So, I plan to make an "Old West" train, as accurate to the 1870s as i can... but, with my own twist (because I';m a bit of a nutter)

I have a number of B.T.S. "War Between the States" cars... but I also have a plastic "SOU" passenger car.

Eventually, I want to have everything weathered right for "1870"... in other words, the cars are new enough not to be too bad, and the crew are proud of their trains.

I'm thinking of modeling a narrow yard with a loop at each end. The yard will be based on the Reading and Northern's Tamaqua Yard in Pennsylvania.I probably add 1-2 tracks seeing the prototype has about 4 tracks.Id probably model a condensed version of the coal load out at the south end of the yard.The main function of the layout would be continuous running and storage/display of cars and engines ,some yard switching

Re-writing history is a subject near and dear to most of us. Some of you are pure free-lance while others are strict prototype. I think that most of us fall in between these two extremes. While I claim to be a prototype modeler, I am not strict in how I go about it. For example, I model Sturgis MI set in 1927. I am building a locomotive that never visited Sturgis. It is a Boston and Albany (a component of the New York Central) USRA 2-10-2. The B&A had ten of these beasts. All remained on the B&A between the namesake cities until being sold to the CP in 1928.