Greetings all from snowbound Cambridge.
John Morgan here, model railroader since Noah landed the Ark. According to my parents, my first word was "Caboosa" - obviously showing where my true priorities lay - since words of lessor importance like "mama" and "dada" came later. In the early 50s after church on Sunday, my father used to take me down to the Rideau canal in Ottawa to watch the steam engines in the passenger yards on the east side of the canal south of Ottawa station. I guess that's where my infatuation with the steam locomotive started.
My first trains were German Billerbahn (
www.billerbahn.de) clockwork models (narrow gauge!!!!) my dad bought at the USAF PX when we lived in France in 1956. From there, I graduated to HO when we returned to Canada in '58. In 1966 when N scale first became available in Canada, I sold the HO equipment to a friend and launched out into what then seemed like microscope scale. When Railcraft (now Micro Engineering first started drawing code 40 rail in the early seventies, I was there, hand laying N scale track using code 40 rail.
I've been modelling in On3 since the early 1980s when I saw built up versions of Grandt Line's D&RGW drop bottom gondola and Crossing Gate's D&RGW boxcar and coach. I couldn't wait to dump the N scale stuff at the next swap meet and invest the proceeds in On3.
I also was an early user of Keller Engineering's "On Board" command control system. I was one of his guinea pigs when he first started offering the On Board equipment in kit form in 1982. I still have a couple of unassembled On Board throttles and steam sound decoders around somewhere. However I'm deserting the die-hard On Boarders with the next layout, which will be DCC.
Of my two prototype favourites, one is standard gauge: the Algoma Eastern Railway - a sister to the Algoma Central - a shortline which ran from Sudbury to Little Current, Ontario and was absorbed into the CPR system in 1930. A few miles of the original railroad still exist as the Huron Central spur from McKerrow to Espanola and the CP Nickel Spur in Sudbury.
The other favourite is narrow gauge, the East Broad Top Railroad in Pennsylvania. I am a life member of "Friends of the East Broad Top" and the assistant webmaster and designer of the FEBT website. This coming summer, my wife and I will be starting our seventh year as regular attendees of the monthly restoration work sessions at Rockhill Furnace PA.
We moved from Trenton to Cambridge four years ago and I'm finally getting around to putting a layout in the basement - a "what if" the Algoma Eastern Railway had been narrow gauge and remained a viable independent operation into the 1980s. The time frame for the layout is a sort of amalgamation of the thirties AER physical plant combined with the mid seventies (which is when I lived in Sudbury) CPR Little Current Sub operations. My version of the AER is a marginally prosperous line using narrow gauge locomotives and rolling stock it has obtained as surplus from less fortunate dying narrow gauge operations including the EBT, C&S, D&RGW and the WSLC.
The track plan is centred around the Eddy Forest Products (now Domtar) paper mill at Espanola with loops of track from either end of Espanola to a double ended staging yard with stations representing Birch Island (because I really like the little AER station that once stood there), House Lake (because of the sawmill and planing mill) and the Loon Lake Ballast Pit (because I have an unbuilt San Juan Marion Steam Shovel that I need a place to showcase and also have plans to build a model of a Lidgerwood Rapid Unloader. The layout will be strictly northern Ontario with accurate models wherever possible of the original AER structures at these various locations.
My main problem is motivation... okay, well... money and motivation... hmmm... I guess really time, money and motivation. Motivation is the main issue though. After playing with the 12" to the foot scale stuff at Rockhill Furnace, it can be hard to get enthusiastic about the 1/4" to the foot models.
PS. My wife Barb and I also handle the FEBT booth at the Narrow Gauge Madness show. See you all there!
