Your favorite RR company to model

Lionel Lines!!

 Mostly the Boston & Albany in the war era. Luckily they only ran a few different steamers and they have been produced. Enough so that I have what resembles a roster. A few repaints and customizing cabooses were involved. Recently I have become entrenched in the Rutland. I've always liked the idea of a milk train. Again the Rutland didn't have a great variety of motive power. Decals and dry transfers are available. A lot of their equipment resembled the NYC. You can find close enough models such as Legacy 10 wheelers and Mikados to reletter. 

 When I want to run a some diesels. I model the NH. Plenty is available as far as engines and cabooses. I model around 1950. Most of what's on the layout can remain.

L&N and NC&StL exclusively.

perfer those roads’ freight

I model the Penn Central and Akron, Canton & Youngstown on my layout.  I model the PC because that is what I grew up with.  The Ft. Wayne line ran behind the house I grew up in.  They had quite an assortment of motive power which kept things interesting.  I model the AC&Y because I currently live in Delphos, Ohio, the western terminus of the AC&Y.  The PRR, AC&Y and NKP all had tracks running through Delphos.  Quite a bit of railroad history here.

I have no problem running cars of various road names in my trains. Look at any photos from that time period and you will see a broad range of road names on any given train.  The only stipulation is that the motive power and cabins on the PC trains are from  the PC, PRR or NYC.  The AC&Y trains have AC&Y power and cabooses.

Tom

READING & NORTHERN

The majority of the collection is New York Central and Conrail, but I also am partial to these roads:

• Erie Lackawanna
• Southern
• Baltimore & Ohio
• Chesapeake & Ohio
• Central of New Jersey
• NJ Transit
• Amtrak

Most of these roads are native to my home state in North Jersey.

I have almost zero West Coast road material, mostly because they don't interest me as much as the East Coast equipment. There are some exceptions, but not very many.

Cleveland Steel mills and industrial areas.Not so much particular rail Roads BUT Union Pacific has the BEST Steam engines!!!!

Boston & Maine with freight cars from the New England area and I stay in the 1950s so that I have steam and diesel electric locomotives.

Nickel Plate Road and Union Pacific.

NKP had a tremendous presence in Cleveland and those glorious Berkshires.

UNP had/has tremendous steam.....and the scenery in the West (mountain and desert) is tough to beat.

Interesting, I grew up where Santa Fe was the only service so I'm certainly sensitive to that. Since the west coast is my most familiar territory but I come from a family spread all over the country as a kid I spent a lot of time on Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and a little on Milwaukee getting up and down the coast or getting from there to Chicago. From Chicago most of those travels further east were New York Central or Pennsylvania.  My locomotive selection as well as passenger cars follow the theme of traveling up and down the west coast from San Diego to Seattle and from those places to Chicago and on to Cleveland.

The layout itself is more west than east in geography and geology which is why I joke about running Pennsylvania turbines through the desert and past volcano mountains, space being limited as it is in my basement.

So the biggest part of the answers is yes the layout and trains reflect that which I am most familiar with and what I grew up with. The layout is a sturdy link to my childhood of living in the coastal southwest traveling to the coastal northwest then from either of those locations to northeast Ohio and back. I also have a LOT of back seat station wagon time from this period, that I realize is not on the layout. Now I need to find an O scale model of a 49 Plymouth woody wagon.

Bogie

NYC most of my family worked there back in the day. Some PC too. Dad worked at the Harmon yards before and after WWll. 

I like modeling what I have seen in real life and in Texas I see a lot of Union Pacific. Also, because I am 15, the only trains I have seen in my life are diesels, so that’s all I tend to buy. I really wish I lived in the steam age though.

I currently model western railroads and have one BNSF and one Union Pacific locomotive.  I do plan on adding some PRR and NYC in the future.  I like to match western railroad rolling stock with western locomotives and eastern rolling stock with eastern locomotives.

I model the Grand Trunk Western in the early 1990s

I'm still not sure exactly why the GTW appealed to me at first, other than I live in a historically big NYC/Conrail area and the GTW ran through a neighboring town, which made that road more "rare" and interesting to me at the time.

Now, after years of getting to know the GTW, it's kind of like an old friend. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's a bit of an underdog and I like that too.

I have a few early diesel and steam GTW models too, but that's not my focus

I also include some Canadian National traffic as they're the parent company of the GTW. Also, i really like the unique Canadian equipment they run, like the Canadian-stye wide cab units below.

I model and run mostly New England and New York railroads including:

• New York New Haven & Hartford
• Boston & Maine
• Boston & Albany
• New York Central
• Long Island
• Amtrak...                  

My under-construction railroad is a model of a small town in New England.

MELGAR

I tend to model an era, such as early 1950s thru mis 1950s. Thus I have a lot of big steam and a very few early diesels.