Family Trees

Editors Note: Been getting a little behind on my production schedule! Because I have just moved. Under normal circumstances, a move across town, across state or across country dictates boxing your goods and hiring a truck – so on and so forth.

But this move was only 30 paces down the hall. So I figured why box everything up to move it 30 feet and unbox it? Just move the stuff! So I went over to Safeway and grabbed a big cart, and began moving. Four days and 3,219 trips with the Safeway cart, the “move” is accomplished.

The difference is at the end of the move. With everything in boxes, you un-box stuff and put it away. Organized chaos. I am now faced with is this massive pile in the living room. I should have moved across state!


So you think you are pretty well informed as a ferroequinologist? Try answering this question: Can you diagram the history of the Columbia & Port Deposit Railway Company showing how it ended up being a part of Conrail?By clicking on “Merger Trees” you cannot only find the answer to that question, but a ka-zillion other facts. The merger trees form a virtual encyclopedia of American railroad history, on a site created by a gentleman from France, Laurent, who has likewise posted "Oil-Electric" to his preferred reading list.

Being a somewhat competent researcher, I can appreciate the work this fellow has created. I can only imagine how it was accomplished. The only way it could be done is by going backwards through each railroad, charting its beginnings and from whence it was begot!

But wait! There’s More! We are all familiar with locomotive rosters, which can be a momentous challenge to accomplish for the prototype folk. But as applied to HO scale?

Well, this fellow has also included on his site, an HO Scale Motive Power Roster, which includes Atlas, Kato, and Life-Like.

And BNSF “Toaster Oven” fans will find a wealth of material on that mega-railroad.

Finally, “Merger Trees” has been scrubbed by the World Wide Web Consortium Hypertext Markup Language Standard 4.01 (W3C HTML 4.01.) This means his site meets a high standard of technical construction: pages load quickly, error free, with no dead links, earning honorable mention on my Blog.