My layout surrounds a fictional continuance of a now-defunct colonial steel making operation in Eastern Baltimore County. You can read more about the history of it on the “about” section of my web.

This assumes that the Joppa Iron Works survived to at least the 1980’s and grew from making nails and other iron sundries to a full steel mill with iron production, electric furnace capacity, a rolling mill and other supporting facilities. This area would have been between Baltimore and Philadelphia off of the current Baltimore and Ohio railroad (now CSX) line.  The works owns its own locomotives and cars and interchanges with CSX.

The city section of my layout probably resembles more of the Wilkes Barre – Scranton area than any area near Baltimore, but I have taken the liberty to have recognizable items and Baltimoriana that would make sense if you lived here (which I have for 48 years).

Time being, and since I do not have a yard facility yet, I am using the rest of the layout as the staging for the steel mill. The two areas are connected by a single track that leads to the main line, and operationally when the mill is getting switched, the rest of the layout can stand in as the other areas of a steel mill that were not modeled.

For the sake of space and brevity, I have decided that the mill purchases raw material from Pennsylvania- such as coke and other raw material required in iron production.

There is still a passenger station that will be included in the future. It may have Amtrak or whatever else I decide that I like. So that I can run steam, I will have railfan trips scheduled.

Anyway, there are many people that feel that a fictional approach is doing a disservice to model railroading. While I love prototype trains, I could care less about the “rivet counters” that deflate all of the fun from model trains.