Growing up in Anderson, Indiana in the 1980s and 90s, I have had a passion for Conrail since the very beginning. My father and I spent almost every Saturday railfanning the Indianapolis Line; we loved pacing trains back and forth along Highway 67 between Pendleton and McCordsville, and we also made many trips over to Muncie to take in the action on Norfolk Southern's New Castle District at the Walnut Street diamonds (CP 229). We had an N-scale layout in a spare bedroom that depicted the city of Anderson between CP 245 and CP 250, and had over 50 Conrail locomotives that we custom-painted and decaled. It was my long-held childhood dream to become an engineer for Conrail and be the one behind the throttle along Highway 67 as railfans paced my train in their car!
Over time, we got to know many Conrail employees. Once, dispatcher Dan Wheat came to my elementary school to make a presentation for Operation Lifesaver. My principal knew I loved trains, and arranged a private meeting with me and Mr. Wheat in her office before the presentation. I came away with an unused pad of NORAC Form D's, and an offer to come and tour the Indianapolis Division offices. I was stoked... for a 10-year-old Conrail nut, this was heaven!!!
Time went on.... CSX and NS bought and split up Conrail during my junior year of high school. I was devastated... it was like losing a life-long friend who'd always been there! My dad and I spent Conrail's final day taking video of every train through town, knowing that Big Blue would be forever gone in mere hours. NS had already begun re-numbering locomotives which had been assigned to them during the split, and we saw many units that day with hideous black-and-white stickers bearing their new NS numbers and "PRR" reporting marks beneath; equipment assigned to CSX was to be marked "NYC".
Then I went off to college, and with great sadness my dad and I dismantled our layout as our family prepared to move to Indianapolis as the economy in Anderson began to crumble. The glory days of Conrail were finally over... but I carried within me a fierce determination to bring my old friend back to life!
In 2001, Microsoft introduced Train Simulator, and I was pumped. I was excited about the possibilities that this new cab-view railroading simulation would offer. During the summer of 2002, I re-created over 150 route-miles between the east end of Avon Yard and CP 101 in Marion, Ohio as an add-on route for MSTS. Marion was the farthest east I'd ever been railfanning on this line, and as an added bonus my route would be longer than the longest route that was included with MSTS (which was a portion of BNSF Railway's main line through Marias Pass, Montana). I distributed my route through train-sim.com, and it was one of the first significant add-on routes for MSTS. It immediately received a huge following, and a short time later I put out an upgraded version which had some enhancements to the signal system, as well as the addition of code line poles along the track where they were present in real life.
As time went on, I realized that even this route had shortcomings which the limitations of MSTS made impossible to overcome, and I eventually lost interest in working any further with it or with MSTS in general.
So, when the Open Rails project was announced and promised to bring new enhancements and capabilities (and an open architecture to allow continuous upgrades and improvements) while being backward-compatible with existing MSTS content, I was inspired to look into the possibility of revamping the Conrail Indy route once again.
But, I decided that the existing route would need so much work to get it to the state where I truly wanted it, that it would be more advantageous to start completely from scratch and build "bigger and better" than what I ever had before. In the time since I built my first route, I learned much more about operations around Indianapolis (and all over the rest of the system), and new ways to build more accurate models and routes. And new sources of information (such as Google Maps and street views) came along that would allow me to build to a degree of accuracy that was simply not possible before. As I was surfing the net one day, I came across a treasure trove of Conrail documents that served as the catalyst to get this project rolling for good.
Having built several routes previously (including some for my personal use), I knew that to attempt to model an entire division of a Class I railroad in one shot was an absolutely ludicrous idea! So I have planned to break my project down into a series of manageable sub-projects, which will each extend from what was built previously. When it is finished, the entire Indianapolis Division will be one contiguous route in Open Rails so that you can run seamlessly from one end to the other! Each phase will take several months to complete, and I plan to take rest breaks in between so that I can enjoy putting together activities and running trains!
I realize that this route will take several years to complete, and that was my intention from the outset. I wanted to take on a project that would keep me busy for a long time to come, and do it at a pace that would allow me to live a balanced life and have time for work, family, and church activities and keep me from getting "burned out".
And I intend to model all of the trackwork and surrounding scenery as accurately as possible, including the correct styles of signals, power poles and signs (including accurate US and state highway markers) along the roads, and custom models of whichever buildings that are so distinctive that a generic model simply will not fill the bill.
The first portion will be all of the trackage within the City of Indianapolis, including:
- the Indianapolis Line and St. Louis Line mainlines
- the Belt Running Track and associated industrial trackage
- Avon, Transfer, and Hawthorne Yards
From here, subsequent phases will eventually extend the St. Louis Line west to Rose Lake Yard in East St. Louis, IL (including the portion of the Danville Secondary between Terre Haute, IN and Paris, IL), and the Indianapolis Line east to Crestline, OH.
In addition, I plan to model the Dow Secondary from Anderson, IN north to Marion, and the Toledo Branch/Scottslawn Secondary from Kenton, OH across the Indy Line at CP 124/Ridgeway, OH down to Columbus, then up the Columbus Line to rejoin the Indianapolis Line main at Galion, OH.
So when this final phase is complete, it will be possible to run MAIL-4 straight through from St. Louis to Crestline, including the pickup at Columbus. And, for several other trains, it will be possible to run the entire scheduled route, origin to destination... including TV-600/601, INCO/COIN, and ASCO/COAS.
But, at this time, the Open Rails simulation platform is still under development and many of its features and capabilities are not yet clear. So for now, I am focusing my efforts on gathering all of the documentation that I will need in order to create a consistently accurate model of the entire area, including places that I never got to personally visit during the Conrail era.
Come along with me and watch our old friend Conrail rise from the ashes of history, mile by mile... one day, factory-fresh C40-8Ws and SD60Ms and SD80MACs will rule the rails of the Midwest once again!
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