The Beginning

      I first got started into trains back on Christmas 1976 when I was two years old. My parents had gotten me a Lionel train set, and I've been into trains ever since.

      It was a couple years later when I got into HO scale with Tyco's Silver Streak train set.

      Since then, I've moved from running toy trains to model trains. Essentially the main difference between toy and model trains is that model trains are scale models while toy trains are not.

      The first actual layout that I had was a combination of my Lionel train set and my HO train set. Talk about looking wierd!

      The next layout was an L-shaped layout with an L-shaped oval of track circling the layout with a second track forming a figure eight inside the first. Originally, the inner track crossed itself via a bridge, but it was then changed to a diamond. There was also a pair of crossovers that connected the two tracks and a four-track dead-end yard that branched off the inner track into the center of the one side of the layout.

A True Layout

      After that came the layout that would become the basis of what became my layout. It was four feet wide and twenty feet long. There was a double track mainline circling the layout with a double-ended four-track yard on the operator's side of the layout inside the mainline. Also, a pair of crossovers were located there as well. Track was improved this time as it was spiked down to the plywood surface, whick kept the track from working it's way apart and derailing trains. However, that layout, like the other, wasn't what I call would call a true model railroad. There was only about an inch or two of space between the outside mainline track and the edge of the layout. One of my locomotives, which still runs, actually went off one of the curves and careened off the layout. Luckily the floor was carpetted. The track was laid directly on the bare plywood, and the only scenery that existed were several cars and trucks, some ready-made trees, buildings that my dad had put together for me, and that was it.

      A couple of years later, the layout's width was expanded to six feet. The surface of the layout was covered with grass paper and the track was completely relaid on foam roadbed. The yard now expanded across the mainline with another double-ended four-track yard. All trackage was also shifted some to allow more room between the track and the edges of the layout.

      All of this was a big improvement.

      However, problems still existed and continued to spring up, seemingly out of nowhere. In the process of laying the new track, my dad didn't put in any crossovers between either of the mainline tracks. The foam roadbed, while it looked nice and quieted the sound of the trains running over the plywood, caused numerous problems. The softness of the foam made the tracks uneven, and in the cases of loose rail joints, it allowed the track to move down with the weight of the trains and sometimes cut off power to parts of the layout. Another problem was the 18-inch radius curves. While most of my locomotives and cars could go around the curves with no problems, longer locomotives and cars often derailed.

      Despite the problems, the layout was up and running.

      Around 1990, I decided to improve the scenery on the layout.

      I started by using black spray paint to make my streets and roads. I then made my railroad crossings by using ballast to build up the "earth" around the crossing to make it level, and then used Woodland Scenics "black cinders" to make the road on the crossing. I then also glued ballast down between and outside the tracks making it look more like real roadbed.

      I also installed a new crossover connecting the two mainline tracks near the west end of the yard. It went through the Amtrak passenger station platform between the two mainlines and, until it was replaced, caused many problems and derailments.

      That was how the railroad remained until the fall of 1992 when I added a couple of industrial sidings to the layout.

      The first siding was for the warehouse on the west end of the yard. It extended staight off the siding closest the operator's panel, crossed the driveway to the loading dock of the warehouse, ran between the building and State Route 117, and ended at the corner of 117 and Southern Street. I then added traffic lights at the intersection as boxcars parked on the siding blocked the drivers' views when pulling up to the intersection on Southern Street. Loaded boxcars were switched onto the siding for unloading at the warehouse.

      The second siding was at the coal tower east of town on State Route 117. The switch for the siding was put in just west of the State Route 53 crossing. The siding parallelled the mainline for a couple of car lengths and then curved into the coal tower. Empty coal cars were dropped off at the coal tower by local freights for loading.

      In the process of adding the new industries to the layout, I began getting more into wanting to do true operations on the layout. I tried to set the layout in northwest Ohio, but with the future changes to the layout, that idea was pretty much ditched.

