Hello , everybody ! Long time RR enthusiast... Grew up on the family dairy farm , in NW IL , along the Illinois Central RR west of Freeport, IL ... Saw plenty of ICRR , Milwaukee Rd in hometown ... Had model trains since Christmas 1971 , when I was 8 (Lionel set)... then, dad and I had HO ... discovered the fun N scale when I was 12 ... had N scale for years and then purchased a persons ICRR 1:29scale G gauge collection... great fun ! Moved from a large IL house to a SC townhouse , in 2013 and had to downsize from G for space and up-size from my N for my eyes and rediscovered O scale 3-rail ... Now I'm out of the townhouse and in a house building my RR empire (as much of an empire one can have in O scale in 12x16 ) I'm not a fan of a lot of the recent mega railroads (I'm sentimental ), so my modern O scale RR I'm designing is a modern Illinois Central( no CN) , Frisco (no BN) Central of Georgia ( no Southern ... the IC and Frisco own it jointly since the 50s ... sorry Southern ) Also will have an interchange with modern day short line/museum RR , allowing me to run locomotives of my favored Builder , Fairbanks Morse with modern consists ... Probably TMI dave
Welcome to the group, Dave. I always enjoyed trips over to the Union County (IL) Wildlife Refuge and the chance to see what was then the ICG. I had very little comprehension of the railroading world beyond what I would see in terms of motive power: SL-SF, MoP, SSW, and ICG.
072 ... 36" .... like to go bigger , but 12x16 room wont handle much larger , without it being just a huge circle
