By my late teens, I knew that I wanted to model late 1970s Conrail. Being able to essentially take any commercially available model of a northeastern railroad, patch it crudely, and slap a CR decal on it was appealing to a student on a budget. I could easily amass a fair-sized fleet of locomotives based on what I could afford at the time. Getting involved in a train club near my college cemented the idea for me and started to narrow my focus.
By my mid-20s, I had decided that I wanted to model a central Pennsylvania branch line. I liked the scenery and the variety of industries that could be found in a relatively compact area, giving me a good mix of commodities and freight cars from railroads all over the country. But I never figured out what branch to model. I got distracted by my publishing company, moving, and marriage, but surprisingly it was the last of these three things that provided the inspiration I needed.
My wife Carolyn and I were driving home along I-81 east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania after a weekend trip. As we passed Exit 72 for the small towns of Paxtonia and Linglestown, she remarked “that sounds like it should be the name of a railroad.” And thus, the concept for the P&L Branch was born. The P&L Branch never really existed on Conrail, or any railroad, for that matter. Despite the entire region being crisscrossed by the Pennsylvania, Reading, and others, neither Paxtonia or Linglestown ever hosted a railroad. This left it wide open for creative development while still being a plausible locale.
My wife was actually the inspiration for another important part of the layout – the date. I knew I wanted the date to be prior to Thanksgiving weekend of 1979, which was when Conrail shut down all ALCos remaining in operation. While that narrowed the timeframe, I was struggling to nail down a season. Carolyn’s birthday of October 7, 1979 fit all of my criteria and gave us the opportunity to put some fun personal references throughout the layout’s scenery, so that became the modeling date.
With the concept set, I was able to begin track planning. With the unconventional layout of our basement, I actually designed the location and size of the benchwork first and then figured out what could fit in that space. Much of the track plan is based on combinations of real-life industry layouts to make operations as realistically challenging as possible. I designed the plan for each industry that I wanted individually, and then fit them together on paper. The benchwork was constructed in the summer of 2020, and I drew the track plan to scale directly onto the plywood to make final adjustments. The foam, cork, and track were laid in late 2020, with the wiring completed for DC operation by the end of the year. The track was affixed using acrylic caulk, allowing a tight bond but also permitting the track to be moved easily if any repairs or alterations are necessary. After testing and any tweaks, I will be installing an NCE DCC system for the layout.
Conrail's P&L Branch in HO Scale 