	A westbound Conrail coal train departs the Arlee yard at Southern Street.
	Two Amtrak passenger trains meet at the State Route 12 crossing.
	A westbound Conrail piggyback passes an eastbound Conrail freight at Southern Street.

New Scenery

      That following spring, I began construction on new scenery for the layout. I'd decided that the countryside on the layout was too flat and bare. In the middle of the layout, a reservoir was made, and the rest of the scenery, except for what was to remain level property for the houses outside of town, was raised using sheet styrofoam that was nailed/glued down to the layout and then carved to shape. A new tunnel was also made, even though the layout was to be northwest Ohio. The only bad part of carving the styrofoam was that I had used beaded styrofoam which left little pieces and chunks of styrofoam everywhere and clogged up my mom's vacuum.

      Once I'd carved the styrofoam to a shape that I liked, I made the rock faces on the layout with plaster that I'd gotten from a local store. I simply mixed the plaster, put it on the styrofoam and smoothed/roughed it some and allowed it to then dry. I then chipped it in some spots and then colored it with a dye that I'd gotten at a hobby shop.

      The surrounding hills were then scenicked with mixes of Woodland Scenics ground foam.

	New scenery going into place. Looking back, if I were to do it again, I would have had a ridge of hills going down the middle of the layout instead of the reservoir that I made.
	The new scenery finished on the west side of town.
		A couple views of the hill and tunnel while they were being constructed.
	Here's another view of some of the finished scenery on the west side of town, including a rock face that I thought turned out rather nicely.
	An early look at my magazine collection. It's grown a lot since this picture was taken.

      I also replaced the poorly constructed crossover with two new crossovers that were constructed much better than the previous one.

      The layout was then, at the time, finished. But I soon did a few more scenery details. I added some more rough grass along the tracks to simulate the edges of the right-of-way. I also put some more grass around the coal tower and abandoned enginehouse to make them look more overgrown with weeds.

      In December of 1997, I closed the coal tower siding. While I enjoyed switching cars in and out of the siding, operations were made difficult by the poor trackwork on the siding and the switch. A gap between the switch and another section of rail kept derailing trains once in a while, and the twisting move in and out of the siding caused many cars to derail. So, the switch came up, and a new section of track was put in its place. Afterwards, I gave the tower and the siding a good covering of weeds and other vegetation to make them look abandoned.

      During the summer of 1998, the west end of the yard was altered. A couple of my switches were causing problems. Since I didn't have any replacement switches, I opted to remove the switches at the ends of the three sidings closest to the operator's panel. The two closest to the mainline remained double-ended while the other two were turned into stub-ended sidings with one ending at the siding for the warehouse. This made yard operations a little more interesting as I had to move cars on the siding to reach the warehouse.

