Inspiration Behind the Indian Creek Valley Railroad

Is the Indian Creek Valley name completely fictitious? No, I took it from the regular Indian Creek Valley, the Rio Indian Creek Valley Railway, that was built in 1906. They ran from Indian Creek to Jones's Mill, PA. I've never heard of that, must of, short line. It was a short line, just a 14 mile. Why did you decide to call your layout that? Well, ever since I was a kid, I liked the name Indian Creek Valley and I just thought that'd be a good name for the layout. But it has no relationship to the short line as such? Not too much of it, I did go to station a few things off of the ICV. But mainly you just liked the name? Yes, right. Why did you make your railroad a subdivision of the B&O? Because my parents and everybody in my family were B&O employees. My grandpap was killed on the B&O and my dad was thrown from a car and died over it, that he, on the railroad. My brothers worked on it and I worked on it three times and quit. What's the purpose of the railroad to you? What do you, what do you enjoy about it? I think it's just making things, whatever I can make, the structures or whatever. More, more than running the trains, really. What sort of freight do you haul when you do run? I combine them, I run everything. Coal trains or merchandise or whatever. You run, what you like, it doesn't necessarily have to fit with any pattern? Not necessarily, no. I have quite a few older cars because I can remember the billboard reefers. Mhm. And I realized the DM1s didn't haul 'em, but I still like 'em, so. And it's your railroad. Right. You can run them if you want. You have a three track mainline, which is pretty unusual because of the amount of space that that takes up. Why did you decide to go with three tracks? Well, more or less for all the running you could get on them. And I still find problems with them that if I had to do over I'd stretch the building a little longer and put a double ended yard in and so forth because it's kind of inconvenient to always have to back into the yard or into the station even. But you can run three trains at once, going against each other the same way. Right, right, yes. That's gotta be exciting. I can run longer trains. I have double head about everything I run. Oh you do? In order to get a good size train on it. Mhm. And I would like to see double headers going up the mountain. So that was one of the reasons for it. How did you get interested in, in the hobby itself? Well, I don't really know. I always liked trains and I never had one when I was small, so when I got bigger I, when I come home from the army I decided to went Lion L. Yeah. I got into that and that, three rails didn't appeal to me, so I got American flyer. Mhm. I couldn't buy everything in one day in American flyer, so I bought a car in H.O. and I set doing on the three railroad track and laughed at it. You built this layout after seeing one other layout. Yes. Tell me about that. Well, that was in 1938 and 39, the world's fair in San Francisco. The Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific had a layout. And it was built up, I guess, on an angle, but it was about the size of this. And you had to walk down the aisle and look at it all. You couldn't get in with it. And from that, I just, went ahead and built this, I thought that's the way you built all of them. That's the only layout you had ever seen? That's the only one up to the then I had ever seen, right. When did you begin construction on this layout? Let's see, I started about, this one here is 15 years old, but I started about 1975, I guess it would be, yeah. On this layout? Yeah, mhm. And you've done all of this in 15 years, it's now 1990- Yes. And I did most of it while I was still working, after I retired I got kinda lazy on it, you know. I still go back and rebuild, but I don't do a whole lot, I don't know what to build now. Well it's pretty finished. In a way it is, yes. Well, nothing's really finished. No, it's never finished. It's not apparent that it's unfinished. Did, did you do things over? Yes. That you don't like? Right, bridge peers and stuff like that. I would like to change the tunnel faces, which I cut out of wood, I whittled them out. Uh-huh. But it takes, it takes several weeks to tear out the plaster and everything and redo it. So that's the only reason I haven't. Well, did you do all this by yourself? All the scenery and everything, yes. And the buildings. And the track? Yeah, I laid all the track, hand laid it. You had help with the wiring. Right, George Perrine, helped me with the, or did all the wiring more or less. I might've helped him a little bit, but I don't know anything about wiring, really. I can run two wires down to it, make it go. You must have put a lot of hours in on this Harry. I did, I put a lot of hours in on it, but. What's it given you in all that time invested? And sometimes I wonder whether, you know a man's right to do that. You mean you might be a little crazy? Yeah, don't have all, both oars in the water. Well, surely, I'm sure you don't mean that though? Well, it's, it's interesting, but you do wonder at times, you know what you're missing, but. What do you think are the best features of the layout? That's a hard thing for me to say, I don't really know. I'm not really overly satisfied with any part of it. You're not? It's a beautiful layout, how can you say that? Well, there's, hindsight I can think of other things that I'd rather done, if I had to do over now. What would you do for example? Well the, like sidings and so forth on it. I didn't put any in, you know to mount anything. Also I would have used a double ended yard in it, instead of the, where I have to back into the station or into the yards. What are you most proud of? I can't say that I'm really proud of any of it really. I enjoy to, I enjoy it, but then there's so many things I think that could have been done better in it. But so much of it is done very, very well. This, the scenery on this layout is, is spectacular and you're being modest, but it's, it's just gorgeous. Well, thank you. It's just, it's outstanding. I mean, you can always improve the same on trees or anything else, you know. When I started, I couldn't see a with a saw mill, I couldn't see cutting like in for lumber. As reason I started building trees. Mhm. And it's just a learning process from the start to finish. I mean, I, every time I can think of something new on the tree to, you know, to make it look better. Harry let's talk about your scenery techniques, what kind of support do you use? Is it screen wire, cardboard? I use screen wire and I usually use aluminum screen wire. I've tried copper and I've tried steel. Uh-huh. But aluminum is softer and easier to work. What kind of plaster do you put over that? I use wood fiber and molding plaster mixed. The wood fiber keeps the molding plaster from setting up too soon. So that way I get a chance to work it out. Wood fiber, it's plaster with wood fiber mixed in? Wood fiber mixed in. You did buy that already? Yeah, it's called wood fiber plaster. You like to make large rock castings, huge things, two feet by three feet. Why so big? Well to join them, usually if you have a certain space and you go to join them, it's hard to get two rocks or two pieces that exactly match. So if you can get by with a three-foot casting, nature made it that way. So it does match.