Chris---It was nice to read your post, and by the way, that conveyer on your layout from the recent post is a really beautiful piece of modeling. As for steam vs diesels, steam represents the golden era of railroading---that's one plus. Second, with the driving gear, steam engines are more fun to see moving. As for the Erie in particular, I think the big yellow diamond on the tender is very attractive, one of the best looking things in all of railroading. Back to my early memories---when I was a pre-schooler, I lived in New York City. We would go up to Deposit NY to visit my grandmother, whose house overlooked the tracks from two blocks away and a 100'- 150' elevation. There was a clear view of about 500' of any train going through town and there were many, because WWII was still on. Whenever I heard a train coming I'd run to the window. Many of the trains had flat cars with military equipment, at least half of them were double-headed. I wish I'd been born five or ten years earlier, so I could have known better what I was looking at. After the war, we lived in Deposit. One of my schoolmates had a grandfather who operated the switch engine, and he sometimes got to ride on it. Lucky dog! As far as I know, he never became a modeler. (He did become a stste trooper.) Well, anyway, that's ancient history. It's a good thing that I got started on this forum, because now I'm going to try to get my layout more photo-ready, plus, obviously it's nice to get to know others who share---specifically---an interest in the Erie. Are there others of us out there? There certainly must be! One final thing for now---it must have been cool to be in a railroad family, as you were, Chris. After I was thinking about that, it reminded me of a great guy I met some years ago named Walt Ruegger, whose father and three of his uncles were all Erie engineers. That must have been something! Walt himself had photography as an avocation, and was one of the best of the people who preserved the Erie in pictures. I didn't even realize that during the brief time I knew him. It was only a few years after his death that I saw a few of his pictures in railroad books.
I don't really know why I go for the older era as I'm only 30 and never saw any steam, but it think its more fun to learn about everything. My dad was a signalman for the EL so as a kid I would go with him to the yard towers to get his check. Guess thats why I like trains so much.
