My father, Jack DeCamp, was featured in an issue sometime between 1950 and 1956. He founded a model railroad club in East Lansing, Michigan called the Lakeshore & Michigan Southern. I believe he started in model railroading in the 1930s. I am trying to put the article with some pictures I have. I am trying to narrow the date down, I remember seeing the issue as a child. Any help will be appreciated. Thank You.
Check MR’s magazine index, somewhere on the Trains.com website. You can search by author I beleive.
I’ll look. I’ve got a few older issues (not all) from that era. It’ll be on my to-do list when I go into the layout room.
Closest thing I see in the index is April 1956 Railroad Model Craftsman http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=RMC&MO=4&YR=1956&output=3&sort=A check the thmubnail to see if it matches your memory.
Good luck
Paul
I checked the monthly tables of contents in my volumes for those years–didn’t see anything with a reference to the layout name or to your family name. I might have just overlooked it but it may be listed with some entirely different article title. Any other clues?
-garyla
Check this link if you haven’t already done so. I found it by using Google.
Sounds like you need to contact Harold G. Fuller in Golden Colorado. He was a member of your father’s model railroad group.
http://www.egr.msu.edu/ece/News_Letters/Spring06/Networks-Spring%202006.pdf
I think you might be a little off on the dates
Model Railroader pp. 473 November 1938 - picture of a switch - caption - “SWITCH on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern O gauge line of Jack De Camp, East Lansing, Mich. Note the self guarding frog. See also the Boomer Pete article on page 492 of this issue.”
Self Guarding Frog
By Boomer Pete
Hopped on the Grant Trunk for East Lansing, Mich., to see the O gauge Lake Shore & Michigan Southern of Jack W. DeCamp. As is typical of model railroaders, he turned out to be a fine fellow. A buddy of his, Don Hughes, was also at the station to meet me. Well, between the two of them it wasn’t very long before my usual complacency in talking to the fellows was a thing of the past. It’s hard to say just what brought this about: perhaps it was because Jack would invariably say “Don did this.” or “Don figures that…” The same thing was true when Don had an opportunity to get in his two cents’ worth. It was “Jack this” and “Jack that.” A most unusual combination.
Some trackwork was going on and it seems that Don took it upon himself to put the switches in shape. As this necessitated tearing up the stock rails I got a chuckle out of the fact that he followed the railroad practice of turning the rail around and using the other side of it. It is said that Don’s dad is a railraod track engineer so, perhaps, he should get some credit for this kin
Thank you, I’ll look into this. I could have sworn my fathers railroad (it covered our basement) was “S” gauge but then I could be wrong.
I forgot to mention that the issue in question is the first one where Model Railroader used color for its cover shot. You said you remembered seeing the magazine as a child. If your memory includes a color cover picture of the nose of a Santa Fe diesel in a warbonnet paint scheme then this would be the issue.