Logansport and Indiana Northern - 4
camp, and I belong to the covered hopper camp. We go back
and forth about it but all in good fun.
I also choose this time frame because it was before graffiti
become a dominant feature of many freight cars. I don’t like
the graffiti on the cars, so that was also a determining factor
of the era. During this time many short lines (some with very
short lives) were created as the class 1 railroads spun off many
lines that were not profitable or marginally profitable. Here in
Indiana there are many old secondary lines that were spun off
5. It’s harvest season and three farmers are talking
about the weather, crop yields, and politics, oblivious to
the L&IN crew picking up carloads of grain behind them.
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and abandoned. So I stitched together a short line based on an
old abandoned Pennsylvania branch line in northern Indiana.
MRH:
Why did you choose to model typical Indiana flat land?
Tom:
I grew up in Indiana, it’s home, I know it, and I like model-
ing what I can see. This is farm country, I love the grain eleva-
tors, small towns, and rural areas of the state. When I want to
model a particular structure or scene, I can go out and pho-
tograph and measure it. If I were to model say something in
the Southwest, it would require special trips to go and photo-
graph the area and structures.
6. Thomas Hardware is the other business still in
operations. The locals provide just enough business to
keep it going, but no one is getting rich.
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MRH-May 2014
