After getting married at 23 and starting a family I began to become interested in trains again and began to acquire HO engines and cars. Built several relatively small layouts mostly based on the Pennsy. Also during two trips to Chicago discovered the South Shore. Trolleys had been gone from DC for years but Chicago had trolley wires and these giant interurban which were just big trolleys as far as I was concerned. Took me a number of years to research them. But I did not act upon that interest as very little in the way of models were available in HO or in O. When I found a good job in WV and moved up here from the DC area in 1977 built a bigger layout in HO based loosely on the PRR Columbia and Port Deposit branch. Visits to the Hagerstown Model Railroad Club created my interest in signalling because of their HO layout had ABS signals.
Some years later I visited a very small club in Martinsburg. They had HO and O scale. Watching the O Scale trains run on two rail scale track really seemed cool and big and up in your face personal. I acquired an Atlas F unit for $25 from Denny Masters. And also purchased somewhere a coal hopper which I weathered and built a 12 inch piece of hand laid track to display the hopper on. And I filled the hopper with real coal. That set on our mantle for a long time. After a number of years I tore out the HO and and start to build a small O scale layout in the basement based on the South Shore as kits in brass had become available. Over a few years I acquired 12 kits of which I still have 8 of which one is almost finished.
During that time I also worked as a motorman at the Rockhill Trolley Museum located next to the East Broad Top railroad. Then we moved to a larger house and a 30 x 60 foot basement. In the meantime I had acquired some EBT On3 brass engines and a bunch of hopper kits. Also lots of drawings and other information. So decided to build the EBT. However, I found soon that I would need to build switches and hand laid track. Then 30+ hopper kits to build. Then someone offered me 8 more South Shore kits. I also wanted signals and the EBT had none. I also realized that was a good market for my EBT engines and cars and several structures I had built, so I sold all of it and purchased 8 more South Shore cars and power trucks for the 12. I then proceeded to build a two deck layout based on the South Shore's entire railroad. At this time I had just finished building a shop building and decided to move my office in the basement over to the shop building thus providing additional space for the South Shore. Somewhere along this route I met Jim Withrow and he helped me with track work, wiring (2000 feet of #12), and working together we built most of the circuit boards for the CMRI system.
At some point the second deck idea wasn't working out. Mostly due to the layout being O Scale and the basement height was only 80 inches under the joists. So we eliminated the second deck and made some adjustments to still model from downtown Chicago to South Bend Indiana. Between Gary and South Bend I had a big 10 foot across peninsular and just didn't look right so we added a view block on both sides and began construction of a mountain between two tunnels. I knew that Indiana didn't have any mountains but my growing up in Montgomery County Maryland and its rolling hills suggested my layout needed a mountain. I considered flat scenery e.g. Indiana was boring and difficult to model. However, I had not seen the work of Pelle Soeborg of Denmark. He was able to model basically flat countryside and make it very realistic and certainly not boring. If I had seen his work I may have never build that mountain. After building the mountain I was not happy with the way it looks and emailed a photo to Warren Hart whom I had known from some years ago. Warren had moved back to Berkeley Springs from Hagerstown and came by and asked if he could "correct" the mountain by tearing it down and redoing it. Stay tuned for Part Two to follow. That part will document how I went from the South Shore to the Western Maryland Railway and the Pennsylvania Railroad that we are building now.
This is subject to correction and editing as I reread and proof read it.
