Layout Extension & Railroad History on the B&B

The Brandywine & Benedictine railroad is a 1950s coal holler that runs between Clear Brook Virginia and Ballard West Virginia. Does the railroad extend beyond the layout? Yeah, the model section is actually only about 30 miles of a much greater railroad. It extends from Winston Salem, North Carolina, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, running North and South. What gave you the idea to do that? To have that theoretical extension beyond the layout? Well, it makes the modeled section a lot more believable. I've got trains coming in from hidden staging yards at both ends and they pass through the model section of the railroad Mhm, and then disappear into another staging area Right Now, where does the coal traffic originate? Most of the cold traffic originates North of the modeled section, we're right around the Roanoke Virginia area in Salem, Virginia. We're basically on the Southern edge of the Allegheny coal field. So I do have some coal mines on the railroad but the bulk of the coal traffic is off camera. And actually just passing through this section The layout is based on the B & O, the N & W, Western Maryland and the Clinchfield. Well, what intrigues you about those roads enough to kind of base everything on them? Locale for one, I'm a great fan of the Virginia, West Virginia Southern Pennsylvania area. We go up there quite often on rail fanning trips and I just fell in love with it. Is that because of the mountains or because of the coal hauling or the?-- No single thing in particular, it's just a neat place. Just place. It's totally different from what I'm used to around here. It's totally different from what I grew up with. It's very interesting from a modeling point of view also. You've really gotten into the ambience of coal hauling because you've created a fictitious history for the railroad, tell me about that. Well, one of the things I did, was I didn't wanna be limited by modeling a particular railroad link, if I was modeling the Clinchfield. I could only get rolling stock. You gatta be there Somebody's gonna come in and say, "No, they didn't do it that way." I didn't want to have that kind of limitation. So I created a railroad that could have existed. I even went so far as to go to Georgia Tech and get out the topographical maps and try to find a perspective route through where I wanted to run. So something would be plausible but it actually didn't exist, the route you drew, Didn't exist But it could have been. Could have been, where it didn't, I made it work. When I wrote the history, it gave everything, kind of justified everything that I built. The Brandywine & Benedictine came into existence while the actual history starts about 1890, right at the turn of the century, it's a fairly recent railroad as railroads go. It was actually constructed in 1905. It was originally of wholly owned subsidiary of the Norfolk Central which is another fictitious railroad . It belongs to a friend of yours. Which belongs to a friend of mine. We wrote the history from then on and in the depression era, like most railroads did, we went through a bankruptcy, Receivership Receivership and part of the receivership, was the Norfolk Central had to give up the Brandywine & Benedictine. So we became an independent entity as such during the 1930s as a result of a receivership. Was a lot of fun though, It was Doing that what if? And think about it, and yeah. Another nice thing is if there is something that I want to do, I changed the history. I mean, how many people have that option?