How did I come to build the GS & SV Railroad?

In 1986 I was living in an apartment in Farmington Hills which is home to a great hobby store named Joe's Hobby (sorry no website). This is a store that specializes in planes trains and automobiles, in other words, model planes, rockets, scale model trains and slot cars. What was most interesting to me was that they had an extensive selection of N-Scale products. I found a book named "Nine N Scale Railroads" and selected the biggest most complex layout that they had in the book - the Gulf Summit and Susquehanna Valley Railroad.

This was a layout that consisted of a double main lower level and a double main upper level, joined by two interchange tracks. Throw in a small yard and you've got the makings of a great layout. And what's more, it fit into a 6.5' x 4' space

In retrospect, a bit too much much track for that size layout. But what did I know at the time? "In for a penny, in for a pound" as they said where I grew up.

I completed construction up to laying the track within a few months but then moved to a house in Livonia. That kind of put the layout on a hold and it stayed in the basement until we moved from there to our present home in 1991. It lived in the basement unfinished until we finished the basement. When that happened, it moved to the storage room, all the while in storage, sitting on its side (never did get to build legs on it!

Fast forward to 1996 and we have another son (we also had our daughter in 1987). Still sitting in the storage room in the basement!

Now it's 2003 and we're in Chicago and Simon is now 7. We visit the Museum of Science and Industry where they have, amongst all the other great stuff, a very large HO layout that depicts the rail route from Chicago all the way to Seattle.

It's really quite amazing, from the downtown of Chicago including the Sears Tower, through the mountains of the northwest to the Space Needle in Seattle

They call it the Great Train Story

Now Simon has been looking at this unfinished layout in the basement storage room since he was a little toddler. Seeing the fully finished, computer controlled, he is inspired and I get the umpteenth "Daddy, can we finish the train layout?". Well, seeing as I am also inspired, he gets an affirmative response and when we got home, we started planning what to do.

In summary, the steps were:

• Tear out the old track, except the remote (solenoid powered automatic) turnouts, which I cleaned up and got most of them working.
• Re-lay portions of the cork roadbed.
• Paint the base and roadbed.
• Lay new track.
• Build a control panel and wire all of the track connections.
• Do the landscaping - note to self: do not paint the riverbed blue
• Build some buildings, lay in the roads and railroad crossings

Early on, I had bought a couple of locomotives and a small assortment of rolling stock. With renewed vigor, I started collecting pieces that were appropriate to the layout. Specifically, this meant mostly Erie-Lackawanna in the pre-1970 era. This also included Erie and DL&W, that is, pre-merger. All in the post-steam era. Also included are locomotives from Lehigh Valley, Reading as well as D&H; all of which would readily interchange with the EL.