Give my regards to the 18's. They sure were pretty sittin' there in Little Ferry. I love American railroads, model my own territory, but hope someday before I go to that great hobby shop in the sky, that I can experience some other countries railroads. I've been to only one Europen city, Rome. I rode the commuter trains, subways and (yikes!) even their tiny electric buses and their exhaust spewing diesel buses. I spent an hour at the main railroad station and enjoyed seeing my very first Europen trains close up! Although I would never really have the need to model anything other than American, I apprecite what others have!
I think a lot of people choose to model what they are familiar with, or try to rekindle childhood memories. I model WVa, but I grew up in Southern, Ohio and live in New England. Let me tell you, it is difficult at times to find a good WVa inspired rolling stock up here in Boston&Maine Country . Thank goodness for the N&W Historical Society and Ken's Trains in Roanoke, VA. As for European models. I have seen a few and I know a guy who owns some European Rolling Stock. He also models Electric Motors and the New Haven as well. I do admit those European models do look nice and there is a shop about a two hours drive from me that does English Trains (I have seen his displays at shows). He seems to be doing well, and part of this is because he sells the electric OO Thomas the Tank Engine Series and I believe the father's get hooked as well. However, I didn't take the plunge, because I want to remember my childhood of watching big Alco's, EMD SD35's and 45's, GP9's 18's and 40's pulling hard westbound past my aunt's house on their way out of town.
I used to model British, but became interested in American when WC bought the UK rail freight system. That made me look across the pond and I was quickly hooked. I suppose after many years of both seeing and modelling British stuff I was ready for a change. I hardly look at the British scene any more (it's such a mess I feel embarrassed just mentioning it ). One thing that interested me is the very different culture of railwaying in The USA to Europe. In Europe the land was already occupied and the towns were mostly built before the railways came, and the distances are much less, so they had to fit themselves in around that. They were also mostly built and operated to high standards because of the density of traffic. In the USA the trains were there first and actually created much of the occupation. The tracks were also initally laid very fast and operated fairly informally (think how many signal boxes you'd need to cover North America at 'UK' spacings ). I'm not saying one way was better than the other - I don't even think that's the case - just that they were and still are 'different'. Those differences are starting to erode a bit nowadays with extensive CTC and higher speeds in the US and (re)privatisation in the UK, but American railroading still has a different flavour to Europe. But it has just come back to me while writing this post, that my very first layout had an American train. I'd forgotten. When I was about 6 years old my dad built a railway round the playroom - probably as much for him as me. All I remember of it is, it was Triang, mostly single track and with maybe 2 or 3 trains. What I just remembered is that one of the trains had a Warbonnet F unit engine and at least one silver dome car. I think it might even have been an A-A with 2 coaches and dome (I have no idea what the other ones were). So maybe modelling US was just a seed that took 40 years to germinate .
