Mike sez…
Ho, ho, ho, Bill, and happy holidays to you, too! By the way, that lump of
coal in your stocking is for that cheesy plastic CP&S 2-8-2 that can’t ever seem to surmount Ridgely Hill without having to tri- ple the grade. Yes, Bill, I enjoyed your Chi- cago, Peoria & Southern operat-
ing session the day after mine on Thanksgiving weekend 2015 too, despite having been killed in a head-on collision with a coal train and then killed again in a side- swipe later on with the same coal train. (Note to readers: No, not my fault. Note to Bill: With CTC, that probably wouldn’t have hap- pened!) But, I came back to life when someone gave me CPR in the form of Janis Navigato’s cookies.
I’m afraid you just don’t under- stand the role of “scenery trains” on my Illinois & St. Louis, and my reasoning for them can ap- ply to other fictitious-railroad-in- a-real-life-setting layouts as well. You see, if you can effectively mesh your fantasy railroad system with a number of real railroads — and not just at terminal end points — even your fabricated-during-time- out-in-the-bathroom CP&S will be
Mike’s world One of the “scenery trains” you’ll find on Mike Schafer’s HO-scale Illinois & St. Louis is the Peoria Rocket, shown at Peoria Union Depot having just arrived from Chicago. Two tracks over in the Sleeper Pocket is the Peoria set-out sleeper — on this night, an Erie Lackawanna car — that came south the night before on the I&StL’s Chicago–St. Louis overnighter, the Prairie Sentinel. On this side of the Rocket is the PUD station switcher and the I&StL business car Chief Takhomasak. The Rocket is considered a scenery train in that its operation is not critical to the rest of the layout. It simply runs from stag- ing to Peoria and back. The station and train shed are a Walthers kit built, assembled, and painted by Art Danz, a retired Metra conductor from Chicago. — Mike Schafer photo
80 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100