Workin' on the Railroad - Attempting to model accurate passenger train consists in O gauge
Good evening DU'ers,
Hope everyone is keeping safe.
With parts of Canada going back into lockdown and with my wife & I trying to stay hunkered down ourselves, as a distraction I've been able to find some more time to enjoy my hobby of model railroading, in particular O-gauge model railroading.
One of my main areas of interest is passenger trains and I've taken on the challenge of attempting to recreate reasonably realistic representations of passenger train consists in O gauge, trying to recreate in miniature some of the great trains of yesteryear based on information & pictures I've found in books and on the internet.
Traditionally, one of the biggest challenges to doing so in O gauge is the availability at any one time of the correct combination of engines & rolling stock, especially in Canada - a situation that has been made somewhat easier in recent years thanks to the internet & mail-ordering, and also helped by no small degree of patience and the fact that for me model railroading has been a lifetime hobby.
Along those lines, I thought I'd post some pics of just a few of my passenger train consists along with some pics I found on the internet of the full-sized prototypes that they represent.
The pics of the models are mine, the full-sized ones are the work of other photographers.
More pics and a video of my layout & collection can be seen on my website at: https://northamericabyrail.info/model-railroading/
Hope you enjoy!
Canadian Pacific Railway's 'Canadian' - Lionel/MPC F3 & GP9 diesel locomotives & express boxcar with K-Line passenger cars
A pic of the prototype's motive power from the Joseph Testagrose collection
VIA Rail's 'Skeena' - Custom-painted MTH F3 diesel locomotives and Ready Made Trains passenger cars
A pic of the prototype 'Super Continental' which used the same equipment as the 'Skeena', by Kevin Dunk
Chicago Burlington & Quincy's 'Denver Zephyr' - Williams E7 diesel locomotives & Lionel passenger cars
The prototype, by Marty Bernard
Canadian Pacific Railway's 'Dominion' - Weaver Class H1B 'Hudson' steam locomotive & passenger cars
The prototype, by Edward J Ozog
Grand Trunk Western's 'Maple Leaf' - Lionel GP7 diesel locomotives & MTH passenger cars
The prototype, by Donald Haskel
Penn Central's 'Broadway Limited' - Williams GG1 electric locomotive, MTH express boxcar, Williams passenger cars
The prototype, by Thomas C Ayers
Southern Pacific's 'Coast Daylight' - Lionel Class GS4 steam locomotive & passenger cars
The prototype, by John West
Erie Lackawanna's 'Phoebe Snow' - Lionel Alco PA1 diesel locomotives & passenger cars
The prototype, photographer unknown
= new reply since forum marked as read
That youtube link to my layout is from one of my prior DU posts, it might get some more views now so thanks again! The train room in the vid is on the second floor of our current house as are the storage shelves from my first six trainset pics in this post. The last two trainset pics were taken in our old house.
I managed to negotiate one upstairs room for my train layout plus another to display my collection, in exchange for another room for my wife's pottery studio plus a kiln out in the shed! 
My train hobby did take a hiatus for a few years a while back but after I set up a few pieces of track on the floor and got trains running again I found that it brought back fond memories of my childhood. Hope it does the same for you as well!
I think it's good to have a hobby, any hobby not just model trains, for distraction, even if you only indulge in it once in blue moon. Though in my case I kinda went off the deep end 
As a mediocre scale modeler returned to the fold after a forty year hiatus, I'm quite jealous of your paintwork. 
FYI my model of the "Skeena' is the only custom painted set I currently have. The rest are factory originals. I found a set of custom painted shells for the A-Unit diesels on ebay so I only had to paint the B-unit and the passenger cars. Used Microscale decals for the stripes and lettering.
I was not aware of that particular layout. Here's another from the Chicagoland area, the gentleman had it set up for years in the basement of his Chinese food restaurant:
