Why That Railroad?

My railroads of interest are:

New York Central Railroad - Long Island Rail Road - Boston & Albany Railroad - Boston & Maine Railroad - New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad - Metro North Railroad - Amtrak - Providence & Worcester Railroad

I have lived adjacent to the tracks or in the territory of each of these railroads. I have watched their yard operations, watched them from trackside, traveled through their stations, explored what's left of them, and read about their histories.

My model trains and layouts reflect this.

MELGAR

On the Central Arizona Central RR (my own line) I have rolling stock from everywhere we ever lived and our own "flag" on RR equipment.

See the fun you can have when you're running O27 TOY trains and not striving for much detail.....or scale.....or any specific time period.

One reason I am fond of The Put is that one of the station stops is Yorktown Heights where I have lived with my wife since 1981 and raised a family.

Here is a photo of the real restored station:

Here is my model, loosely defined, which I think kind of resembles the real station:

The NT Central Ten Wheeler 4-6-0 steamer commonly ran of The Put. Arnold

I model the NH although I live in CA.  My parents sent me and my brother to live with our aunt and uncle and their daughter in the old family home in Fairfield, CT during the summer.  The family used to take the NH train to New York once or twice during the summer to see a baseball game or a play.  When I became older, I used to ride the train by myself from Washington DC to Bridgeport and back.  These were PRR trains pulled by GG-1s between Washington and NY and NH EP-3s from NY to Bridgeport.  I always had a window seat and really enjoyed the trip as much as the summer in Fairfield.  

Now that I am in CA and have lived in the SF Bay Area for a long time, I have developed an interest in all the western railroads. My western railroad collection now exceeds my NH collection.  NH Joe

I'm a big fan of the Santa Fe RR and its successor: the BNSF RR. I love the ATSF Warbonnet. It looks amazing on my Lionel Legacy B40-8W. The UP, SP, and other western railroads are also favorites. Why? I live in Vegas, so I occasionally see UP diesels when I go to different places around town. My favorite train-watching location is Cajon Pass and BNSF's Barstow Yard. I see plenty of BNSF and former ATSF diesels heading trains through the yard. I like watching the UP and BNSF trains heading up and down the pass as I ride in the car on the highway towards Disneyland. Speaking of Disney, Walt loved trains, too, and he had a train in his yard, as well as the ones in the parks.

Fun topic @Arnold D. Cribari . As I sit here snowed in I’m going to make quite a long post.

To start, I’ll give a general overview of the  types of trains, accessories, figures, etc... that I model and a thematic brief thematic overview, second I’ll discuss the geographical areas & era I model, next I’ll name the RRs that I use, fourth I’ll discuss my military theme and how I manage to have one in o scale, finally, I’ll discuss the “Why” behind each portion.

First, know that I’m a tin plater- I love Ives, Prewar Flyer, Prewar Lionel, & Prewar European(Bing, Bassett-Locke, KBN, etc...)  just as much as I love modern trains and accessories. Further, with the exception of tinplate structures, I try to keep all my vehicles and structures between 1:43 and 1:50 scale and figures between 1.25’and 1.7’.

THEME: the time period is modern but Trains are just as important as cars in transportation. Further, there’s an on-going military conflict, think Cold War-esque East & West Berling, requiring a military presence, heavy security of industry, gov. Buildings and transit centers, and a border.

Geography & Era: While I don’t “model” a specific area, I  try to combine elements of specific areas with a heavy focus on the Lehigh Valley(Allentown & surrounding towns) , the Northeast corridor(specifically Philly & its suburbs) , a tad of Washington DC(the street with the embassies) as well as Richmond VA. That said, the trains, structures, accessories and figures on my layout are generally a representation of the modern era. I like to think by using my altered modern theme and combining the geographical areas in my particular manner that I have some plausible or feasible linearity in terms of both the geography modeled and the time period, such that my accessories(buildings, figures, cars) and trains don’t look out of place. I do try to keep my tinplate portions structures separate from my modern structures

RRs/leasing companies I most often run  are:

Amtrak, NJ Transit, TTX, PRR, LV, CSXT(and certain members of its family tree, specifically Chessie System, B&O And C&O). Also I guess you’d have to include Ives Railway Lines, Lionel Lines, American Flyer Lines

RRs/leasing companies of interest include the above plus:

Norfolk Southern, SEPTA, Reading, Northampton & Bath RR, New Haven, New York Central

Military Modeling: I’m into military history and am a collector, modeler/displayer of o scale military figures, vehicles and buildings. By extension, my layout often features some type of overarching “conflict” akin to an East/West Berlin situation. Things like an embassy, military checkpoints, United Nations vehicles, small military bases/camps, soldiers at freight stations, SWAT at passenger stations, etc... As anyone who likes both toy soldiers and o scale trains knows, very slim pickings for o scale soldiers, let alone any in action/fighting poses. The only offerings of non-sitting o scale soldiers are by MTH(one set of 6), K-Line/OLR(one set of 9), and Corgi’s discontinued 1:50 scale WWII era Forward March(six sets of six soldiers)& Skirmish(3 soldiers and a vehicle)- however, there’s only about 2-3 figures in fighting poses in each set. Hence, after many hours of scouting the internet, I’ve also found and use composite miniatures(about 1 3/8’) And SAE, Authenticast and Ahi Toys 30mm(1.25’)lead soldiers which, While expensive and a bit undersized, allow me to add a ton of diversity to my layout. For example, the picture below is a U.N. Convoy consisting of U.S. & Jordanian soldiers getting supplies are a freight station.

WHY:

I live in and grew up in the Lehigh Valley and have been to Philadelphia many times and love Pennsylvania. In elementary school and middle school I made 4 trips to Florida from 30th street station in Philly via Amtrak- hence my love for Amtrak. Also, Amtrak is the National passenger service, being quasi-government fits in with an political/military conflict on my layout. I went to college at Richmond hence my love for that area. My first MTH Proto 3 Train was an NJT which has built an interest in both inter and intracity transit. That explains my reasons for modeling the RRs and area that I do. As for the tinplate trains and the military theme, My grandfather was the youngest of 15, his 5 oldest brother’s served in WWII and he and the 3 younger brothers before him all enlisted prior to the Cuban middle crisis. He was a major collector of antique & collectible toys(cap guns, Corgis, Marx tin Toys, Auburn rubber cars, lead and plastic soldiers, sports items, beer advertising, political memorabilia, some trains, and so much more). As a kid, many times I’d make forts and buildings with blocks and toy soldiers at home and his house. My mother, father and grandfather fostered a love for creativity in me and my grandfather, especially, instilled a love for history, historical items, collectibles and old toys for me, so that’s how my joy for tinplate coalesced.

I hope I didn’t stray to far from what you wanted, Arnold, but I felt I really couldnt adequately explain why I run the RRs I run without including information regarding my layout’s era,  thematic, geographical elements and their histories  as they relate to my own personal experiences

Though I'm just in the early stages of building my new layout, my present and past layouts are really a generic representation of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota  -- all pretty much with whimsical landscape representations, but very focused on road names for my trains.  I've been a road sales guy my whole career covering those states and have spent most of my windshield time observing old trains and new trains both on mainlines and on sidings and in railroad museums throughout my territory.  I've also been to a lot of hobby shops in those states and I'm always intrigued by the local inventory representations of their trains.  I love the past and present trains in the Chicago area as much as the Milwaukee Road and Soo Line in northern Wisconsin and the trains and train things in Duluth iron ore country of Minnesota and the trip down highway 61 along the Mississippi, where the CB&Q once traveled, and then down through Dubuque to the Quad Cities,  and then further west toward Nebraska, where the UP reigns supreme today, roaring across Iowa cornfields. What I've learned, however, is a lot of those "local" roads really cover a lot of territory.  The New York Central, for example, as most on this forum know, has a bit of Chicago bred into it as it offered first class service from Chicago to New York.  Likewise, the CNW had Wisconsin and Minnesota in it's blood because it served those area, too.  But you can become a hoarder if you wanted to collect all those roads that cover the territory you want for your layout.  So I'm holding off collecting New York Central -- in the interest of space and money, I have to draw the line somewhere.

