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Why I got Back into Railroading and Model Railroading
I grew up in Massachusetts with the Conrail railroad mainline running
diesel power in my backyard but my main interest in railroading is the
Western Maryland Railway. Find out why below.
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Why I got back into Trains and Model Railroading
Why do I love trains? A lot of it has to do with the presence of them when I
was younger, living in the city in an apartment made from the second floor of a
house at 7 Glenwood St in Worcester, MA. From my first pre-school
memories through fourth grade I always had long trains of loud house-rattling
diesels running through the back yard. I remember how the walls in the house
shook when those engines would roar by. I always watched them, but since
they were so commonplace (several times a day), I never really took the time to
appreciate what I was seeing. My earliest coherent memories of the power
there were shiny blue Conrail and black Penn Central diesels. The
boxcars were all sorts, but the Penn Central logo sticks in my mind from that
time period. The tracks are still there, and owned now by CSX. The huge yard
and the "Port of Worcester" were located nearby, and were something I rode past
often when my mum would bring us out to the stores or the doctor's office.
Worcester
The photos below show the view from the rear of the house. The factory blocked
most of my view of the Port of Worcester, so it is the factory and the Conrail
train that rain in front of it that I remember best. The field between the
house and tracks was blocked by briars and scrub, so I never ventured out into
it. Also, being very young, I was not allowed to go down to the end of the
street from where I took the first photo below. Now, this area is very scary. I
only snapped a few photos as I was drawing unwanted attention with my camera
and out-of-state plates. My wife waited for me in the car, with the doors
locked. The street with the house is so bad now, that I would not even get out
of the car. I took one photo with the car still rolling and kept going. It was
always a poor street in an immigrant neighborhood, but it was safe. I used to
walk to school in first through fourth grade without any worries. Now it
is just an unsafe, poor, inner-city street with prostitutes and
dealers just around the corner. This is not simply the jaded view of
someone 25 years older. Bad areas, especially those along the tracks, just
get worse.
 Yards The Port of Worcester. You can see the P&W engine house Pete Brown Photo - December 2004 |
 Factory Former factory behind house in Worcester. This is now the Providence & Worcester RR headquarters Pete Brown Photo - December 2004 |
 House House where I grew up. We rented the top floor only. It was all brick back then. Pete Brown Photo - December 2004 |
It was in this house where my dad got me my first train set. It was also here
where my dad brought me to a model railroad open house and lifted me up to see
all the trains running. I believe the open house was in a club in Auburn,
MA.
Southbridge
Later we moved to Southbridge, MA. Again I had railroad tracks in my backyard
(again the P&W), but these were almost never used. I do remember a couple
trains, but it is possible they were simply fan trips over soon-to-be-abandoned
trackage, or were maybe just one-off deliveries to local industry. I used to
walk the tracks all the time, through the woods and over the bridge near the
Quinnabaug river. The tracks mainly served the American Optical company, and
several other local industries. I abandoned my trains for building plastic
aircraft and ship models until I discovered computers in 7th grade, and
hell-raising sometime in highschool.
Sometime when I was in jr high or early highschool, trains ceased to run over
the tracks. During 8th grade, we moved to a different location in the same
town. I still walked the tracks a lot, as they were the shortest route to many
parts of the town, but I never again had tracks in my backyard. I continued
building military models
When I visited home a couple years ago, I saw that the tracks had been
abandoned, and the problematic low-clearance bridge (trucks were always getting
stuck under it) over main street had been removed.
For demographic information on Southbridge, click here
http://www.state.ma.us/dhcd/iprofile/278.pdf . For the town's main
web site, click here http://www.ci.southbridge.ma.us/
I am not sure if the P&W still services Southbridge from the other side of
the bridge. I did find this on an abandonment list site:
MASSACHUSETTS – CONNECTICUT - PROVIDENCE AND WORCESTER RAILROAD CO.
– To abandon a portion of its line of railroad known as the Southbridge Running
Track, extending from milepost 0.18, in Webster, MA, to milepost 10.98, in
Southbridge, MA, a distance of approximately 10.8 miles, in Worcester County,
MA, and Windham County, CT. Effective on December 4, 2003. ([STB Docket No.
AB-254 (Sub-No. 7X, decided October 28, served November 4, 2003)
Maryland
In 1996 I moved to Maryland after accepting a great job in the software
industry. In 2001 I bought my first house, and finally had room and means to
pick up some old hobbies. I had been talking to Jim Mucka at work
about trains (he is an O scale Lehigh Valley modeler, and former president of
AIS, but no longer, as he has moved on to another company), and he got me back
into Model Railroading, bringing me to my first train show. Around that
same time, my wife mentioned to me that there was a railroad museum in Union
Bridge, MD that I should check out. Well, I visited it one day in early 2002,
the Western Maryland Railway Historical Society museum in Union Bridge, and
quickly fell in love with the WM. I've been a fan ever since :-)
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