@Texas Eagle 77 posted:Nice layout! The vignettes on your layout remind of scenes from the tv show "The Waltons."
In a way, that ironic as they filmed the show in California (split between the Warner Brothers lot and Hollywood Hills), but I get the point and appreciate the compliment. The original concept of the show was in the area of Schuyler, Virginia, more toward the Chesapeake area than the Blue Ridge.
Thank you all for the kind words!
The ET&WNC (and Stoney Creek) is in the extreme northeast corner of Tennessee, take place in Carter County, just east of Elizabethton. There was a real railroad there, which was yanked out around 1932. In my concept, my fictional layout line (the Stoney Creek Southern) competed with the real one and drove it out of business, then flopped during the depression, when the ET&WNC bought them out (soon regretting so, once the big hurricane in 1940 washed a lot of stuff away).
I've long had two dreams throughout my life that involve railroads;
- I would wake up one morning in my childhood home in Florida to the sound of a train (we were miles from the nearest tracks, even logging line in the past) and see a train going down our road, right on the opposite side of the road from the house, with current at the time rolling stock and a black/yellow Seaboard GP on the head end (yes, it was that detailed of a dream)
- The ET&WNC had a branch line on Stoney Creek, and on visits to the area as a kid, my brother, cousin and I would discover it was all still there, slowly rusting/rotting away
I think the latter was based on our seeing the Doe River Gorge tracks when I was about 10 or 11, which looked like they had only been used last a few years previously (which surprised me to find many years later that the operation there did run into the mod 70s, we had no clue at that time).
This layout was something I'd felt the drive to create for most of my life, but only once Bachmann made the ET&WNC ten-wheelers in On30 was it attainable (as there was no way I could scratch build one to my standards).
I know plenty of people in the hobby want the layout first, then go looking a concept (or just don't have a concept at all, and just run whatever they want). That make no sense to me at all. In my own case, it was always about what I've done. Sure, there are other concepts I would have liked, but it was always going to be this.
