By Donovan in Dallas
In 1999 my wife, my son, and I made our return to Texas. Soon after I began what has become the most productive, and I hope interesting, part of my railroading hobby. In this time I have attemtped to build 5 different layouts, designed from scratch one other for a friend, and switched scales from N scale to HO and then back to N again. I have also been involved in a few great operating sessions (OPS) both in Texas, and around the country. And I have made some great friends via the internet and through my travels.
It all began like this......
The design was based loosely on the Oregon Electric line of the BN/BNSF because the area had interesting local switching and it might please my wife to see something that reminded her of our home in the Pacific Northwest.
Originally designed to fit in the dining room of our small aprtment, it was merely 6' x 6' forming the shape of an "L" - but it was quickly moved to a longer wall in our living room, where I continued to work on the concept and the layout plan, re-naming the location after Sumas, Washington - near the Canadian border in Washington. And re-arranged things again and again until I was completely frustrated, and totally lost interest in the layout.
The layouts final demise was the approach of Christmas. With the layout in the living room, it left little room for decorating, and the wife was not pleased (to tell the truth, I was a little dissapointed with the arrangement as well). So that Novemeber I tore down the layout with the hopes of starting new.
On our very first adventure together Blair introduced me to the Great Southwest Railroad right in my own backyard of grand Prairie, Texas. The GSW was jointly owned by the Mopac and the MKT or Rock Island (I've heard different stories from different sources) serving an industrial district occupying about roughly a ten square mile area. Today the line is still active, though it is owned entirely by the UP.
The GSW had a lot of appeal to me. I started building and designing two different versions of it. One based in the living room space just before taking it down for Christmas, and again in the den - which my wife had conceded to letting me use instead of the living room.
In the end the GSW had two fatal flaws: one is the space it took to model HO was not worth the efforts to me. I wanted to switch back to N scale. And the other was the limited choice of motive power. I like GP38's and SD40-2's and the GSW used SW's exclusively until long after the Mopac was history.
During our time of visit we also were privilaged enough to visit some intense switching layouts - that of Jim Senese (Kansas City Terminal - circa 1980); Kieth Jordan (San Diego Terminal); Stephen Priest's Santa Fe layout; and Chuck Hitchcock's Kansas City Terminal (circa 1960). Among the many lessons I brought home from this trip was that I wanted more crew interaction - like you might get from interchange.
At first I tried to increase the amount of activity in Joplin, but in the end I decided that the OPS were just too one dimensional for what I imagined. So the search for more operations was on.....
