Open Houses at MARPM24

The owners of some of the finest model railroads in the region will open their homes for MARPM attendees during MARPM24.

Addresses and directions will be e-mailed in advance to registered attendees, or will be available at the registration desk.

MORE COMING, SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

Friday, September 6, 2024 10AM to 2PM Southern Circuit

Bernie Kempinski

Aquia Line

Alexandria, VA

The O-scale Aquia Line developed since 2009 models the U.S. Military Railroad between Aquia Landing and Falmouth Virginia during the late winter/early Spring of 1863. The USMRR rebuilt 20 miles of the original RF&P line to Famouth as a supply line to the Army of the Potomac in its winter encampment after the first battle for Fredericksburg VA. The model features period locomotives, some DCC, some battery-powered, and connected to rolling stock through working link & pin couplers. There is also a working simulation of a Civil War-era telegraph system from a dispatcher station in an adjacent room. Two or three crews of two-persons each take trains over the single-track line from Aquia Landing (with ferry connections to Washington and points north and several modeled period ships) through several towns with passing sidings to the small yard at Falmouth, overlooking the Rappahanock River. Usually a train leaves each end of the layout almost simultaneously, so planning meets in the stations in between involve careful planning.

Bob Rodriguez

Nickel City Line

Montclair, VA

The Nickel City Line is an HO Scale model railroad set in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1999. The railroad is a free-lanced short line railroad which operates 102 miles of single track mainline between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Ridgway Pennsylvania. The layout is Digitrax DCC (Simplex / Duplex / WiFi) with CAD dispatching through JMRI / CATS and FRS radios repeated over the internet. The layout can be operated in person or remotely over the internet through apps designed for throttle and train camera viewing. The layout is triple deck occupying an area measuring 22' x 40'. The layout is not ADA accessible. Website for the layout is: https://nclrr.potomac-nmra.org/index.htm

Marty McGuirk

Richford Branch

Gainesville, VA

The Richford Branch is an HO scale depiction of the branchline that once ran across the far north of Vermont between St. Albans and an interchange with the Canadian Pacific in Richford. Along the way, the line meandered through several New England towns and served a paper mill and a large plywood manufacturing plant. The layout depicts a single level, single track, unsignaled line – in other words, truly branchline railroading. The railroad measures approximately 15x32 feet.

All track and wiring are completed with about 50% of the layout scenicked. Structures are mostly scratchbuilt depictions of prototype buildings. "

Todd Hermann

Lehigh & New England's Catasauqua Branch

Falls Church, VA

The layout depicts railroading in Catasauqua, PA (just north of Allentown) in the mid-1950s in HO scale. At that time, the town and its environs hosted six railroads. The Lehigh & New England Railroad’s Catasauqua Branch touched them all and plays the featured role on the layout. In addition to serving local industries, the Catasauqua Branch was one of the L&NE’s primary interchange gateways thanks to busy connections at the end of the branch with the Reading and Lehigh Valley railroads. Only a few prototype miles are modeled with the goal of recreating select scenes as faithfully as possible in a space of approximately 16’x23’ + adjacent staging. Access to the layout is via basement stairs only.

Friday, September 6, 2024 12PM to 4PM Middle Circuit

Andrew Dodge

Central Maine Railway

Olney, MD

The Central Maine Railway is a freelanced railroad modeled in O scale Proto 48 that operated in Maine in the late 1890s. Running between Bangor and Portland and west to a connection with the Grand Trunk Railroad, the main focus of the layout is the area between Belfast and Camden with a car float/tug operation from Camden Junction to Stonington on Deer Island. A steamship company also operates a passenger side-wheeler between Deer Island and Camden Junction. The layout occupies two rooms plus a staging area with a total area 1,000 square feet. All the locomotives, cars, and buildings are scratch built. The engines are operated though radio controlled NCE hand held radio devices and operate on hand-laid track.. The scenery is real dirt and stones with a hand-painted backdrop. There are also more than a thousand hand-made trees. Of special interest, besides the ships, is the fully operational rotary snowplow, and a full-size Victorian Shingle Style “cottage.” Model Railroader has already published a photo of the layout with a full article coming in the future.

