Inspiration Behind the M&K Division of the B&O

The layout is based on the B&O in West Virginia. Why did you pick that setting? Well, it just so happens that everybody who's working on the layout is very fond of that area of the country, and we like that kind of railroad operation. So we picked the B&O, the thing we like best. Well, have you tried to model it exactly, or do you just want the feeling of the area? Well, the area we're trying to model is about 50 miles long, and there's no way that you can model an area of that extent scene-for-scene, so what we've really tried to do is to catch the spirit of the West End. The West End? Yes. The West End is a division of the B&O that we're modeling, and down in that country when they talk about the railroad, they talk about the West End. Do the letters M and K mean anything? Yes, they do. In the middle of the West End Division, there was a little independent railroad called the Morgantown and Kingwood, the M&K. It was purchased by the B&O many years ago, and there's a junction there that was called M&K junction where the railroad joined the B&O, and that's the centerpiece of our layout, and that's why we call it the M&K. Why did you decide on this bridge line concept? Well, it wasn't a choice that we made so much as it was a choice that the railroad made. That was the roughest part of the terrain in the rock between the Monongah Division where all the coal was and the East Coast, and because the terrain was rough, not many industries located there. It was fortunate for us because it fits into the kind of railroading that we like. Which is? Well, we like the idea of railfanning a model railroad where you watch a train come into the scene, go through the scene, do something interesting, and disappear. You've got a lot of track to accomplish this, two or three main lines in many places. Are they really main lines, or is that an illusion? Well, it's an illusion. The scheme of the layout is a three-time-around loop, but we've arranged it so that it looks like two or three-track main line, and the trains go through it, sometimes east to west, sometimes west to east, but because we run such long trains, it's really not apparent that you're running in circles. You're not aware of going through the same scene twice. Not when you're operating because you're too busy, and it takes about, at the speeds we run, it takes about 25 minutes to make an entire transit of the layout, so you don't frequently see a train. You don't see it now and a minute later see it again, and if you're following it, you're so busy that you don't realize that you're going through the scene two or three times. What kind of scenery materials do you use, Don? We use the traditional materials. We use plaster and we use poly fiber. We use lichen when it was available, and we use ground colors, plaster colors, and we use the Woodland Scenics. The ground foam? Yes. We've done some things that I think are interesting with scenery techniques in that we use things like package tape and Handi Wrap and plaster cast bandage, and we use caulking guns so we can move very quickly. We think it's worked well, but that's a whole different story as to how you can get a lot of plaster up in a hurry. But everything is plaster under here, under the foam and the lichen, it's all plaster. It's all plaster. Screen wire or hard shell? Some places have hard shell. Some places, I have screen wire. I like hard shell except if you have to get under the layout, the hard shell compresses. When I have to get under the layout, I build farmers and put chicken wire over it, and then I lay the plaster. Caulking guns. What do you use the caulking guns for? Well, you can buy silicone adhesives. You can buy panel adhesives. All of them are extremely usable in model railroading. You don't have to keep buying small tubes and replacing tubes. You can start the evening with a caulking gun loaded, and by the time the evening's over, you've exhausted a whole caulking tube. You use that glue for? We use it for gluing the scenery on. We use it for gluing track down. We use it for gluing our roads down. We put silicone in it to fasten the poly fiber to the top of the plaster. It's all very handy. So you're not using white glue like everybody else there? No, we don't use a whole lot of white glue. We use it to glue ballast down, that's about it. We have one tube of every kind of glue that was ever made. Most modelers name their towns and a few other things on the layout, but you've gone so far as to name rivers and bridges and tunnels and curves. Does that help add to the scenic illusion? It does for me, and I think it does for most people. Talk to a railroader sometime on a train and listen to what he talks about. He'll talk about the cricks. He'll talk about Hitchcock Tunnel. He'll talk about Big Curve. He'll talk about M&K junction. Railroaders talk that way, and when you're running a train and you know you're going through Big Curve or you're approaching MK junction or HA junction, it just makes you run a lot more realistic in your own mind.