BALTIMORE SOCIETY OF MODEL ENGINEERS 75TH BIRTHDAY - MARCH 4, 2007 - PAGE 2

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"O" SCALE LAYOUT

Here's an overall view of the layout, with the president in the center area, an operator up in the command center, and several members and guests checking out the action.

The trolley line operator is bringing that yellow PCC in the distance into the loop.  It runs on overhead trolley wires, and it ran flawlesslessly while I was there.

In this view you can get an idea of the complicated trackwork and overhead wiring.  The orange Brill car on the left is headed toward the camera.

The Milwaukee Road Hiawatha engine is far from home.  Those F units are lettered for the Baltimore and Northern, a fictional name for a could-have-been railroad.

A B&O Dockside locomotive sits under the coaling trestle.  The father of one of the club's members was an engineer on the prototype locomotive.

A smooth-running O&W camelback was switching the yard.  Two of the guests- Joe and I - like camelbacks, Joe modeling the Jersey Central and me the Reading.

While the camelback switches in the distance, a boxcar sits at a lumberyard siding on the trolley line, hence the tight-radius curve and the overhead wiring.

Just behind us (and above us) is the main operator's console.  Lots of red and green lights kind of reminds you of Christmas.  Around here it's Christmas every day!

Another siding on the trolley line is this coal trestle, high above the workers sweating down below.

The PCC trolley has travelled all the way to West Virginia, where it passes by the General Store in a quiet little town.

HO DIORAMAS

Thousands of HO model railroaders owned Dockside locomotives over the years.  Here it is, in a very realistic setting, along the docks of Baltimore. The actual Dock-sides ran along Pratt Street, just a few blocks away from where we are standing.

The Otis Coal Company is just a small-time operation but it is still filling up carload after carload of West Virginia coal.