Been Gone A While, Can Someone Fill Me In.....

[packers#1]

I vote Illinois Southern as a shortline model railroad, or Atlantic Western as a larger railroad model railroad.

As for your first question, it's been rehashed but the old Atlas forum shut down, and then a lot of the Atlas people came here, and I think the flare-ups are mostly a product of several users here having much more demanding standards as compared to a majority of the users here. I wouldn't let that stop you though, for two reasons: 1) there is plenty of good modeling and discussion here if you're willing to wade through the flame wars, and 2) said flame wars can be entertaining to read through, and surprisingly still offer some good points to take into consideration.

[sirenwerks]

I like the W&OD best.  I'm not a fan of electric lines, but have been playing with the idea of a post-electrified freight only merged North Shore/CA&E now that S2/4s are available.  Unfortunately, scope creep has set in and the pure idea has been beset upon by grandiose EJ&E ideals.  Then there's the all-Alco (ok, maybe F-M and BLW too) St. Paul to Rapid City regional idea that's still rattling around...

[Iain]

Believe it or not, I remember back when you used to hang around here.

[John]

Don't let Alex's (VARR) modesty hide the fact that he is a pretty good modeler. He not only developed the VARR theme (and a couple of others IIRC), but he did super work brush painting a lot of rolling stock that looked just great ..  He also had the very first Railwire special run of VARR cars ..   

And something else you probably don't know -- VARR designed the paint scheme for the real Virginia Railway Express locos ...   he's a modest fellow .. but I'm glad to see him back.

As far as ownership changes --- I gave up running RW because after 6 years, I was just tired of dealing with it .. and Tom Mann agreed to handle the chores ..

[spookshow]

Shouldn't this thread be in "crew lounge"? (DUCK  )

Cheers,
-Mark

[John]

Shouldn't this thread be in "crew lounge"? (DUCK  )

Cheers,
-Mark

Not my job ..

[peteski]

Shouldn't this thread be in "crew lounge"? (DUCK  )

Cheers,
-Mark

PM Ian McMillan about this. He is anxiously awaiting thread-move recommendations from the backseat moderators. 

[PAL_Houston]

Shouldn't this thread be in "crew lounge"? (DUCK  )

Cheers,
-Mark

Definitely NOT!  This topic is legitimate for the main N-scale forum, I think!  It is definitely a legitimate modelling topic --  to proto-freelance or not.

To "answer the mail" as it were, posted by the original poster: 

First: welcome back VA!

Second: my opinion to your very general question really doesn't have anything to do with the logos.  It is that you go with Illinois Southern.   Not knowing much about you (the OP) and your interests, I would observe that there are some potentially quite strong rationales for choosing the IS:

a.  more railroading occurred in Illinois than anywhere (with the possible exception of Pennsylvania), back in the day.  (Both IL & PA dwarf other states in terms of numbers of photos on RRPictureArchives.net with similar totals above 300,000 each).  There is a huge amount of reference material from a variety of sources that can give you all sorts of inspiration and information.

b.  there are not enough N-scalers working on mid-western roads (off-hand there are me with the CBQ-based C&I Sub; Mr. Neal has his Wisconsin Central Heritage Division; Rossford Yard has his IHB of Texas;  Soo, who occasional shares about his Soo-based layout; and a few others.) while there are all sorts of guys working on eastern and western roads.

c. depending on your interests, the notion of an Illinois Central line going pretty much transcontinental, but North-South as opposed to East-West could be appealing, or if more local operations were of interest, C&EI could provide a lot of inspiration. (Personally I'd find a lot to attract me to an IC-inspired IS if I were you!)

[C855B]

... a.  more railroading occurred in Illinois than anywhere ...

Yeah. All above I-80.

[PAL_Houston]

Yeah. All above I-80.

I saw a really cool Illinois railroading map:  where, oh where did I see that map?   

It is most certainly NOT true that all Illinois railroading occured north of I-80.  Chicago certainly was the hub and is north of I-80, and CBQ, MILW and C&NW certainly operated mostly north of I-80.  But most of the eastern roads (think B&O and PRR) actually accessed Chicago from the south via routes around Chicago, or avoided Chicago entirely.  IC, ATSF,  Monon and a bunch of others came in from the south as well. 

[PAL_Houston]

I saw a really cool Illinois railroading map:  where, oh where did I see that map?   

To answer my own question, that "really cool Illinois railroading map" is on page 15 of Tony Koester's "Realistic Model Railroad Operation", which is put out by Model Railroader Books.

Many people don't realize how much rail traffic went thru St. Louis, or had to cross the Mississippi somewhere a bit further north (think Quincy or the Quad Cities) which necessarily meant going thru Illinois...

[Robbman]

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet... Illinois Southern is the railroad in the Harrison Ford version of 'The Fugitive'

[wazzou]

There really is only one epic troll here at TRW.

[peteski]

There really is only one epic troll here at TRW.

If he is still around, then he is not all that epic. 

[C855B]

I saw a really cool Illinois railroading map:  where, oh where did I see that map?   

It is most certainly NOT true that all Illinois railroading occured north of I-80.  ...

There's also an excellent map somewhere on the IDOT site, IIRC, but I can't seem to put my finger on it at the moment. About I-80... I was just tweaking anybody who "knew" Illinois. We downstate folks have an inferiority complex because the government and commerce here is Chicago-centric (what we mean by "north of I-80"). Even the folks in Springfield kowtow to a Chicago governance - the governors haven't lived in the official mansion for at least three administrations, having a shadow executive office complex in Chicago.

But like you say, the railroads were Chicago-centric. You say "south", but only the C&EI and IC were true north-south lines, the others predominately east-west lines curving up to meet Chicago. Yes, St. Louis was really big as a rail hub in the late 1800's/early 1900's, but there was an event or series of events that prompted nearly everyone to move to Chicago as the interchange preference. St. Louis got hit hard in the pullback during the 1980s, with numerous mainlines yanked. Chicago some, but not nearly the percentage.