About the Railroad

The Delaware & Susquehanna is a fictitious line located in northeast Pennsylvania. The time era on the layout is the mid-sixties. Since the club owns very little of its own equipment, the members provide most of the motive power and rolling stock. As a result, a variety of motive power can be seen on the D&S, the majority of which is Pennsylvania Railroad, our members' railroad of choice.

As a viewer travels around the layout with the trains, he is taken from the modest sized freight yard with a small diesel facility into a heavy industrial area. This really illustrates to the viewer the real purpose of railroads in our lives. Viewers are really intrigued watching members switch the way freight in this area and seeing how it snakes its way through the tight clearances, dodging cars and trucks while traversing the street. Typical of industrial areas in our cities, this one is not without the clutter and debris so commonly found in these areas of abuse.

As we leave this industrial area, we pass by a series of row houses that appear to be in the process of being cleared away in the name of progress. From here, the mainline travels across the "high line" over the city of Shardesburg. Shardesburg represents the "other end of the city" that most people try to forget. The commercial district is alive, but barely, and the residential section is not one where most of us would choose to live! The railroad carved its way through the city many years ago, but developers have done their best to use every inch of valuable real estate by building as close as possible to the busy mainline.

As we leave the heart of the city, we enter an area known as Duncannon Valley. Lined with industries for the way freights to work, this area is truly a workingman's town. As we pass among some other industries on the outskirts of town, we find ourselves crossing the Susquehanna River. Fishermen trying to catch a meal have found their place along the banks. Across the river, we see Gil's Bait and Boat Rental, a business that saw better days before it lost its dock and stairs to fire.

After crossing the river, we pass under the Bentwood Road bridge and enter the small rural community of Salotta Rocks. We come alongside a typical farm, reminiscent of those peaceful days in the country, right down to the tire swing. Just as we start to reflect on our childhood days on that swing, we find ourselves entering the small town of Lycoming, which is a station stop on the D&S and a major interchange with the Pennsylvania RR. Lycoming represents a typical suburban town with a freight house, a home coal and fuel dealership, etc. We notice that it is also a sad day in Lycoming as many of the towns people are at the cemetery paying their last respects to a departed friend.

Leaving Lycoming, the mainline enters a large cut as the countryside becomes hillier and rougher. Trees abound in this mountain scene, typical of northeastern vegetation. As we clear the cut, we reenter the yard from which we departed, but this "loop" of fond recollections is not over; our viewer's imagination has now been stimulated to continue his or her own journey down memory lane.

Since at the time we came together most of us modeled the Pennsylvania Railroad, the layout reflected this in terrain and era. We chose to model the northeastern Pennsylvania area in the mid-'60s. Although there are some minor exceptions to the era modeled in terms of details applied, we feel we have successfully captured the feeling we were after. We chose to avoid using any prototype names because we are trying to model a general rather than a specific place and time. We felt if we provided a believable setting, the viewers' imagination could do the rest.