I'd have to go with the Canadian Northern Railway in terms of favorite railways.  The stations were relatively  nice to look at, whether they be of the Scottish barony/chateauesque look, or even the smaller more rural versions that still invoke some reminders of that style long past.  The owners Mackenzie and Mann were generally respected by those in the prairies (consumer friendly business practices), and even today you can find the scattered remnants of a crazy amount of former CNor (at one time or another) branch lines that once served the countryside so well.  While it did somewhat lead to the railway's downfall (and later amalgamation into Canadian National), they had a thing for 'rapid expansion' to the extent of respectably adding other railroads to their holdings and the completion of a Transcontinental line.  Unfortunately much of what made up their expansive profitable branchline network has since been lost under Canadian National with its rather unfortunate attitudes and lack of ingenuity (a crying shame!).  I sometimes like to think if CNor had survived to this day,  much of Canada's rail network (that wasn't CPR) would have remained intact and functional.

In terms of modeling, I have been drawing up plans for a layout that emphasis the height of the CNor in the Western Canadian Prairies,  albeit the railway had a wide array of fascinating railway architecture, bridges, tunnels, and steamships to draw from in modeling.  As such, there is a lot of interesting places to pick from across the continent, and even across the border.  While manufacturers tend to go with the CNR or CPR in terms of models, It would be nice to see some actual locomotives bearing the once great road name (besides those custom aftermarket painted, or done by Atlas for special order club cars!).

Fun fact: Canadian Northern was even the first railway in Canada to have a self-propelled passenger car
with an internal combustion engine (CNor #500).

Folks, it was such a pleasure for me to read your above explanations of the railroads each of you are drawn to and why you collect and model them. IMO, your accounts are very well written, and would make a very interesting theme for a train magazine to include in one or more of its runs. Your explanations, even your writing style, say much about you and your interests and make me want to get to know you, and the railroads you are interested in, more.

Now, I will share something about myself and my model railroad, which many of you know because I post a lot, maybe too much, on this Forum because of my sometimes uncontrollable passion for this hobby.

I love baseball.

So, I have a lot of baseball on my layout:

I call this my Popsicle Stick Yankee Stadium.

Later on, I will post more baseball on my layout.

I say: put on your layout what you love, then you will love your layout, and the trains that you run on it. Arnold

Here's the image that is missing in the body of my above post:

Good morning Arnold.

You certainly do not post too much.

Always fun and interesting to see your topics.

Thank you.

I grew up in the Northeast Bronx and lived there until I left for Buffalo at age 22 in 1975..... therefore, northeast railroads.....90% of my equipment has northeast origins.....

The New Haven and New York Central were always in my sight. I lived near the New Haven freight line that came up from the HellGate Bridge and my father's family lived along the 4 track Main Line in Larchmont.

There was a small freight yard adjacent to East Tremont Avenue in Parkchester where, as a child, I remember that we would buy our Christmas trees off a NH box car.

The number 6 El serviced my neighborhood.

I took the Dyre Avenue subway line to my high school (Cardinal Spellman). This was built on the remnant of the NewYork, Westchester  & Boston RR.....a would-be competitor to the New Haven that failed in the 1930s.

I remember the New York Central trains zipping up the Bronx River corridor on the Harlem Division.......and, road the subway, New Haven trains and New York Central trains into Grand Central......

I went to Manhattan College and every day I smelled the wonderful aroma of cookies from the Stella Door factory in Riverdale, a business serviced by the New York Central's Putnam Division......every day, going to class, I drove along and passed over the Putnam Division as it entered Van Cortland Park.

We vacationed in the Catskills. I remembered a boarded-up station in Middletown....that started my interest in the NYO&W.

.....and, I just adore Conrail Blue.....heck, I even have a soft spot for the PennCentral.....

Sorry if I rambled.....

Peter     aka Putnam Division

StevefromPA, your post reminds me that I may have, buried in the stuff under my train tables, a bunch of green plastic military figures. I think they are a little bigger than O Scale, but some are in action poses. I even had a couple of figures with a stretcher carrying a wounded soldier, which was my favorite.

