Hello everyone! Years ago (well before I was born) my father and my grandfather built an enormous HO-Scale layout in their basement in Kettering, OH. My grandpa’s name was Don Santel. The railroad was the “Ohio-Michigan South Shore”. Long story short, my dad turned 50 this year, and as a Christmas gift, I was going to see if I could hunt down pictures, articles, etc of his layout that he may not have seen before. Currently the layout is on its side in our basement in our new house that we moved to about 8 years ago.
If ANYONE has any information where I could get copies of railroading magazines that my grandpa wrote articles for in the 70’s, or any pictures, etc, I would VERY much appreciate it.
Also, if anyone has ever seen the layout when it was up and running, please get in touch with me. We moved when I was just a kid, so I really never got into model railroading. I have very limited pictures that I took with my ninja turtle’s camera when I was five or so. [:-basketball]
Again, thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer!
Wow! It was a great layout…I visited it back in the early 80’s on a Dayton layout tour…It was very detailed and even had a working “hump” yard…I don’t remember the dates but it was featured in Model Railroader and had pictures I think in RMC…It was also featured on the First VCR layout tour that MR came out with. It had Don kidding the V&O about not having a working “hump” yard…I am sure some one out there could help you get a copy of the tape…Good luck collecting stuff on the layout…Cox 47
If you go up to the top of this page to the “Index of Magazines” you can search by keyword, enter Santel, Don. That brings up a couple articles that were written for Railroad Model Craftsman, one in July 1977 and another in May 1986. You can usually find back issues on Ebay, and relatively cheap- a buck or two an issue.
Sounds like a neat quest you’re on! Maybe you should help Dad dust it off and get it running again!
I would love to help him get it up and running again, because it was quite an amazing layout. However, our basement does not have dimensions to accomodate it. The old basement was long and skinny, and the new one is very square.
However, I got him a huge giftcard to a local store to help him get started on a G-gauge layout out in the backyard. It will give us something to do, and hopefully I can share the same fun time building a layout with him that he shared with his dad.