Dorchester & Delaware Railroad Combination Car of 1874

Here's a really neat builder's photo of the Dorchester & Delaware Railroad's combination smoking, baggage, & mail car at Jackson & Sharp Works in Wilmington, DE in 1874 (the exact date is not known). This is from the Delaware Public Archives collection. She arrived in the D&D's 5th year of operations.

Dorchester & Delaware Railroad Baggage car in 1874, Jackson & Sharp Works builders photo, 

Delaware Public Archives collection.

I'd love to build this car as a display item (it's a little too early for my model railroad operations). Of course, that Bachmann American-type (4-4-0) still looks enticing as a “W. Wilson Bryn” stand-in. Although it would require a lot of re-working the boiler, moving the stack & headlight forward, replacing the tender trucks, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Dorchester & Delaware Railroad's "W. Wilson Byrn" on an unknown date, an unknown location & by an unknown photographer, Delaware Department of Transportation collection.

Bachmann Trains' DCC Ready (HO American 4-4-0) Pennsylvania Railroad 51005, Bachmann Trains photo.

I can always dream.

What's this all about, then?

So, why did I create this blog? Simple. I'm going to post here my interests in not only the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) on the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Peninsula (also known as the Eastern Shore), but more specifically, the PRR's Cambridge Secondary Track sometime in the 1950's (more on a specific date later) that I model in HO Scale.

I'm trying to be "prototypically-faithful" in my modeling because I've done the "freelance thing" and the "just purchase anything that looks cool thing" in my 40+ years of model railroading and all that did was create shelves full of models that either just weren't going to get built or run. Let alone, that's a lot of money that could have been spent on other things (like shelter, food, the wife, the kids, etc., etc.) - sounds selfish now, doesn't it? This allows me to purchase only the "things" that are specific to what I'm modeling and, in my case, it allows me to keep the shelf-area clear of clutter and spend money for the "needs" in life, rather than the "wants" (and yes: model railroading falls under the "wants").

I want to stay on the good side of the wife: she's been with me for almost 20 years now and I'd like to keep that going.

Secondly, since I graduated high school and college, I've worked in the railroad industry (that's almost 30 years now). I'm an Engineer on a Class I railroad in the Northeast U.S. (maybe I'll talk more about that later - but that's work, not modeling), so being "prototypically-faithful" appeals to me because I live that life at work.

I've been a member of the PRR Technical and Historical Society (PRRT&HS) on and off since the mid-1980s, and I've been a member in the Philadelphia Chapter of the PRRT&HS for almost 2 years now (I don't know why I never joined this Chapter in the previous years - well, live and learn). There's other historical societies I belong to (more on that another time), but another fantastic association I belong to is the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA); their Mid-Eastern Region (MER); and Division 3 of the MER: Philadelphia. Again, this has been an on again, off again membership due to life.

I'll be a little more specific on the PRR's Cambridge Secondary Track later, but you're also going to see a lot of research I've done over the years on the PRR's history on the entire Delmarva Peninsula - that's my second hobby: research.

As they say: "Stay tuned."