I don't have them on my layout because the figures are all green and I have no keen interest in military matters, although I admire the courage of those who serve in our armed forces.

These figures could be improved greatly, and might look good on a layout, if carefully hand painted, so at least the skin of the figures is flesh colored and not green. Arnold

@Putnam Division posted:

I grew up in the Northeast Bronx and lived there until I left for Buffalo at age 22 in 1975..... therefore, northeast railroads.....90% of my equipment has northeast origins.....

The New Haven and New York Central were always in my sight. I lived near the New Haven freight line that came up from the HellGate Bridge and my father's family lived along the 4 track Main Line in Larchmont.

There was a small freight yard adjacent to East Tremont Avenue in Parkchester where, as a child, I remember that we would buy our Christmas trees off a NH box car.

The number 6 El serviced my neighborhood.

I took the Dyre Avenue subway line to my high school (Cardinal Spellman). This was built on the remnant of the NewYork, Westchester  & Boston RR.....a would-be competitor to the New Haven that failed in the 1930s.

I remember the New York Central trains zipping up the Bronx River corridor on the Harlem Division.......and, road the subway, New Haven trains and New York Central trains into Grand Central......

I went to Manhattan College and every day I smelled the wonderful aroma of cookies from the Stella Door factory in Riverdale, a business serviced by the New York Central's Putnam Division......every day, going to class, I drove along and passed over the Putnam Division as it entered Van Cortland Park.

We vacationed in the Catskills. I remembered a boarded-up station in Middletown....that started my interest in the NYO&W.

.....and, I just adore Conrail Blue.....heck, I even have a soft spot for the PennCentral.....

Sorry if I rambled.....

Peter     aka Putnam Division

Peter, I love your post and totally relate to it. My home town is Mt. Vernon, NY and I fondly remember the train rides I took with my mother (she didn't drive), to and from Grand Central Station.

And thanks for mentioning the smell of the cookies from the Stella Doro Factory in the Bronx which, of course, I remember, but I did not know that the Stella Doro factory was along The Put.

What a great project for me: to put a Stella Doro factory along my model railroad incorporating features of The Put, and getting that sweet smell of those cookies in my basement. Maybe we can have Stella Doro cookie smoke fluid! LOL, Arnold

I'm a native Clevelander from a long line of Clevelanders (insert your Cleveland joke here), and I picked up a book at my LHS about history of railroads through Cleveland. Really educational book, and it made me decide to focus on the NY Central, Pennsy, B&O, NKP, and Erie/EL.  Only other roads I own are from the outfits I inherited from my grandfather.

I grew up in northern California with UP, SF, WP, SP tracks near me.  My older brother would take me with him on our bikes to watch the trains.  I would ride my bike to school on the right of way of a UP (I think) branch line and catch a freight every now and then.

So, do you think I would model those roads?  Nope.  Being in a single parent (mother) household we did not have money for toy trains, so I never developed any nostalgia for toy trains or those roads.

However, my father-in-law was very much into O gauge trains and specifically the Pennsy (he lived in Detroit and traveled on it a lot).  I would indulge his hobby, as well as my brother's pre-war Marx addiction, whenever I visited them. 

Then a strange thing happened.  Lionel came out with command control and, wow, it was so much more fun.  Like many members of this forum, my father-in-law and brother were not interested and try to ignore me when I would run my new TMCC engines on their layouts.  Because of my father-in-law's dedication to the Pennsy my engines were Pennsy to keep peace in the family.

When my father-in-law passed away I inherited his trains.  Since I now had all this Pennsy stuff I just stayed with it.  If I could do it over again, my road would still be Pennsy.

I model the Pennsylvania Railroad, specifically the Panhandle Division which passed through my town.  Why?

First, because I saw a lot of this bridge growing up.

Second, because of this painting which brought home to me the personal importance and meaning of the bridge and the railroad that built and used it.  I first saw this painting at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in 1999.  Until that point, I had no idea the bridge was famous.

