I have been a model railroader for as long as I can remember. My father and I build the first Lionel layout in our basement when I was around 10. Later Santa Claus gave me an American Flyer set which had two rails instead of three and that made more sense to me because real trains didn't have three rails. I was around 13 or 14 I guess. A few years later I got a small HO train set because my cousin was into HO. Well I set up the HO layout on the rug and it won't stay on the track. (I wonder why!) I decided to give up on HO and traded it to a kid up the street for an old Lionel Standard Gauge set. Quite a trade when you consider the value of Lionel Standard gauge today. By the way I still have both Lionel sets and the American Flyer. Then I discovered girls and that was the end of trains until after I was married. I purchased a small HO brass traction engine. It was basically junk, but my interest was sparked again.
The year after we were married we had the occasion to visit Chicago. We drove all day and stayed in South Bend, Indiana for the night. The next morning we got up and had breakfast. On the way out of town to the Interstate I saw a trolley wire above this street. I pulled the VW bus onto the street and found a parking space, picked up my trusty old Super 8 camera and got out of the car just as a South Shore orange car pulled out of the yards and headed up the street. It paused at the red light then as the light turned green it proceeded on up the street headed for Chicago. I didn't know what I had seen and photographed, but I did know that I liked it a lot. Thus began my love of anything powered by overhead wire or third rail.
During my childhood I used to visit my aunt and uncle in Baltimore, Maryland. My parents would either take me to the B & O station in Silver Spring, Maryland and I would ride into Washington Union Station or they would take me to the station directly. There I would board a train headed up by a Pensy GG-1 and ride to Baltimore's Penn Station or if I couldn't get my way I would continue on the B & O behind steam into Camden station. I preferred to ride the Pensy. Once in Baltimore my aunt would meet me and we would take the number 26 trolley through Baltimore, Highlandtown, Dundalk, across the famous Bear Creek trestle into Sparrows Point to D street. They lived on E street there.
Later, I discovered narrow gauge in the person of the East Broad Top railroad and this was the layout design that was shown on the drawing. HOWEVER, I have come to my senses and gone back to my original love, the Chicago Area Traction, and that may be the railroad I will be modeling. The drawing has been corrected very roughly to reflect this change. Hopefully I will soon have the time to begin that process and in addition produce and publish to the web information and drawing(s) about the these railroads as they will exist in my basement.