I have aquired the old issues of Boys Life magazine for the Glenn Wagner layout.
I will be willing to share copies of the layout to anyone interested.
I do not have file hosting at this time. I will send a pdf to your email address.
Please email my address [REMOVED] for a pdf of the layout and other info from Boys Life.
Ed
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I would be interested in taking a look.
Greg,
I have the layout in pdf format. What email address should I use to send ?
Ed
Ed,
Did you recieve my e-mail?
Ed, what scale/guage (O or HO) is the layout in your magazine and what size was it?
Does it matter what scale it is in?
After all, you can always rescale it.
Has anyone heard from Ed?
No Greg I guess it doesn’t matter what scale it was, just thought you knew.
The Boys’ Life 1959 layout was just another HO 4X8. Tight curves, switchback industry spurs, not much room for structures or scenery, etc., etc. Fifty-year-old design ideas.
Except for nostalgia, I can’t understand why anyone would care, but that’s just me.
Well, given that I hadn’t seen it and don’t mind looking for ideas that can be applied to a smaller scale ( in the same area ) even just another HO 4x8 with tight curves, holds the promise of something I might not have thought of before.
Possible, but not likely.
Here: http://www.trainplayer.com/Site3/FeaturePages/user_layouts_gallery.html#Boys_Life_4x8 - it took all of 2 minutes to find using google, with keywords:
Boy’s life 1959 layout
And then having to find the new link on the trainplayer.com web site, since it had been reorganized since the last update of the google cache.
Smile,
Stein
Wow!
Talk about a busy layout - reminds me of some of those Atlas track plans where they try and cover the entire area with track.
Yup. Which kinda was the point Byron was making 
Grin,
Stein
To be fair, I have seen some 4x8’s that were not to bad - indeed would have been fairly decent rescaled to N or Z scale, while still retaining the 4x8 size, I’m not sure that layout would benefit from anything but Z and doubtful of that.
Hmmm, while I am not in the “anti-spaghetti” bowl 4x8 camp, I find very little to like about that layout.
To me it doesn’t look like anything Altas has ever proposed. Those that do might want to do a closer comparison. The Altas plans at least attempted to have a rhyme and reason and convey some element of real railroading.
Actually, I’ve seen the color photos of this layout as they were in BL and it wasn’t all that bad. Mountains weren’t taking up 3/4’s of the layout. This layout had a small town in the center. The switchback down the center was actually a trolley/interurban. It was rather Midwestern as I recall, quite flat.
There was another layout in BLM as well that I recall, it was photos only, I believe the year was 1969 and either July or August. It was a nicely done island layout, my wild eyed guess would’ve been 5 x 9, it looked bigger than 4 x 8, but no track plan was given.
Yes, those layouts are old school, but they serve to show an era in the hobby which we will never get back. I must admit, I wonder whatever happened to those layouts. When you were a kid in those days, such things were really cool.
I remember that other layout article. If it was 1969, I would have been 7 years old. I think that article helped me fall in love with model trains. Combine that with the Sears Christmas “Wish Book” filled with several pages of “train sets” and you have the beginning of a great hobby …
Remember, those articles showed kids like me there was a different way to build a layout … not just a couple of symmetric loops or a figure eight for running around and around … there was switching of industies and switchbacks and small yards to make up trains …
Marty
I only vaguely remember any MR articles in Boys Life. What always stuck with me was the “Think and Grin” column… What a bunch of groaners those jokes were!
Lee