And that has led to this:

I invite you to check out the continuing story of my layout:  https://ogrforum.com/topic/72523942496927447

George

What I model is a reflection of what was available on the O gauge market when I was a kid, and what was available when I got back into O gauge model railroading in the 1980s.   I settled on the transition era because it was commonly available.  For road names it was Southern (I liked Southern, had lived near Southern mainlines and had friends whose parents worked for Southern), N&W because my wife liked it and we had done 611 excursions, and Virginian as a nod to the first O gauge train set I got.  What my trains truly reflect is a preference for O gauge trains over trains in other scales, rather than a preference for the era or road names that I model.

PRR and Reading because I live near Philly and grew up a few hundred feet from the Reading Plymouth branch.

LVRR because I went to college in Bethlehem.

D&H because…well have you ever seen a locomotive in D&H lightning stripe or bluebonnet paint?

And since George posted that beautiful bridge, I’ll add my attempt to model the Manayunk viaduct.

My Hi-Rail O interests are Frisco, MoPac, T&P along with some of the small roads that were associated with them:  MO & ILL (and one of its parents, the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre), Sligo & Eastern, and The Frisco Silver Dollar Line   Proximity is one explanation although I model an era before my birth, which is partly a function of exposure to operating tourist and retired display steam engines.  I have an interest in the mining industry and agriculture with which these roads were more or less closely associated.  The Ozarks are my favorite place in the world, so the geography also contributes.

My very first train was a Marx NYC, however, and I have long had a soft spot for that road (which apparently I have passed down to my older son, who models it).  My interest in Standard Gauge as led me to envision a layout which will reflect New York to some degree, both the city and the agricultural countryside.  If I live long enough to build it (need room!), I will use mostly S- and T-motors, as well as New Haven engines, along with steam to help set the stage.  Fortunately, most Prewar buildings and accessories have a NY flavor to them.

An odd pairing, I know.

Growing up in SF my favorite RR became the SP.My dad would take me down to the Townsend St Station and Look at the Trains,once he Took me to San Jose on the Daylite.Now I model Western railroads,SP,UP,WP,ATSF and Little bit of GN and Sac Northern.

Great stories I love reading about people and their journey through life.

For me it's the MA&PA RR it ran through my grandparents farms and made stops at a small

station at the edge of our property. I have a vivid memory of the first train I saw as it stopped at

the station.  I ran inside and told my mom there was a train outside like the kind

dad watches on TV. Great memory

For me, it is a back-and-forth between my favorite manufacturer and my home city. I am a Lionel collector, specifically a pre-2001 Lionel collector. That means it is impossible to truly "model" anything, as Lionel never had the density of product which would allow you to recreate a particular railroad using only Lionel trains. But when you live near the nation's third-largest rail terminal...

Focusing on St. Louis "limits" my collection to "a few" roads in the steam-diesel transition era: Frisco, MoPac, Rock Island, Wabash, the Katy, the Burlington, GM&O (and predecessor Alton), New York Central (in subsidiary "Big Four"), Chicago and Eastern Illinois (a MoPac subsidiary), the Nickel Plate Road, Chicago & North Western, Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, Louisville and Nashville, the Southern, the Illinois Central and the Southern Pacific (in subsidiary Cotton Belt). And let's not forget the terminal railroads: the Alton and Southern, Illinois Terminal, Terminal Railroad Association. And two industrial short lines: Manufacturer's, and East St. Louis Junction Railroad.

And then came the era of mergers... old favorites stuck around for a while in the form of not yet repainted locos and rolling stock, while we added: Norfolk and Western, Burlington Northern (and predecessor Great Northern), Penn Central, Conrail, Chessie (and predecessor C&O), CSX, Rio Grande run-throughs over the MoPac, and, reluctantly, Union Pacific. And it has no business here, but darn if a Santa Fe unit doesn't sneak down from Chicago once in a while. I cut it off in the '80s, so I don't have NS, CN, KCS, or BNSF.

So, it's more like "why NOT that railroad?" . Seriously, though, staying with one era of one manufacturer has meant there is a finite number of trains to pursue, even with such a large number of road names. And using the rail terminal concept gives me an excuse to have a little of this, and a little of that.

@nickaix posted:

For me, it is a back-and-forth between my favorite manufacturer and my home city.