	An eastbound freight rounds the curve and crosses State Route 53.
	An eastbound with two Chessie System SD40-2s sits and waits for a clear signal at the Hickory Road crossing.
	Old meets new as a Norfolk and Western caboose passes an EOT device on the rear of an eastbound freight.
	An eastbound freight rolls past the Amtrak station and across Southern Street.
	A boxcar is backed into the warehouse siding at State Route 117 and Southern Street.
	An eastbound coal drag crosses over from main 1 to main 2.
	Two units come out of the Arlee yard to help shove a westbound out of town.
		A couple views of the abandoned enginehouse and the coal tower siding after I added more overgrowth to both.
A crossing accident was staged at the Hickory Road crossing with a station wagon going around the gates after a westbound passes and going in front of an eastbound Amtrak passenger train.
	A westbound freight enters the east portal of Snow Hill Tunnel. The hill and tunnel were so named because of how white they were when I was constructing them, looking almost like a snow scene.
	This is an overview of the Main Street area of Arlee as a westbound rolls through town.
	These two pictures aren't quite what they seem. Before I made solid pipe loads for my gondolas, the pipes were loose in the gondolas with the wooden stakes keeping them from falling off the car. However, the stakes sometimes fell over, allowing the pipes to come off the car. In this case, a couple pipes came loose, hit the passing scenery, and started to derail the car. I stopped the train and then staged the crash for the pictures.
			Three views of Triple Crown trains around the layout. A westbound exists Snow Hill Tunnel. An eastbound train passes a westbound trailer on State Route 117 at ES Tower. Two trains meet at the Hickory Road crossing.
	The Hickory Road crossing at one point required getting patched up. The foam roadbed under the tracks sunk, and the track pulled loose from the timbers for the crossing on the outside of the track. As trains went over the crossing, the timbers then began catching the sides of the trucks of passing cars, causing derailments.
	At the time this photo was taken, the coal tower was abandoned, and the switch was removed. I then left the siding in place, bending the rails where it neared the mainline to the side to simulate the track being pulled off to the side.
	An eastbound Amtrak passenger train exits Snow Hill Tunnel and crosses Hickory Road as it rolls into Arlee.
	In the summer of 1998, I had to remove a problem switch at the west end of the yard. As a result, I had to rework the end of the yard somewhat.
		In a couple views of Amtrak trains on the layout, a westbound exits Snow Hill Tunnel, and two eastbounds exit Snow Hill Tunnel and approach the Hickory Road crossing.
	I have a lot of vehicles for use on my layout, and in the case of some of the duplicates that I have, I melted either a side or end of the car with either a hot light bulb or cigarette lighter to make it look like it had been in a wreck. In this picture, several cars and a dump truck have been involved in a pile up on State Route 117. In case you are wondering, "CHiPs" was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid.

      In October 1998, operations ceased on the layout as I had moved to my apartment in Ashland, Ohio. In early February 1999, I packed up the trains, transformers, and some of the scenery to move out of my parents' basement and to my apartment to keep the trains safe with me after a major family arguement.

      However, not long afterwards, I was laid off from my job, which caused me some serious financial difficulties. I was able to survive until October 1999, when I talked to my parents and decided to move back home to cut my expenses while I looked for work.

      On November 20, 1999, after being home a week and thoroughly dusting, cleaning, and vacuuming the entire layout, trains began rolling once again on the Wagner Lines.

Problems Realized

      However, there were problems that gave me headaches on many occasions:

• Poor roadbed: When the current layout was constructed, I used a soft foam instant roadbed that came in rolls. While it looked great at first, over the years, it no longer supported the track. The weight off a train passing actually caused the tracks to sink, and in some areas, the roadbed had shreaded off in little pieces. The track had a slight up-and-down profile, which ruined the realism of the layout. It had also caused intermittent dead spots in the track where the weight of a train would pull on a loose rail joint enough to break the circuit and stop the train. And, in a few cases, track nails would catch the passing train or, worse, fingers using a track cleaner on the track. On my one grade crossing, the track sank and caused the wood planks on the outside of the rails to rub the bottoms of the sides of the trucks on my rolling stock, causing an occasional derailment.
  
  
• 18-inch radius curves: When the track was laid, 18-inch radius sectional track was used on the curves. While it initially worked fine, longer engines and cars had a hard time getting around the layout, if they made it around at all without derailing.
  
  
• Poor track: While the straight sections of track were mostly laid with flextrack, areas around and including the curves and several places on the yard tracks were laid with sectional track. The many rail joints had given me trouble with loose rail joiners as well as the rail expanding and contracting, causing kinks and gaps in the rail. One kink on the one ladder track in the yard was caused by putting a #4 turnout after a #6. In order to get the diverging yard tracks parallel, the #4 turnout was angled out, resulting in a kink in the rails that plagued any locomotives switching the east end of the yard. The track was also a mix of brass and nickel-silver. While I hadn't had too much trouble with the nickel-silver, the brass was a pain to keep clean.
  
