Major Announcement

As many of you know I have been going through a very tiring process of trying to finalize plans for my railroad.  I have interests in many things related to railroads and other things e.g. ships and amusement parks to name a few.  I also love the mountains and mountain railroading.  So after being pulled by these sometimes conflicting interests I have reached a decision that I earnestly believe I can live with.  Hopefully you all as casual observers of this very difficult process will be pleased that I have finally settled down and set some bounties for the layout.

Basically in a nut shell, the layout will consist of two unrelated but connected railroads, the Western Maryland Railway and the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend Railroad.  They have a common connection of the C & O as being owned by the C & O at various times.  The WM of course was purchased by the C & O/CSX and still operates what is left under CSX.  The South Shore was owned briefly by the C & O also but is now an independent railroad again.

The WM will run and haul coal and other freight mostly within WV.  A connection with the C & O will allow interchange with the South Shore.

The WM portion will be modeled after real locations and the South Shore also will be modeled after real locations and both with operate as prototypical as possible.

Also a future addition to the urban portion of the layout will include a short section of CTA L (elevated) from downtown to the suburbs.  The South Shore portion will go from downtown (Randolph Street Terminal) to Gary, IN.  Traffic East of Gary was and is very sparse.  So this covers 80% of the railroad's traffic.

My theater that has been seen in some older posts will be re-designed to represent the Chicago Theater in Chicago near the loop.

In the next few days I will be posting photos of the WM side of the layout showing the mountain scenery of which some is finished and other portions under construction.  I will also post an updated layout drawing.

I have also deleted out of date postings from this blog.