Having (mis)spent quite a few years there, I'd love to see pics of your St. Louis layout!

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Here's the image that is missing in the body of my above post:

Okay, we need to know more about those monuments, like how you made them how did you mount them, and cetera.

Forty Rod, the monuments were made by cutting off the ends of 3 Popsicle Sticks, painting them with gray acrylic paint, going on the Internet and printing the images of Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

Then, I glued the images on to the Popsicle stick ends using a little rubber cement.

I also painted the Popsicle stick ends with gray acrylic paint. Arnold

For me, it is Lionel Lines all the way. I grew up in Lionelville, so the affinity is natural.

In polling club members, it seems that roads we grew up with/near drive the road selection. I grew up near the SP Torrance Branch, but worked near the Santa Fe Harbor Sub and later lived near the Pasadena Sub. I have a few SP items, quite a bit of Santa Fe, and a BUNCH of CNW equipment. I have no idea why I have so much Chicago & Northwestern equipment, though, since the only spot in CNW territory I even set foot in was the Chicago Airport on my way to York. Go figure. Of late, I've acquired quite a few UP items that grew out of acquiring the UP Heritage locomotive series.

Grew up in Detroit - as a teen visiting yards in Detroit / Windsor in the early 1970s.  Penn Central was by far the biggest of all the shows in town.  I have just about every scale/near scale piece of Penn Central ever produced in every road number plus NYC/PRR/NH carry over.  Followed by what you might guess - N&W, CN, C&O, DT&I.  Significant amounts of EL, D&H and LV.

A lot of D&TSL, GTW, IC and RDG rolling stock plus everything else you would have commonly seen in the early 1970s Mid-West.

Interesting to read other stories!

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Forty Rod, the monuments were made by cutting off the ends of 3 Popsicle Sticks, painting them with gray acrylic paint, going on the Internet and printing the images of Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

Then, I glued the images on to the Popsicle stick ends using a little rubber cement.

I also painted the Popsicle stick ends with gray acrylic paint. Arnold

Oh, come on!  That is way too simple.    Thanks.

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Peter, I love your post and totally relate to it. My home town is Mt. Vernon, NY and I fondly remember the train rides I took with my mother (she didn't drive), to and from Grand Central Station.

And thanks for mentioning the smell of the cookies from the Stella Doro Factory in the Bronx which, of course, I remember, but I did not know that the Stella Doro factory was along The Put.

What a great project for me: to put a Stella Doro factory along my model railroad incorporating features of The Put, and getting that sweet smell of those cookies in my basement. Maybe we can have Stella Doro cookie smoke fluid! LOL, Arnold

Arnold, thank you for the kind words...........about Stella Doro, you know where it is/was.....think of going north on the Major Deegan.....and the Harlem River peals off to the left heading for the Hudson with the New York Central Main Line.....that's where the Put diverges to go north.......you're still on the Deegan and before the 240th St/Van Cortlandt Park South exit.......to your left going north are the backs of businesses that front on Broadway with the #1 El......between the Deegan and those businesses is the Put.....and Stella Door is/was there........ah, the smell of baking cookies coming into the car on cold winter mornings.....I went to Manhattan College from 71-75.

45+ years ago and I can see it; I can smell it; I can feel it!!!!

Peter

My Mother is from a very small coal mining company town in central Pennsylvania, that fed coal to the East Broad Top RR. As a boy, I spent weeks of every summer there, at my Grandparents' place. Though the mines closed a few years before I was born, all the infrastructure was still there, and I endlessly explored it all. A life long fascination with it all, and I've always loosely modeled it, starting with HO as a teen.

But, I grew up in industrial northern New Jersey. While the PRR mainline ran through the town, it was the small, beat up, often broke Central Railroad of NJ that I watched servicing the industries. I would ride my bike out there just to watch the action.

So, I've always combined the two ... EBT and CNJ ... in different iterations of my small, around-the-walls 1950's layouts in my home office.

Arnold,

Warrenville RailRoad operates engines from 28 different railroads plus Lionel Lines, US Navy, US Army, US Marines, WVRR custom, Coke and Disney heralds. Diesel, Electric and Steam. What is common is that other than a MTH subway, they are all Lionel (mostly PostWar)

Why all the different road names? Collecting is fun and I like the different colors/styles.

