Going Back in Time on the Manitoba & Minnesota Sub.: Figuratively and Literally

Two Athearn blue box units lead a train on the M & M Sub.

Visitors to the Manitoba & Minnesota Sub. step back in time when they enter the layout room--both figuratively and literally.

Figuratively, because it is always the early 1990s on the layout. That means a preponderance of my favorite locomotive, the SD40-2.

The latest version of modern power are two AC4400s, which made their appearance on CP Rail in 1995--the end point for my layout's era.

There's also no "golden beavers" or modern block-script CANADIAN PACIFIC: Just multi-marks, no multi-mark and Twin Flags schemes, along with some original SOO and other liveries that existed at the time.

But a visit to the layout room is also a literal step back in time. Visitors can see what model railroading was like in the early 1990s, when I started the layout.

For one thing, the layout is still DC. (Or, as I call it, Dinosaur Control). And a lot of the locomotives are Athearn blue box.

As for highly-detailed (and high priced) rolling stock, I have a few--mostly InterMountain cylindrical hoppers and a couple of Rapido vans. Otherwise, it's Athearn, Roundhouse and Accurail, with some Atlas, Tyco, Bachmann, Lionel and a few other kinds thrown in.

In other words, my layout has become a historical set-piece in more ways than one. It can take people back 20 years, to a different kind of railroading, and also back 20 years to a different kind of model railroading.

Now that I think of it, maybe I should stop calling it a layout and start calling it a museum!