Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The good thing about writing this book

I have to admit, I tend to have a short attention span with projects. Maybe that's why I liked studying the cavalry when I was working on my civil war research in college. Move fast, do the job, go home, do next job.

However, now that I've started working on this book in earnest, I've been able to take advantage of something:

I'm really writing about three railroads in the B&O's system.

Yup. Three. The Pittsburgh and Connellsville which got the B&O into Pittsburgh. The Wheeling and Pittsburgh which was their first route OUT of Pittsburgh. And finally, the Pittsburgh and Western, which eventually got them to Chicago.

This is a good thing because whenever I'm afflicted by a need to change focus, I can just hop over to one of the other railroads. I've already determined that the W&P is probably going to be the most difficult to get good documentation on. But that is just a fact of life.

Anyhow, back to work.