WVRR itself is my fantasy so, IMHO, they all fit in - Even if a New Haven F3 is running next to Santa Fe's of the same model.

Fun topic (as always), thanks for posing the question

When I was a child, my dad put up the American Flyer, Lionel, and Marx in our basement once or twice for several months over the winter holidays.  I loved playing with those trains after school.  In high school, during activity week, a friend and I set out from Lancaster, PA for the big cities of Philadelphia and New York, via Amtrak, of course.  While visiting with his grandparents in Philadelphia, I learned that his grandfather, Russell Hurd, drove GG1s from Philadelphia to Harrisburg along the main line.  Another little memory sticking in the back of my mind about trains.

Fast forward to adulthood and the company I worked for had Conrail as a customer.  A few years later, after that company went defunct, I was working in a job I really didn't enjoy; but, thankfully, I had the shortest commute of my career of only about 20 minutes.  So, I used the evenings after work  to get out the old trains from my parents' attic and I setup a layout in my basement.

After setting up that first layout, I discovered (at Al's Coventry Trains in Pottstown, PA) the technological wonders of "modern" toy trains.  Did I mention I was in Information Technology for much of my career?  The sounds and control capabilities of MTH specifically enthralled me.

As I rebuilt the layout the second year, I had to decide what types of locos and rolling stock I would focus on.  While I never have been "strict" in any sense of the word, I quickly came to conclude that I would do Conrail and/or anything related to one of it's esteemed predecessors, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Standard Railroad of the World!  So, that encompasses a whole lot of lines.   Over the years I expanded to "that plus others that were 'around here'."

Today my roster includes:  Conrail, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Pennsylvania (of course), Western Maryland, New York Central, Amtrak, Susquehanna, Lehigh Valley , B&O, Penn Central, & Norfolk and Western.

Back to The Put (perfect name for a toy train layout IMO). Its southern-most station was 155th Street/ Sedgewick Ave. in NYC.

Did I mention I love baseball as well as trains?

On one side of the East River is Yankee Stadium, which you have already seen. What is on the other side of that River?

Here's a clue. It was another famous ballpark.

The Polo Grounds in the early 1950s where "the catch" was made by Willie Mays in center field in the 1954 World Series.

Two ball parks on one layout can you believe it?

Arnold

Just getting back into trains whose spark was my acquisition of a fine Santa Fe F3 ABA set to fulfill a childhood dream.

I grew up in San Bernardino CA area and will always remember loving the trains at Colton Yard, the Santa Fe station in San Bernardino, and of course the long trains through Cajon Pass. I graduated from Cajon High School in fact.

So I’m all over the Santa Fe, SP, and UP. To keep myself focused, I self-limit myself to motive power and cars I would have seen in the 70s, with two exceptions. The aforementioned Warbonnets and matching cars and a lion chief ATSF Mikado because how can one not have a Lionel steam engine? I justify it as an excursion loco. I have the vague idea of getting  #3751 Northern (if one exists) because it was on display in town for many years.

EDIT. I see that Lionel made a #3751 engine with all the deluxe treatment. Will add to my shopping list.

@ New_Haven_Joe Coincidentally I am the reverse of you. Grew up in California but now life in Fairfield CT! When not working from home I am a daily metro north commuter to Grand Central and a short walk to my midtown office.

I'm still building my layout, but all my locomotive purchases are either CP or CN. My childhood was Stratford, Ontario, Canada; a steam railroad town. I'm 70 plus, just to explain my reference.

My layout won't represent anything, but my locomotives and rolling stock will.

While I dont consider myself a modeler I run jersey central almost exclusively.  I grew up in bayonne nj, down the street we had the 4 track mainline.  I would sit and watch the commuter trains, the reading train I learned went to that far away place called Philadelphia,  the mixture of N&W, B&O, C&O locomotives.  Still live near the former cnj mainline although in a different town.  My layout is set up so I can run through the primary station a parade of short commuter trains with the occasional freight mixed in.  Maybe someday I will have the space to create some places I remember in a compressed format, the JC terminal, E port station with the diamond crossing, fanwood where I live.  Maybe the next house will have the bonus room I desire.  For now, the fleet is complete, and it gets a workout several times a week.

