Not the train,

But the Boy Scout Camp, and the hospital, and a few other "Scenes"

So real life dioramas, and the road name "New haven"  grew up in CT.

Ben

Indirectly, the real RR's influenced the manufacturers who in turn influenced me.

When we bought out first TMCC loco it was New York Central. Then we decided to loosley model railroads from the Allentown area where my mom grew up a stones throw from a three track mainline. I don't think the NYC was in that area, so we are adding Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and Reading. All of the locos and majority of rolling stock will be from these lines.  CNJ is a possibility down the road.

No, mine is a toy train layout.

Jeff Davis

I think for me it was my great grandfather being killed while working on the old Grand Trunk in Canada. I never knew him, but my grandfather had an odd, love-hate relationship with trains his entire life. He was genuinely interested in my HO trains, and he liked to talk about steam locomotives, but at the same time he was dead set against me applying for a railroad job, which I understood given what had happened to his father.

This love-hate relationship of my grandfather was put into an entirely different light when last year I obtained copies of newspaper clippings covering the story of his father's accident. It was only then that I learned that his father literally died in his arms a few minutes after the accident occurred.

Jeff C

Absolutely! CP1800. First diesel I ever saw!

Got to walk through an F unit when I was about eight years old and have been partial to them ever since. Like my motive power to be CP or CN.

I was born in Quanah, TX which was served by 3 railroads: Fort Worth & Denver, Frisco, and Quanah, Acme & Pacific.  I worked for 2 of those roads, and have collected several trains depicting what I saw trackside from all 3 lines.  I even "proto-lance" fleets of QA&P cars as I act as if it was never abandoned.

My father's business outside Lubbock, TX was located on the Slaton Division of ATSF, which has caused me to collect a large amount of recreated childhood memories of the Santa Fe.

Many railroads have influenced my tastes but narrowing it down to a certain period in time keeps a tight focus on what gets purchased for the layout.  I'm leaning greatly towards electrics so I envision putting those engines under wire when construction begins.

Bruce

When I first read your post I thought that it was meant as a joke.  But after reading some of the answers, I see that it obviously isn't.

My whole pleasure in model railroading is trying to recreate real railroads as accurately as I can.  I'm usually pretty disappointed in my ability to do that, but it never the less is my motivation.  I want to remember watching the real Milwaukee Road switch reefers cars in my home town by having the same engines and cars on my layout.  Hear the sounds that the models make takes me back in time to listening to the real thing.  Watching a model lean into a super-elevated curve and remembering watching a real railroad doing the same thing.  Seeing my passenger train slowly backing into a model of a major Chicago station reminds of the fun of watching the real thing.

Art

Absolutely .... the B&O!  I grew up in Maryland along the B&O mainline from Baltimore to DC.  I got my first cab ride in the station switcher at B&O's Camden Station in Baltimore when I was 3 year old ... the engineer let me sit on his lap and put my hand along with his on the throttle as we switched from one track to another ... a huge thrill!!! My second cab ride was in a B&O GP7 when I was about 12 years old.....  The engineer even let me blow the horn for the grade crossing ... yet another huge thrill

Prior to that I was allowed into a real live steaming  B&O steam locomotive when I was 2 years old ... still remember it ... and have loved train ever since.

My Free State Junction Railway has a fleet of B&O locos .... both  steam and first generation diesels!  They include a scale B&O Hudson, scale B&O Atlantic, GP9 and dummy, SW 9, Alco FA2 ABA consist, and a 3 car set of B&O RDC cars.  My layout also includes a model of a Bollman Iron Truss Suspension Bridge.  This kind of bridge was a B&O exclusive and used throughout their system ( around 100 bridges ) and now only one survives.   

My great grandfather was an engineer on the B&O

Oh yeah, only the whole railroad! If you'd like to see what I'm actually doing, go to Google maps and start in Red Wing, Minnesota and follow the tracks north, up through Fridley, MN. That's my mainline, about 60 miles.

This is a piece of the Amtrak Empire Builder route over the BNSF and CP mains. There is also UP (ex C&NW) action and a couple of small local railroads, the Minnesota Commercial and the Twin Cities & Western.

In terms of trains it would be the Florida Tri-Rail Bombardier set.  Took a trip to South Florida a few years back and saw this on running and just thought it was really cool looking especially with the palm tree graphics.  When MTH came out with it a few years back I placed the order.

For scenery it would be what I am working on right now with my baseball field.  In high school our field had a main line about 30 yards from the outfield fence.  Many times a train would pass during a game and I always thought that would make a nice scene.

Now if I could only bring myself to add metal "rot", and holes in the floors from campfires, I'd be all set. They had no interior left, so that parts ok.   

The normal speed was about 15mph, maybe 20mph on a fast one. I rode 2 miles and stepped of easily two blocks from home....till one day the train sped up. And kept speeding up. I had hopped a train that wasn't headed to the yards and now I knew it.

Hey, don't. Not fun. 

Well that makes one of us. 

I wonder if Elvis hated the sound of his own voice

() 

Jeff C,

  I can relate. One Grandfather loved trains, and spoiled all the Grandkids with them.

I would take them to the other Grandparents house often to play too. But that grandfather would not play with the trains with me. He played with me with other toys, and we modeled ships, cars, and other things, so I wrote it off as just another non-train person that couldn't be swayed. Disappointing, but no big deal we did lots of stuff together.

  Later as an adult, after finding his wife's MARX CV buried at an old family house.

 I asked Grandma why it was not at their house. It was then I found out his mother got her foot caught between rail and bricks (before pavement) and was run down by a trolley before his eyes, and died, him there, while still caught in the tracks, after about 20 minutes. Grandma had moved it to the other family house, to spare him.

 I never spoke of trains around him again, and cant believe the strength it must have took to deal with me, and my trains all those years before that. I think I even asked for a trolley as a gift option a few times.

Boy, he must have really loved to see me happy.

He did tell me the story himself eventually. The driver ignored the yelling crowd for about 150 yards as they were trying to stop him. He said he wasn't ever really "angry" about it, and felt guilty about that sometimes. He was just so thankful he got to say goodbye, it was easier to accept without anger, or extreme sadness.

I think it was a shock that never faded though.

   I also think the other Grandfather knew of this, because the one thing I always asked for each holiday was a trolley, but I never got one. When I asked "when?", the answer always was you can always come here to play with trolleys. But if I asked for something else I'd more often than not, get it. And/or be offered a chance to earn it at least.

  I often wish my Train-Grandpa, would have still been alive then to ask if that's the real reason I never got one, or if he really didn't know how bad I wanted one.

 I finally got my GG-1, for about the price of a trolley too, but I still don't own a trolley.

Fate sure can be cruel . 

To the question posed by the title of this thread:  Yes - everything was influenced by my Home Road.

Brian,

What about that beautiful Grand Central Terminal of yours? 

My layout is very loosely based on the PRR's Middle Division and my hometown of Lewistown, PA.  I don't model anything exactly but, like several previous posters, include representations of places that are meaningful to me. 

I don't limit my layout to PRR though.  You would be amazed at the number of railroads that have arranged detours over my railroad, including some of the western carriers.  No route is deemed too circuitous to be considered in my layout "world". 

Curt

When I was still trying to seriously model the LIRR in HO and had a serious illness I saw traditional/toy versions of LIRR equipment--the K-Line Greenport Scoot and the MTH RDC car pair properly decorated in LIRR although they're short etc.

These purchases of to my eye at least models that captured trains I remembered seeing on the LIRR.

Now I'm in traditional O and am selling off the last of my HO LIRR kits etc.

Scotie

C&NW cowboy line.

Well, it's real to me. Does that count?  I've always followed a theme in developing my layouts - over the years, I've worked up layouts based on the C&NW line through my town in the late 1800s, an imaginary combination of the 'Roaring Elgin' (CA&E) and North Shore interurban lines, Thomas the Tank Engine's branch line from Elsbridge to Knapford, and now the Merionith and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited. The M&LRTC is home to Ivor the Engine who first appeared on British television in 1958. Fortunately, like Sodor, this line is pretty well documented and my layout includes all its main scenes.