Howard Zane

Piermont Division

Columbia, MD

Pike is 95% complete and in a 2850 square foot room almost complete with scenery…..floor to ceiling. Theme is northern New Jersey and New York state set in the early 50s. It is DCC and runs quite well. Motive power is all brass steam. Most structures and rolling stock are scratch built with some wood car kits….all fashioned from wood. Roads depicted are CNJ, Erie, PRR, L&H, and NYC. All power is fully DCC with lights, sound, cab lights and markers in addition to firebox lighting.
Pike began in 1982 and is 23 scale miles (1400’+ of main line. It has been covered several times in the MR press and in professional videos. There is also a private museum and over 1000 brass locos for sale in addition to a mess of rolling stock I will not be using. There is much on You Tube and internet on the layout.
I do have some rules…..no bags or boxes of any kind allowed in train room. No coats or loose clothing are also not allowed in train area. Photos are OK as is video. We do have refreshments on the house. Parking is not a problem. We do have pussy cats so we cannot help with allergies. Kids under 8 are not allowed under any circumstance. We are semi equipped for handicapped (stair lift) and aisles are quite wide."

Jim Brewer

N&W's Shenandoah Valley Line

Glenwood, MD

HO scale representation of N&W's Shenandoah Valley Line between Hagerstown, MD and Roanoke, VA; the model portion represents the area from Front Royal, VA to Waynesboro, VA. Era is August, 1956. The layout features many scratchbuilt structures. For more information on the layout see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=195_pPHFMC4, as well as other videos on the Al Pugliese Trains You Tube Channel.

David Vaughn

Nickel Plate/Canandaigua Southern

Clarksville, Maryland

The layout is a Two-Rail O Scale in an 18'x90' basement. The layout is built primarily from parts of three OS2R heritage layouts, the best known of which is John Armstrong's Canandaigua Southern. The layouts are integrated into a single, multi-level track plan. Operations are a mix of Canandaigua Southern (featuring original CSRR engines and rollng stock) and Nickel Plate. Long trains are featured. The era is set in 1958, although more modern equipment is sometimes operated. The layout is DCC and sound-equipped. The layout was featured in Great Model Railroads 2016, but much has been added since then.

Kelly Regan

Baltimore & Ohio's Georgetown Branch

Highland, MD

An HO Scale Model Railroad modeled in 1958. Slipping through the suburbs of Montgomery County Maryland in the early 1900’s the Georgetown Branch split from the Baltimore and Ohio Metropolitan Subdivision in Silver Spring Maryland and ended in Georgetown Washington D.C. The mainstay of the branch was freight service mostly building materials, lumber, steel, coal for home heating, and in Georgetown coal for the steam generating plant that heated congressional buildings in Washington D.C. https://finescale360.com/georgetown-branch/

Lance Mindheim

CSX's Downtown Spur

Silver Spring, MD

My layout is a prototypical representation of CSX's "Downtown Spur" in Miami as it existed in 2006. The prototype branch is 3 ½ miles long and serves a variety of customers ranging from produce manufacturers, scrap yards, and an LPG dealer. The layout, which is HO scale, occupies a 20 foot by 20 foot space in my basement. Details, photos, and a trackplan can be found on my website, www.lancemindheim.com.

Friday, September 6, 2024 2PM to 6PM Severna Park Area

Jack Keene

Delaware and Hudson Railway - Susquehanna Division

Severna Park, MD

The O Scale Delaware and Hudson Railway - Susquehanna Division is an under-construction 3 level point to loop layout with a planned 500 foot mainline. It represents the D&H from Albany, NY to Binghamton, NY and Wilkes Barre, PA. The upper level is operational with basic scenery in place. Trackwork and scenery are underway on the middle level and some lower level benchwork is in place. The railroad is set in 1975, just prior to its post-Conrail expansion.

Don Marvel

Wilson Creek Division

Severna Park, MD

The Wilson Creek Division represents late 50’s railroading in the hills of Eastern West Virginia. The railroad is proto-freelanced with settings suggested by locations in the general area. The B&O line is modeled around the town of Norton W.V., with staging toward Grafton and Charleston, W.V.

West of Norton, the line to Richwood W.V. branches off to the town of Cowen, with Richwood staging at the end of the branch. The Western Maryland and C&O connect at Norton, with their staging represented at Elkins and Durbin, W.V. Operation features substantial industrial trackage and live interchange at Norton, as well as coal and industrial traffic along the branch, including a coal preparation plant and papermill at Cowen and a connection with the NYC.

Scenery is 80% complete.

The railroad is basically single deck, around the walls of a 15’ x 22’ foot room with a central peninsula and grade up the branch. It was rebuilt for operation over the past few years and is now holding regular operating sessions. Car forwarding is by Car Cards and Way Bills with NCE wireless radio controlled throttles as well as one Proto Throttle. Ninety five percent of the locomotives are equipped with sound decoders (mostly Soundtraxx) and fine-tuned with Decoder Pro. Op sessions are held using a crew of 5 and utilize a fast clock set at 3:1. The layout room is not handicap accessible.

Jeff Mutter

Erie Lackawanna Scranton Division

Severna Park, MD

The Erie Lackawanna climbed steep grades both east and west out of Scranton, PA. This 28- by 34-foot HO Scale layout faithfully models the eastward climb to Pocono Summit and East Stroudsburg in July-August 1975, and nearly all trains require helpers to climb the grade. ProtoThrottles are used to control sound-equipped DCC locomotives, helping operators feel the struggle up the grade. Two eleven-track and one seven-track staging yards provide traffic. Two on-line yards and multiple on-line industries provide operating interest beyond the mainline action, and the Bloomsburg Branch provides a live interchange with the Reading Railroad plus additional industry. The layout is dispatched using ABS/Rule 251 on the mainline and timetable and train orders on the Branch. Turnouts are both commercial and handlaid, using code 83 rail for the mainline and code 70 in the yards and industrial areas. The layout is fully operational, and scenery is about 50% complete.

Friday, September 6, 2024 7PM to 10PM Northern Circuit

Ken Poznaniak

Chesapeake, Susquehanna and Western Railroad

Hartford County, MD

Ken Poznaniak’s Chesapeake, Susquehanna and Western Railroad (HO) is a contemporary line featuring Amtrak passenger trains and modern, high capacity freight trains. This fully scenicked, bi-level layout is connected at each end by a helix permitting running or point to point DCC Digitrak operation. Featured industries include a coal processing plant with an automated, continuous running, coal loading facility and an automated rotary dumper for the hopper cars at a large power plant. A major steel mill with dual blast furnaces, rolling mill, and all the necessary support facilities generates much of the traffic for the railroad, and plenty of switching chores for the operating crews. Also an engine terminal with roundhouse and turntable servicing both diesel locomotives and steam engines which power rail fan specials.

Ken Larson

Iron Belt

Woodstock, MD

The Iron Belt is an HO scale freelanced slice of the B&O's CL&W branch from the Pittsburgh-Chicago mainline into Cleveland, OH, circa 1969-72. Since it lives in a 24x24ft garage, it primarily serves as an industrial switching layout where the two largest industries are a steel mill and an automobile assembly plant, plus several smaller lineside businesses. In spite of its name, it does NOT accurately replicate any prototype scenes; rather it was given that name since Cleveland was a Great Lakes steel-producing city served by the B&O, where I could also include the lakeboat SS Marquette.

Fred Eisen

Western Maryland (and more)

Timonium, MD

The model railroad is set in the early 1970’s around the time of the consolidation of the B&O, C&O, and WM into the Chessie System. Fred Eisen loves the Chessie System paint scheme and the ability to have locomotives from all three railroads on the layout, but his heart is with the WM.

The layout is double deck connected with a helix approximately 21’x19’ with 10’ long by 1’ wide staging yards in an adjacent aisleway. There are four railroads represented on the layout, the WM, Ma & Pa, Penn Central and Reading. There are two interchanges, one with the Penn Central in Hanover, PA and one with the Reading Railroad in Gettysburg, PA. There is a WM branchline that runs from Porters Sideling to York PA. At last count there were 40 industries served by 20 scheduled trains. JMRI is used to generate switch lists.

David Hughes

Western Maryland

Glyndon, MD

Dave Hughes models the Western Maryland in HO scale in late spring/summer, set from 1965 to 1973. His point-to-point, two-deck layout runs from Port Covington (Baltimore) on the east end to Hagerstown on the west. There is also a continuous run provision. Scenery is 95% complete. Prototype trackage modeled includes the Tide, East, and Hanover Subdivisions. If you like eclectic diesel locomotive consists and the glory of the WM’s proud twilight, you’ll love Dave’s layout. Access is gained via swing bridges – there are no duckunders.