I have said this many times over the years on this forum, but ever since I was fairly young I have always had two competing interests in my favorite roads.  My association with 3rd Rail and the tremendous amount of learning over the last 12 year of that relationship added a third competing interest as I starting learning more about railroads I never studied in the past.

To start I have been a life long Amtrak fan.  While my first long distance train ride was on the Southern Crescent when I was 4 and I have lasting memories of that trip to this day, I grew up with Amtrak.  My first trip was to Washington DC from Metropark, NJ in 1977ish on a family vacation to see our amazing capital.  It was a clocker of Amfleet cars pulled by a E60 and I only remember that as my dad who is a railfan and modeler as well pointed out the Metroliner on the far platform prior to the modification of the fleet.  I feel very lucky to have witnessed that.  My second Amtrak trip was around 1979 to Boston prior to electrification north of New Haven so it was F40's and more Amfleet cars.  Amazing how a 10 year can think cardboard hamburgers out of a microwave was the best food ever!  During college I went to school in Indiana so I took the Broadway limited frequently from Fort Wayne to Trenton and often for $70 extra got the Slumbercoach upgrade.  I rank those trips as some of the most fun I have ever taken as I was flying solo and met so many interesting people in the lounge and dining cars.  I think I rode the train about a dozen times round trip.

During those same years, my girlfriend's mom moved to AZ and we took the Southwest Chief twice together and I did once over break with a college friend.  Loved the experience even if I could only afford coach.  To this day I am die hard Phase III Amtrak fan.  I saw the original B-32s on their early runs on the Chief, but the F40 has always been my "F" unit.  Graceful in its own way and served Amtrak harder than any diesel before or after.  I have a fairly significant collection of Amtrak locomotives and cars that consist of mostly K-line and GGD cars.

Now to my true love, the NY&LB.  I grew up a 1/4  mile from the tracks halfway between Little Silver and Long Branch.  For the die hard NY&LB fans, I could see the former Branchport station site across the river from my dock.  My first ride on it was on the CNJ to Newark and a transfer to a GG1 pulled PC clocker into NY Penn.  This was in 1975 and I rode on the same style cars that the Blue Comet pulled as they lasted in service up until 1983 on some lines.  My dad pointed out the GG1 as it roared into Newark Penn.  As a six year old it was frightening and amazing at the same time.  I watched the road trackside change from E8s and GP40Ps and lot of 2nd and 3rd hand long distance cars converted to coaches to F40s and Comet cars and finally fully electrified in 1986.  I still have great memories of those years.

However, my grandfather on my mother's side is what really influenced me to start a life long pursuit of modeling the NY&LB during the 50's when he often commuted on the road the NYC as a Westinghouse employee.  He loved to tell a story and shared how he was late for the train one night and had to take a later train.  He followed up by stating the train he missed was his normal trip on the Broker and that was the night it had it's crash in Woodbridge.  He told me how CNJ engineers used agricultural branches to get around the Matawan trestle the night it burned.  He was never a PRR fan as he hated how PRR did not do a very good job of cleaning their trains.  The PRR interest came from father's dad who took my dad and my uncles to the Horseshoe curve in the 1950's to watch steam.  Lots of steam.

After modeling the CNJ in three scales since I was 12, I have finally found all the equipment I need to make a fairly prototypical train for both the CNJ and the PRR in 2 Rail O.  That will be my layout when I get a place with enough space to model it properly.

As for the third distraction, living in AZ for 30 years now has finally got me interested in the main roads that ran through AZ and primarily the ATSF.  The ATSF was just a class operation and kept their passenger service in top notch up into the Amtrak era in ways no other road did.  Being a part of western themed 3 rail club, it is fun to run my ATSF and SP trains as the scenery fits in so well.

Now for my second book .... as you can see I am passionate about trains of every road, but have deep passion based on family influence and the trains I have been lucky to witness in my life.