Thursday, February 22, 2024

Maryland and Ohio - My First "Railroad of Lies"


I came up with the idea for my freelanced Southern New England Railway in conjunction with Iain Rice during one of his visits to Wisconsin. But not many people know that I had a "railroad of lies" long before the SNE named the Maryland & Ohio Railroad. I created the M&O when I was 10 or 11. As the name implies it was an Appalachian bridge route with lots of coal traffic. It had blue first generation diesels, and a lot of coal hoppers … I’ll let you guess which railroad may have heavily inspired the M&O… they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

With the news that Jim Hediger recently passed away, I was digging through my box of freelanced railroad cars looking for an Ohio Southern (Jim's railroad) car and came across what I believe is the one surviving example of M&O rolling stock. Note the use of Champ "word" decals - an alternative at a time when I certainly didn't have the resources to get custom decals made! 

1 comment:

Gerard Fitzgerald said...

That is a good looking car and you can tell it has a story.