  
• Poor wiring: When the layout was built, one cab was wired to one main, and the other cab was wired to the other. The result was a layout that didn't offer much in the way of operation. While I installed stop blocks on both mains on the other side of the layout and a switch to turn off one rail of a siding, it was still a pain to try and operate the layout realistically. If I would want to run a switcher from the one siding in the yard and across the mainline to the other side of the yard, I had to stop both mainline tracks, turn off the stop blocks, and turn both cabs so that the directions and the speeds were the same so that the switcher could cross over between the two mains. Also, wires were actually pieced together by twisting the ends together and wrapping them with electrical tape. There was no color coding, which made trying to trace problems a nightmare.
  
  
• Horn-hook couplers: Another problem that I had was horn-hook couplers. Once I am able, I will begin converting to Kadees since they will stay coupled after backing a long train. Right now, all of my freight equipment has horn-hook couplers. All Amtrak equipment has Kadees or Kadee compatible couplers.

Rebirth

      On Monday, July 10, 2000, I started a new job, which got me back on my feet. That's when changes began to be made to the layout.

      In August, I began getting the tools that I would need to make improvements to my layout. While cleaning our basement at work, I found a ton of scrap Cat-5 cable that was going to get thrown out. I was allowed to keep it since it was no longer usable at work. That solved my need to find wire for the layout. DPDT toggle switches and terminal strips were bought from Radio Shack. While cleaning the basement at work, I had also found a couple sheets of a board material suitable for a new control panel. I was also allowed to take it home to use. My new control panel was built, the wiring on the back was hooked up, and the panel was mounted on the layout. Then the big step came.

      On Saturday, September 16th, I made a trip to The Train Station in Columbus and got supplies to redo my entire mainline. On Thursday, September 21st, the last train was run, and I began the painful task of tearing up the old track. One thing I had to keep telling myself was that the new track would be better than the old. That Saturday (the 23rd), new roadbed started going down on the west side of the layout with new flextrack. The curves were widened some to accomodate longer equipment as well. On Friday, October 6th, at about 11:45PM, the last spike was hammered down on the mainline, the wiring was hooked up, and I ran an engine that I'd been unable to run on the old track to test the track.

      The wiring went so well that I never had to correct one error! The engine ran smoothly, never slowing near the end of a block of track.

      That following day, I began running a couple trains. The first was an 11-car string of Walthers autoracks. On the old track, I'd only been able to run about five or six with occasional derailing on my rough curves. However, the train never once gave me any trouble. I didn't have to put a heavily weighted car between the first autorack and the engine, and I was even able to put a caboose behind the last car without the caboose being pulled off the tracks by the autorack coupled to it. The other train was a long piggyback train with three Athearn Impack intermodal cars and eight Walthers Front Runners. The Front Runners had never been able to run on the old track. While I could hear their flanges rubbing some, they ran with pretty much no trouble on the new track.

      One week later on the 14th of October, I again went down to Columbus to The Train Station and got some more supplies for my yard. I went railfanning in Marion on my way home, and that evening, I started work on the yard, finishing it at aproximately 12:15AM on Saturday, October 21st.

      The only problems I had with the new track and control panel was getting used to the transformers not being assigned to a specific track. For a while, I would think something was wrong with the wiring or track when a toggle switch or transformer was simply turned off. I also had to learn to work the correct transformer when starting or stopping a train.

      After finishing the track and wiring, I began rebuilding the grade crossings, reballasting the track, and put in an overpass where the crossing on State Route 53 had been.

      The Penn Central phase of my layout had come to a close. The Conrail era had begun!

