What railroad snuck up on you?

[hnipper]

Penn Central.

Yeah, me, too. I saw that lonely PC GG-1 in the Hobby Shop window and just had to take it home and give it some love! (along with a bunch of odd-ball passenger cars!

[bnsfdash8]

NS snuck up on me. I went from having a fleet of BNSF locos to only 3 and more NS locos than my little 36"x80" layout can handle. Living by the NS Chicago Line really aided in my switch from BNSF.

[PGE-N°2]

Milwaukee for me too, the LHS had a pair of U23Bs sitting on the shelf for quite a while, finally came up with an excuse to buy them, then FVM announced Milw cabooses, etc.

Milwaukee Road had a significant presence in the Twin Cities, so it was just meant to be, I guess.

Next up, I've been contemplating Rock Island...

I guess it just proves the adage, once again, that everyone has two favourite railroads, and one of them is the Milwaukee Road. It eventually gets into your blood.

It was the same for me: I was always a CP fan, especially the Kettle Valley, and then a BCRail fan. Then one day, I picked up a back issue of R&R with a photo series on the Milwaukee Road 30 years gone, and I suddenly realized how good those Little Joes and Boxcabs looked, and what a great colour scheme orange and black was, and what incredible mountain crossings St. Paul Pass and Snoqualmie Pass were. Now the Milwaukee Road overwhelms everything else railroad related I buy.

There is only one problem, though, and that is that Fox Valley is just producing way too much stuff. One would hard find a time and place to run all of it  .

[6axlepwr]

My own proto-freelance road the Copper State Railway.

I had been an RPM junky for a long time. But I never had a favorite road. I was all over the place and tried for a long time to settle on a specific road to model. I would get a few done and then get bored with it and find another road to model. For a lot of modelers, I think what they model is what they grew up around or remember seeing while growing up. Believe it or not, I had railroads around me, but never saw them growing up. I had the Soo Line to the west of me, the Milwaukee Road and C&NW to the east and EJ&E to the south. All within about a 10 mile radius of my town or closer. Never saw them. Only thing I ever saw was the Milwaukee scoot that went through my town. No freights. The first time I ever saw a freight was late night in Roundout about 1981. So I really have no tie to anything prototype.

I had been kicking around a proto-freelance railroad since about 1997. I just could not convince myself that it was OK to proto-freelance. Finally about three years ago for th efun of it I just started an HO model of one and it stuck. I am having more fun with modeling now than I ever did with RPM modeling. In the past three years I have trid to go back to a prototype railroad, but but can't. I do nto have the desire.

I set goals for my railroad. How it operates, the management style and attitude. I have a number of friends who work for short lines and talked to them a lot about how their railroads are run, how decisions are made and whatever else I can use to help build my story. I think what it is about the road I built is I had to write the story and make it truely believeable. As a proto freelancer, I can do anything I want, but I do not. I have VERY strict criteria for the motive power I use and what my roster is. It is keeping me focused on what I want and on what I buy. The best part is it has given me back the joy of modeling and the dream of having that layout.