American Railroading fascinated me since I was a youth after I saw a photo of a real long train in one of the Euopean Railfan magazines. When I bought one of the best books ever published on Railroads, "The Milwaukee Road" by Fred Hyde, in the eighties, the virus got me.
And I was hooked by the Pacific Northwest setting - endless forests, remoteness, long trains - so one day it became clear that this was what I wanted.
When I do a little railfanning during sessions it is clear to me that the decision was the right one. Seeing a string of locos wearing orange and black coming out onto a high trestle from some dense forest is a sight to behold!
The Milwaukee Road with its electric operation was a natural choice, because that linked it somehow to Europe.
Many hours reading in books and later the Internet gave me the information I needed. I learned how US-style layouts were built and operated and what the thinking behind it is. So out went my European H0 scale and my 0m garden railway and in came the N scale locos from Kato (and later Atlas) and the cars of Atlas and all the other manufacturers.
A huge part of my car fleet are the leftovers from ahm/Aurora/PostageStamp Trains/Atlas which were all produced in Austria. When Atlas turned to other sources there were obviously a few thousand cars left. They found their way to a second-hand shop in Vienna and that's were I found them and bought many at very cheap prices.
I try to stick to the 1980-1985 era, so most cars have lost their roofwalk and have roller bearing trucks.
Avery Depot
It took very long to build, but now it is nearly ready - the depot!
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