Here is some more history on my late father's Troll & Elfin model railroad on this Father's Day. The T&E was a modest sized layout (perhaps 10' x 15' in a semi- triangle shape) located in part of his basement with a tunnel through the wall into his shop area for a tiny shelf RR addition.
The photo above shows the wide end on the right with his engine terminal and the Troll station in the center.
The above view is at the narrow end and shows the Elfin station.
The photo above shows a structure named after his friend Whit Towers, past president of the NMRA and once editor of the NMRA Bulletin, predecessor to the NMRA magazine. I had the pleasure of visiting Whit Towers and operating on his layout while on a business trip to California many years ago. He had a simple operating method using a small, fixed number of cars in each train, and when you dropped off a car at a siding you picked up another one keeping the train length the same.
My father had a lot of model railroad friends around the USA and in other countries. He frequently named his structures for them. My father also approached model railroading from the fun and humorous angle - witness the name of his MRR. My father took a lot of his MRR photos in black & white as he was a frequent contributor to the NMRA Bulletin which was a B&W publication back then. He also took numerous color slides which I have and have struggled to covert decently (I know I can pay to get that done but it is expensive).
My father and many of his friends used to exchange tape/slide presentations on their modeling work. The tape part was cassette tapes - not very easy to deal with these days. I still have these.
1 comment:
Hello,
The first issue of RMC I ever read was summer of 1973 I remember reading the article about your dad's railroad over and over. I had a Tyco train set but your dad's layout is what got me interested in model railroading. Best wishes
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