As I grew up not far from the mainline of the Long Island Rail Road in Floral Park, the LIRR is my favorite road. Unarguably, Ron Zeil's Steel Rails To The Sunrise is a fantastic book about the LIRR, and I particularly admire one folklore story so much that I have a strong urge to incorporate it into my layout somehow.
In the early days of the LIRR (1800s), the tracks ran through what was once the farmlands of Central Long Island. In the town of Bethpage, an elderly widow farm lady blamed the railroad for scaring her live stock, so the cows didn't give enough milk and the chickens didn't lay enough eggs. The mainline of the LIRR had a grade where it crossed her farm. so in defiance to the railroad, she greased the tracks and when the engine stalled, she shot at it to scare it away!
Can you imagine the consequences of doing that today? I am thinking of building a diorama of this event using a Camelback which was most likely the type of engine she shot at. Eventually, the diorama will find a place on my layout.