		Work on the new track began on the west side of the layout, starting with tearing up the old track. After the track and roadbed were removed, I then cut out the grass mat that had been under the track, leaving a strip of bare plywood to spike the new roadbed and track to.
	More track torn up on the curve by the coal tower. If you look closely at the bare plywood, you can see a mark on it from the track of one of the previous layouts.
	The new control panel was installed, and the wiring was done as the track was put down. It was my first control panel, and I thought it turned out rather well. It worked flawlessly.
	The original yard was torn up relatively quickly. Getting started on tearing up the old track was hard to do at first, but as more of the old track came up, I could see how bad it was. It got easier then.
	Once the mainline was done, I ran a couple test trains. Everything ran much more smoothly than it ever had before.
		The new yard track was then laid. The yard tracks on the outside of the mainline were further altered from before, spacing the second and third tracks apart and extending the third track a little further.
			Six of the original seven grade crossings needed rebuilt, requiring new timbers to be put down for the road, Woodland Scenics black cinders to be used again to build the road up to and on the crossing, and then ballasting the track on either side of the crossing.
	The yard was completely ballasted in late December 2000. Here's a view of it shortly after when trains began rolling on the newly ballasted track.
		A section of State Route 53 was torn up like the old track's roadbed for the new overpass and it's one modeled incline. A Rix Products modern overpass was built for the new bridge. Woodland Scenics inclines were then used for the ramp to the bridge.
		Woodland Scenics Mold-A-Scene Plaster was used to build up the "earth" around the ramp. Smooth-It was then used for the road and to shape the bridge abutment. The road was then painted black, and the abutment was painted with Floquil concrete.
	I used masking tape to mask the road from the shoulders and used ballast to make the shoulders. By this point, the bridge and two of the piers were painted into more realistic colors.
		Track through the "work zone" was then ballasted in preparation for the remainder of the scenery to be done. Note that the abandoned coal tower siding is overgrown with vegetation.
		Using different textures and colors of Woodland Scenics ground foam and ballast on the slope below the bridge abutment, I then scenicked the new ramp and glued the bridge piers into position.
		The bridge was put into place. Road lines were put on with white and yellow colored pencils. Rix Products guardrails were put in on both sides of the road. Road signs were put in, and the trees were put back in place, completing the scenery.
			Three views of two trains meeting at the new overpass. The first one is probably my favorite picture from the old layout.
	An eastbound freight approaches the overpass.
	Here's an overview of the controls of the old layout, showing the two transformers and sound generator with the control panel on the right. The index cards to the left of the transformers were an early attempt at a car-card forwarding system.
	An eastbound freight rolls under the overpass, around the curve, and towards Snow Hill Tunnel.
	A final overview of the overpass area. While I could have done it better, I think it turned out rather well for my first attempt at something like this.

End of an Era

      In late June 2001, the last trains were run as I was moving into a townhouse just a few minutes from where I was working, ending a 45-minute one way drive to work each day. By late August 2001, all of my trains, vehicles, signals, controls, and salvagable scenery items had been carefully packed up and moved.

      In October 2001, the unthinkable happened again. I was wrongfully fired from my job, just three months after getting moved. I began looking for work, hoping that I wouldn't have to move again. I'd been planning a sectional around-the-wall type of layout for in the spare bedroom of my townhouse that had just over 150 square feet of space in it.

      Fortunately, I was out of work for only eight weeks. I got a new job in Columbus. Knowing that I couldn't continue driving that distance every day, I focused my spending primarily on saving for the move which would be happening. In the meantime, I did keep busy with new Walthers Amtrak equipment that I'd gotten as well as some more Walthers autoracks, of which I now have 43.

      In September 2002, I moved into a new townhouse in Hilliard on the west side of Columbus. The new townhouse is about the same size as the one I had in Mansfield with one exception. It has a full basement!!! Not only did I have room for the layout I'd been planning in Mansfield, I now had even more room for expanding the original plans.

      Sadly, the original Wagner Lines is no more. When I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving in November 2003, my dad, with my permission, was tearing up the old layout. It was something that I could have never done myself so I'm glad, in a way, that he was going ahead and doing it. There was one laugh I got out of the experience, and that was my dad's complaining about the strength and amount of plaster and glue I'd used on the scenery, which he really had to work at to tear up.

      Of course, I am still planning my dream layout for when I get a house of my own.

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