Structures A C1 0-8-0 switcher on the Annville drill track passes some small yard structures. Left to right, the cabin car (caboose) equipment storage shed, elevated kerosene tank, and coal bunker were scratchbuilt by a friend of the author. The switch tender’s shelter was a laser-cut wood kit.
Diesels The Annville diesel house crew is servicing a Fairbanks-Morse H10- 44 switcher and a set of Baldwin sharknoses today. The diesel house was kitbashed from three IHC engine house kits.
The Pennsylvania Railroad has always fascinated me. It was, in its heyday, the biggest railroad out there, including 598 locomo- tives of a single class (and other classes with more than 450 each); 39,000 class H21 hopper cars; and 23,000 class X29 boxcars. The Belpaire fireboxes and high headlights on the steam locomo- tives really appeal to me. Starting in a graduate school apartment in 1974, I built a series of three N- scale layouts with Pennsy themes. These were the bad old days of N scale, when most equipment didn’t run well at all. I stuck with it for more than 10 years, and the final N-scale layout (begun in 1980, but never completed) fea- tured handlaid Code 40 track and turnouts.
At this point, my son was a tod-
dler, and we set up my old Lionel trains for him. Work on the N- scale layout slowed as we spent more of “my” train time together. When he got a little older, he and
I together built a larger layout for the Lionel trains. In 1992, a job transfer to another state meant a fresh start and hopefully a full basement for a layout. After look- ing at numerous houses with ei- ther partial basements or with “finished” basements cut up into multiple rooms not really suited to a large layout, my wife and I de- cided to build a house for her and a basement for me.
The “dream basement” would have a nine-foot ceiling and be 28 feet wide by 70 feet long, with a 10x12-foot bump out for a break- fast nook in the kitchen. In fact, I proposed the nook to my wife since it would be a great space to house a model of Horseshoe Curve in the basement. Now, what scale should the new railroad be? I had experience with N scale and 3-rail O gauge. The idea of keep-
56 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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