Welcome

Welcome to my railroad, the Hampshire County Ry. This is my first attempt at doing a blog. I am hoping that by recording the progress and showing it to my friends  on the internet, it will force me to keep building so someday I will have the railroad that I dreamed of and designed.

So, to start things off, I will tell you how the Hampshire County came to be. After many years of modeling On2, the interest decreased to the point were I needed a change. I had modeled in O scale many years ago, so I thought I'd give it a try again now that I had a house, or should I say I now have a basement with a big roof over it.

The constraints were that the layout had to fit into the finished portion of the basement that had been built for the On2 layout. This meant there wasn't going to be any big sweeping curves for large steam locomotives pulling full size passenger trains at high main line speeds. In fact a 48" radius was beginning to look like it was too big. This meant that my choices were limited. Being a prototypical-freelancer, a shortline would foot the bill perfectly. The name came from the county I live in and the time frame of 1968 to 1972 was chosen. All the station names are from actual places that have or had a railroad thru them.

I'll get deeper into the construction, the who's and why's, etc. as I learn more about how to run a blog, so bear with me as I learn as I go.