Chesapeake & Ohio: Final Words with Mike Burgett

Well, when you have a bad day on the real railroad, what do you do when you come home? It's an interesting question. You know, a lot of people don't understand how I can railroad, you know, nine to five and then come home and railroad again, two totally different worlds because real railroading, you know, there's so much stress involved, We do have to make a profit, there's politics involved, people's lives are at stake. You know, there's days I come home that I'm just mentally drained from real railroading. And no matter how bad it gets, I can come down here whether it be my by myself or with somebody and submerge myself in my world, where if I was the boss this is how we're gonna railroad. So it's an opportunity for me; If I was running the railroad, this is how we're going to do it. I enjoy the model railroading as much as I do the smell of fresh-cut grass, and I don't need, you know, to get a big vacation and stuff together. And the stress of flying here flying there and, and be, you know, constantly entertained, if you will, to relax and enjoy myself, I can come down here, flip the lights on and spend a couple hours with some paint and some glue and be as relaxed at the end of the night as I would be if I took a vacation to Hawaii. Prototype operating practices can be successfully employed on a model railroad that we don't have to make as many concessions as most of us think that we have to, you know, the old saying of, well this is a model railroad, so we can't do it that way, we gotta do it this way. All too often, with just a little extra thought or a little rearrangement of some things would fit prototype practices like a glove, but we tend to streamline them and simplify them maybe a little too much. That devotion to the prototype comes from Mike's connections with many current and retired railroaders, who've shared their stories. The Clifton Forge Division is a chance for him to show how a railroad should be run. The signals play an active part in all the layouts operating sessions because they and the CTC machine were designed even before the layout. Mike lives prototype railroading daily, yet he also designs and builds signal systems and CTC machines for models. The CNO is a great model railroad because Mike has followed the prototype of the James River Subdivision using photos and oral history as his guide.