April 2020

For many baby boomers, the path to model railroading started with a Lionel or American Flyer train set under the Christmas tree. But Donn Tolley's hobby journey started in 1963 when serving in the U.S. Air Force in Japan. He went into a store and stumbled upon a selection of brass locomotive next to the jewelry counter. After looking over the inventory, he purchased a brass HO scale Porter 2-6-0 Mogul for $10.

When Donn returned to stateside in 1964, he built his first HO scale layout on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. Another 4 x 8-foot sheet of plywood was added when Donn and his family moved to Wisconsin two years later.

If there's a common characteristic shared by almost every model railroader, it's lack of space. Whether we have a small shelf layout or a basement empire, there's never enough square footage to do justice to everything we'd like to model.

Among the most important items on our must-have list are those that support the purpose of our railroads. A scale model railroad should reflect the characteristics of its full-size counterpart. That includes its reason for being, its sources of livelihood, and the industries that supply or use the carloads that make running trains worthwhile.

Noted railroad photographer O. Winston Link dubbed the Norfolk & Western Ry. of the late 1950s "The Last Steam Railroad in America." That moniker was also the title of a book published by Harry N. Abrams in 1995, that republished many of Link's iconic, mostly night photos of the waning days of N&W steam power. Those photos, along with the charm of railroading through the Appalachian mountains, inspired me to plan and build my latest 24 x 49-foot HO scale N&W model railroad.