josef posted:Odd, but when running my trains, it is no longer a layout, nor toys or models, but a time and place I wish was real.
I agree fully. I built a layout for a time and place that did exist, but with a RR that had pulled out a decade previously. If someone offered me only ride on a time machine (with a guaranteed return, of course), I'd go ride the ET&WNC 3-foot line out of Johnson City, TN to Cranberry, NC and back, at the end of WW2. Then, I'd go talk with my grandfather (a WW1 vet who passed before I was born) and my one uncle who passed away in an airplane crash in the 50s, after his time flying in WW2.
My layout, to me, represents my mind's eye of what that place and time might have been like, if certain historical events taken place, like a branch line into that valley and the Army taking interest in it as well.
