MODELING THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD
Created October, 2013
Welcome - The creation of this website is to share my interest and
passion in modeling the late great Southen Pacific Railraod. I guess you can say I was drawn to the SP from the beginning, way before I became a more serious modeler. As a kid I received the traditional HO scale Tyco and Life-Like train sets at Christmas time. In fact my first set was a U.S. Army train with moveable cannons, machine guns and working spotlight. I would set up the track on the carpet and sit in the middle watching the train run around for hours. Shorly after that my dad helped me move it to a 4'x8' sheet of plywood which slid under my bed. Of course my interest pretty much stopped in my teen years and then all of a sudden picked up again around the age of 17 when I decided to set it up under the christmas tree.
Train #99, the westbound Coast Daylight swings around the curve and heads north to San Francisco.
The train set was still out after the holidays but the locomotives weren't up to par anymore. With a short experience in N scale, another Toys R Us set, my interest went back to HO. My first trip to a actual model train store was well overdue. The salesman introduced me to the classic blue box Athearn models and that's where I picked up my first bloody nosed SP GP9. I believe I was drawn to the model because of my numerous trips to my grand parents house in the mid to late 1980's where we would drive past the West Colton, Ca yard. My face was always glued to the window. By the time I was almost 18 I had visited a model layout open house which then exploded by interest even more. There I met others who shared their passions and I was well on my way to a life long hobby.