Seriously considering modeling my home town. Anyone else?


mantua mike

mantua mike

Member
At one time I thought about this before. It seemed like quite an undertaking. I've since read about some of the history of Kent Ohio. It is quite rich in railroad history. There was a roundhouse and turntable, and an engine shed. There is a nice station that is now a restaurant called The Pufferbelly where my step-daughter works. several lines ran through here as it is in proximity to the Cuyahoga River and near the Erie Canal. After looking at some pictures of Kent from the early 1900's it regained a real appeal to me to try this. I am however curious if anyone else has tried to model their home.
 
That is exactly what I have done. I grew up with relatives working on both the Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific railways in the 50's. I spent countless hours as a kid riding in steam, diesel and electric locomotives. Needless to say, I was hooked on trains.

I have a freelance railroad that is a short line / bridge line connecting to both railroads. Modeling even part of a subdivision of either railroad would not do justice to either. I model real towns with industries that were either in these towns, or with a bit of model railroad license, could have been in these towns. I do model the transition era as I really enjoy steam locomotives and early diesels, plus that's when I grew up with the railroads.

Insread of having track looping through the layout multiple times, I chose to do a point to point layout, with the main line passing through the layout only one time. This left me with more room to build detailed towns and industries. I prefer a switching layout and there are plenty of industries to keep me busy. There is a yard and engine facilities at each end, along with a hidden staging yard that will allow continuous running.
 
mantua mike said:
I am however curious if anyone else has tried to model their home.
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Not me. My home town was in the mountains about 50 miles from the nearest railroad, so it would make a very boring model railroad. I guess the track and roster purchases would be very low.
 
I plan on having a part of my hometown and the farm I grew up on represented on my layout which will be the CB&Q in the late 60's. There will be a few changes such as the railroad still using the track through my hometown as the mainline. The rails were torn out past the town where I lived and was just served as needed by the "local" after 1962. I won't be doing a model of the whole town, just a representation of it.
 
Although not truly modeling it, I have all the towns and industries from around my hometown on my layout. My main terminal and yard is named after my hometown, but I'm not modeling it with any kind of accuracy. The other place names are all located on the current NS mainline north out of my hometown to about 30 real miles.
 
A portion of my layout is devoted to the Reading trackage visible from my front porch of the house I lived in growing up. Funny how in Conrail years, I worked the crew that switched the territory. The track is still there, and essentially the same as it was, although the through route has changed.

Joe
 
I would love to have the room to do so. My hometown had a small station with a water tower; the tower got its water from a pump house and piping on a nearby creek. The station also had a "run-around" track, and a LCL ramp was on that track. Passenger trains stopped running in 1943, and the station closed its Railway Express office in '69 or '70 (or thereabouts; it burned to the ground in 1974). One spur went to a fuel oil facility, a warehouse, and a canning factory. A local furniture factory had its own spur that went right into the factory. And a third spur served an LP gas facility, two grain mills, a lumber yard and a coal yard.

I've never figured out a way to get all of that on a layout that left much room for anything else!

By the way -- this was a farming community that had a population of around 950 people. Two "express freights" went through each day, one going each direction. And the "local" ran one way on Monday, Wednesday and Friday -- and the other direction on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Of course, that was back just before trucking really made its impact felt on the rail industry... :(

Regards,
Tom Stockton
 
My childhood hometown wasn't near any railroads, so nothing there worth modeling. The nearby big city (Detroit MI) had lots of exciting heavy industry, including lakefront steel mills. But when my family moved to Maryland I became a diehard B&O fan, and the B&O didn't directly serve Detroit, so I couldn't really model that area. Finally I settled on Cleveland, OH, because it had lakefront steel mills and the B&O.

You may be wondering, "Why didn't you just model Baltimore, it had a lot of heavy industry"?... because nobody makes a decent, affordable 1:87 scale model of an ocean-going ore freighter with quality comparable to a Sylvan Scale Models lake freighter.
 
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I have tried to model my home town to the best of my abilities. My interest in model railroading was limited until I decided to model Mankato. Once the decision to model where I live was made, I really got into this hobby. I get as much satisfaction from learning how things were back then as from the actual modeling. Not having enough room, money, or ability to model it exactly, I've done a reasonable representation instead.
 
That's kind of where I'm at. I'm gonna take a little artistic license as far as scale distances due to real estate available, but try to model a reasonable facsimile of what Kent looked like turn of the century. I will include the buildings and industry that make it interesting and fun. Should be an interesting and enjoyable project. The topography hrer is quite diverse and will make for some great scenery.
 
Ozarks R. Lee said:
I'm planning on modeling the route between St. Louis and Piedmont Missouri which are both my hometowns.
clayguthrie said:
Nice! I'm from near Sikeston so we're not too far apart.
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Interesting. I've got a pile of rock samples from all along your right of way in my collection. Drewsey quartz from near Ironton, barite crystals from Potosi, and a few samples of red granite from the quarries near Elephant Rocks. For others not from the area, all the cobblestones used in St. Louis streets came from Elephant Rocks Quarry, transported by the railroad(s). There is still an old loco house at the Elephant Rocks state park.
 
The history is one of the factors that makes modeling any area more interesting. I think it's cool to learn about your surroundings and why they have evolved into what they are. I've also always been a loyal home team type guy. I've been a Browns fan and a Tribe fan my entire 48 years. Last time the Browns won a championship was pre- Superbowl and the year before I was born. That's loyalty, they're making it tough. Next year ! (that's our local cheer BTW ).
 
What an intimidating project! While literally next to the ATSF main line it was less than 1/2 mile from the U.P. main with an S.P. branch between. In my time there could be 5 sections of the Super Chief inbound, 10 to 15 minutes apart holding freights on the sidings. No, give me an imaginary back woods line, relaxed like I am trying to be (minus my current health challenges), enjoying my railroad as it winds through the woods.
 
I think it's a cool idea, although it's not what I am doing. I did grow up near an old branch of the Pennsy in SE Pennsylvania, and if I wanted to, that would be a perfectly good prototype to model. In fact, over the years I've seen no fewer than three examples based on elements of the line. One was a Model Railroader featured layout that ran in the summer of 2010 (that builder, although retired and living in No. Carolina, had lived in the general area where I grew up for a part of his adult career). Another is one that I've just happened to stumble across on the Web via the builder's blog. The third was just a track plan, published in RMC back in the late 1960s or early 1970s. I admit I've gotten a kick out of seeing other people modeling where I grew up, even though I'm not particularly inclined to do that.
 
I did model my hometown more or less. People coming through can identify the city even tho it isn't exact. So I would say, go for it.

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In some respects, I would not mind modeling the town I grew up in, except for the fact that I'd need a lot of space, even with a lot of selective compression! Four railroads came through, and although the Soo would be modelable, it would not be all that interesting-not much industry to switch and no passenger service by the mid-1960s. The CNW was just a branch on the very west side of town-elevated to go over couple of roads, but that was it. For those who can do it, I say go for it and have fun.

Photoman475
 
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