Around the time of World War II, the TRU-VUE Company of Rock Island, Illinois released Sandy’s Railroad, a 35mm filmstrip with 14 stereo (i.e. 3-D) images showing Lionel equipment being operated on a rather elaborate model train layout by a model railroader identified as “Sandy McDonald” and who, we must assume, built the layout.
(A forerunner of View-Master, the Tru-Vue Company manufactured 35mm stereoscopic filmstrips that fed horizontally through a special bakelite viewer. When held up to light, the images on the filmstrip appeared in 3-D.)
The copyright year on this subject’s title card has been blacked out for some reason. The date August 1946 is printed at the filmstrip’s end. According to TRU-VUE authority John Waldsmith, this is the date when the filmstrip itself was produced, so the images have to date from some time before then.
Viewed today, Sandy’s Railroad provides a priceless record of Lionel locomotives and other rolling stock released prior to 1946. (Knowledgeable Lionel collectors should be able to identify the various items shown.) The images also document what a typical model train layout looked like back when many of the buildings, trees, tunnels, and trackside accessories had to be scratch built or built from kits.
Although they can’t be presented here in their original 3-D, here are the 14 images along with their original captions.