Design influences

We all have our railroad experiences, model and prototype, that influence our choices of what to model and how. A comprehensive listing of all such experiences would be too huge to list, but there are usually a small number of experiences that stand out among the others in terms of influence. In this post I'll describe my railroad experiences, and show how they explain why I've chosen the modeling themes that I have.

Like most model railroaders, love of trains is in my DNA. Before I could walk I was pulling myself up to look out the window of our apartment in north Chicago to watch El trains. As a toddler I would beg my mother to stay just a bit longer watching the huge Santa Fe exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. (I'm told I would stay still for over an hour transfixed at the layout.)

By far my biggest influence was between the ages of 7 and 10 when I lived in La Grange, Illinois, just 2 blocks from the Stone Avenue station on the Burlington route into Chicago. This three-track line is informally known as the "racetrack" for the intensity of railroad traffic that runs on it, which historically included high-speed passenger trains on tight schedules. The 3 years that I lived in LaGrange were especially interesting for railfanning as both the Burlington Northern merger and the founding of Amtrak happened then, increasing the variety of roadnames that ran on the tracks. I spent many hours photographing and drawing the trains I saw.

Then, sadly, my parents divorced. The only positive side effect of that was from a railfan perspective: as a result my sister and I rode the Burlington commuter train once per week to visit my father in Chicago. I loved going through the Cicero freight yard and seeing all the trackside industries along the route. But for me the best part was by far the approach to Union Station: first a trip around an impossibly tight curve, generating very louds squeals of protest from the trucks, then past the coach storage yards and through a seemingly endless field of double slip switches until finally the drama of arriving alongside the platform.

Then, in one of my best childhood memories, my sister and I were invited to ride with the engineer and fireman in the cab car (trains would back into Union Station on the Burlington line -- I suspect they still do today). We continued to ride with them over a period of 3 or 4 weeks. We saw how they performed their jobs and were even allowed to push the buttons to sand the track and blow the horn.

In subsequent years I've seen many railroads but always had a special affection for large Union Stations with complex trackage. I saw a lot of these during my years in Europe, of course, and each one left a lasting memory.

Now, I wasn't actively thinking about my Burlington commuter experience when I designed my current N scale layout. However, in retrospect everything I loved about that experience is a central feature of the present layout. The whole layout takes place in one city and features: a double track BNSF main line -- which was part of the original Burlington according to the fictional layout history; an active commuter Union Station with 8 tracks servicing trains from 4 directions; and an active city freight yard similar in function to what the Cicero yard was back then. There is even one Union Station approach that has a tight radius curve where I hope to duplicate the sound of the squealing wheels as the train slowly approaches the double-slip switches before the platforms.

I'll also note that the theme for my outdoor railway also is linked to personal experiences, but a different set of them. You see, during my teen years my mother and stepfather moved from the Chicago area to the western slope of Colorado, where we spent many weekends visiting ghost towns like Ophir and old mining towns like Silverton. We never rode the Durango tourist line (then the DRGW), but I sure was aware of it. Later, while living in California, I spent a lot of time reading about and visiting the sites of many of the old narrow gauge lines in the Sierras and along the coastal mountains. So, it's not a surprise that my outdoor line is based on an 1880s narrow gauge prototype.