John's Erie Railroad,spans from Buffalo, N.Y. over the Cattaraugus hills (predecessors to the Appalachia Mountains) south to Salamanca in the Susquehanna River Valley. Here, the Buffalo Division met with the B&O and the main Erie line from NJ to Chicago. John models an era of late steam and early diesel power. His layout focus is on wood products, coal, and steel.

The Erie Buffalo Division is made up of three RRs - the Erie, the South Buffalo (SB) RR and the short line Conception (beginning) and Viridity (green valley) RR. The Erie serves as the main line for movement of traffic between Buffalo and Salamanca (staging) while the SB serves the steel operations located in Lackawanna, N.Y. The CV brings out lime for the steel mills and hardwood from reforested stock to the interchange in Little Valley. Dayton, N.Y. is a unique stop created by an Erie to Erie interchange of the original Erie line that went from Dunkirk, N.Y. to Port Jarvis, NJ. with the defunct Buffalo and Pittsburg RR line (bought out by Erie). It has one of the rare tunnels found in the east. The layout affords a variety of operational opportunities for passenger and freight service.

John moved to Texas in the mid 80's and was faced with no basement. So, half of a two car garage had to suffice. John and his wife built a new home in 1998 and lots of the layout moved to that new home which gave him the opportunity to plan for an actual train room. So, the house was designed on a sloping site with a lower level train room. John's wife had a large adjoining sewing room with a common seating area in between. In went the old layout. But in 2007 John retired but set out on a new job. Thinking to also sell their home and build elsewhere, John tore out the layout and got the area ready to sell. Well, they stayed in the house and John built a new layout with parts from the old and he built a new one. In the process of building the new layout he became more interested in mainline operations and involved with operations in general through a Club layout operating sessions and visits to other layouts through the "Interchange" (a voluntary open exchange of operators between Tulsa, Houston and DFW). He had a new interest in mainline operations. Jack Kibbie , a local hobbyist, decided to tear his layout down and offered several steel making related facilities and other buildings to John. He worked those into his new layout and his modeling and the Erie and the South Buffalo RR's steel making operations (on a very small scale) joined his past interest in logging.

John's story of his Erie Railroad was published in the Lone Star Region's Marker Lamp in the 2018 Fall issue. The text and photos on this page come from that article. The photos were captured from the Marker Lamp's magazine archive resulting in reduced clarity.