Awesome pics video from yesterday and TBT August 25th 2016

Yesterday, My two sons and I headed due north up to my favorite hobby shop:
Mainline Hobby

It's a long drive but always worth it.  As usual, we do some railfanning along the way.  The Maryland Midland interchanges in the area of the hobby shop which is located in Blue Ridge Summit, PA.  The name is where I got my name for my HO empire.  I've been coming up here for 15 years and one of the first time I did, I stumbled upon the Maryland Midland.  The paint has changed recently but they represented what I wanted in a railroad.  I railfanned them alot over the years and knew the line like the palm of my hand. We lucked out as we found them in Thurmont, MD as we were heading up.  The chase was on once I saw this lashup!:

FIVE Emds on the head end?  Must have a big train.  Turns out that it had 54 loaded cement cars and 2 boxcars for the run up the Catoctin Mountains.

2006 lashup

2016 lashup

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Op Session yesterday and a railroad map of the Virginia Midland

Visited Mike Pulaski's model railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson near Richmond yesterday.  This is the second time I have visited his amazing double decked layout in his basement.  He models about the same time period as me( mid 1990's).  Most of his crew did not show up but that meant more trains to run!  If I were to ever get house with a basement, his layout is the perfect size.  Not too big and not too small.  Did not take a bunch of pictures, but here are a few:

This was a stack train I ran all the way around the layout.

His backdrops set the upstate New York scene.

This is a great looking feed mill on the upper deck.

Gotta love some Susie Q!

Here's a map of the railroads of Virginia.  CLICK ON IT FOR A LARGER VIEW.  The VMID trackage runs west out of Fredricksburg to Orange with the Mine Run branchline in western Spotsylvania County.  The F&NN trackage runs east out of Fredericksburg.  The F&NN trackage is not modeled on the layout.  

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