This is me. For what it’s worth, I’m a 50-something-year-old psychology professor at Shepherd University. My specialty is human memory and cognition and I very much enjoy learning how and why humans remember (or forget) the things they do. I’m happily married to a beautiful woman and we have 2 kids, both boys.

This site is the result of a long evolution in my approach to railroads, both prototype and model. My family had property in Louisa County, about 4 miles east of Gordonsville and about ¼ mile from the Doctors Road grade crossing. To reach our property we had to pass through Gordonsville. I always wanted to stop and take photos of the C&O passenger depot in Gordonsville - it looked very impressive and “railroady” to my 12-year-old eyes. But I never could get my folks to stop. I also used to walk from our place to the grade crossing on Doctor’s Road. That’s where my interest in the C&O was born. As the photo below shows, it’s still a pretty isolated place (though there’s now a general store just out of view to the right). I’d spend hours there, doing whatever it is kids do when they’re alone with no toys. And then, sometimes, a train would come through...

I still have hazy memories of C&O trains roaring past. Big blue diesels with C&O on their flanks in yellow. Long strings of freight cars followed at last by a blue caboose. Sheer heaven. At least, I think that’s what I saw. Sometimes I could swear I saw yellow cabooses. It’s all kind of hazy now and I’m not really sure. I really wish that just once it would have occurred to me to take my camera with me. I also seem to recall that the Gordonsville depot was gray when I saw it, but in all the pictures I ever seen it was white. As Barbara Kingsolver once wrote, “Memory is a complicated thing...”

I built some railroad models as a kid and even had a layout that my Dad built me on a sheet of plywood. When I hit high school, I gave up on model railroading and spent my time learning to play folk guitar and being rejected by girls. I was in my late 20’s when I finally got back to the hobby. I originally intended to be a free-lancer, but my fictional railroad was going to have strong ties to the C&O and an interchange in Gordonsville — I wanted to model that station. It took about 12 years of constantly making up stronger and stronger relationships between my fictional railroad and the C&O before I realized what I really wanted to do — I wanted to model the C&O as I saw it in the 70’s. So, I combed through all my C&O sources and culled out whatever I could find on the Piedmont Sub. After having done that, it seemed that it might be fun to share it with everybody else. I’m also hoping to make contact with others interested in the C&O in central Virginia. I hope you enjoy the site. Stop back often — I always add more material as I get it.

Best wishes,
Larry

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Please note that, due to a huge volume of spam coming in on my email account, I’ve had to change my email address. The new address is lzdaily@nospam.piedmontsub.com (but remove the nospam and the dot before piedmontsub.com).

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