Cat power

May 14, 2011

If you have been following my model railroad blogs then by now you should have noticed a recurring cast member in most of my photos and it isn’t your average house cat. I would say probably most people my age have no idea what the Chessie System was but seeing I spent every weekend as a child in the downtown side of Niagara Falls I have early memories of these power cats that would come roaring through town on the now defunct NYC/CPR line that use to cut right across the tourist end of the city. When I was 10 my father bought me a train set that featured a Chessie System GP38-2 number 3802. I no longer have this engine as I sent it away for repairs and it never returned but it didn’t matter because at that point I had seen the Chessie in real life and I had one of my own for a brief time. I was hooked.

When I was 15 I had a resurgence of Chessie, I got an Athearn GP35 with a bizarre little C that never existed, an F9 dummy and a BQ23-7 that never even existed in Chessies fleet but I didn’t care, I had Chessie running strong. Around when I was 16 the basement decided to leak all over where the layout was, I lost some things but my Chessies survived.

13 years later I am back into modelling and my HO scale heart still belongs to the Chessie system. When I bought my Bachman EZ command I made sure to get the one that came with a GP40 Chessie.

The Chessie system may have become defunct in 1986 but it is still my Railroad of choice for modelling.