Welcome to the new home for my HO Scale layout – Conrail’s Chicago Line. I started building this layout in September 2023 and have made steady progress since that time. I’ve had websites in the past, but life and other priorities took over and I let them lapse. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get them back, so I decided to start a new website/blog dedicated to my railroad hobby.

Due to my job with the military, I was never able to build a permanent layout since we generally moved every 2-3 years. I’ve since retired from the Army and now work for a corporate flight department flying their business jets. Now that we are in our permanent home, it was time to start building.

This layout is the second one I’ve built since we moved here in 2022. The first one was good, but there were some things that I didn’t like about it, so I used it as a learning experience and incorporated those lessons into the new layout. Future posts will cover that topic in great detail. For now, I’ve started a separate page that will show my fleet of locomotives, as well as some of my favorite freight cars. I have started to do custom weathering and painting on the side again now that I’m semi-retired and have more time available. Cheers and hope you enjoy the new site!

A pair of Conrail GP15-1’s has just returned back to the yard after delivering a block of empty hoppers to the local cement factory.