An Introduction to the Blacklog Valley

My interest in trains began at a very early age.  When just a youngster, I wandered away from the back yard and found myself exploring the tracks of the Susquehanna Railroad some six blocks away.  After being picked up and returned home by the local constabulary, my parents decided it was safer to invest in a set of Lionel electric trains.  My dad built a complete layout on two sheets of 4x8 plywood, complete with Plasticville houses and painted green scenery.  That was the beginning of a life-long love of model railroading.

My railroading was sidetracked by college, grad school and seminary, and lay dormant for a decade and a half.  But in the mid-1970's, a friend showed me his train collection, and I was off and running.  The first incarnation of the Blacklog Valley Railroad was constructed in the dank basement of my first parsonage on two sheets of plywood set on sawbucks.  As you might expect, the plywood sagged over time, creating an unintended valley in the middle of the layout.  Interestingly, the church I served was located in Mount Union, Pennsylvania, at the junction of the Pennsylvania Railroad mainline and the tiny narrow gauge East Broad Top Railroad.  Thus was born my fascination with narrow gauge.

The second Blacklog Valley was in an unfinished attic in my second parsonage.  Located in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the parsonage was only two blocks from the Pennsy's Sam Ray Shops, a major car repair facility on their Philadelphia to Pittsburgh route.  A few miles away lay Altoona, with a huge locomotive repair center.   I determined to build a larger and sturdier model railroad than my first effort.  The benchwork was a massive wooden grid of 1x4 boards supported by 2x2 legs.  It was strong enough to stand on!   But the Blacklog Valley Railroad of my imagination never got much beyond the benchwork stage.  Nevertheless, the bug had bitten, and when we moved to South Carolina, I was ready to begin work on the third version of the BVRR.