Its a Bird!.. Its a Plain!..
ITS A BIG YELLOW PUMPKIN!!!
And the caption touts “Big Civil War Layout”
This LION was quite unaware that there were great yellow pumptins in the Civil War let alone a big yellow Turbo Train!
Maybe if the South had Great Yellow Pumpkins they might have won the war!
GYP or GY&P sounds like a name for a railroad… Maybe with a Civil War Theme.
Hey It cannot be any different than the Route of the Broadway LION!.
ROAR
Hmmm…not sure what to say…
Lions and Pumpkins? Who would have guessed?
Not the first time the cover photo was not of the featured layout visit. Guess they didn’t have any in the right format.
–Randy
The great yellow pumpkin:
Turbo_CN-Spadina-79 by Edmund, on Flickr
An older, yet recognizable pumpkin:
CMStPnP_Coon-Rapids by Edmund, on Flickr
And still another in yellow (but more of a lemon-yellow)
Shaker_56_1966 by Edmund, on Flickr
And now the Civil War yellow, not shaped like a pumpkin at all:
General_CUT-62b by Edmund, on Flickr
Mellow Yellow — Cheers, Ed
Looks more like a Squash than a Pumpkin to me, Brother Elias, although admittedly the cover composition seems a bit off with that Civil War layout blurb right to the left of the VIA Turbo. Perhaps the Confederates took turbo trains to the battle of Gettysburg or something.
While I have the issue in front of me, I just want to know what Mernards was thinking with their latest “Tide Soap Factory”…er, concoction. They have proven they can do reasonably realistic structures (Taco Bell, Starbucks, Red Owl, and so on), but this “soap factory” looks like some Tyco tanks oddly mixed with some Plastruct beams with a few Tide stickersn thrown in (reminds me when I was a meddling kid in the 1970s and cut manufacturer’s logos out of old Popular Science and Mechanix Illustrated magazines to glue to structures, with questionable results). Also, did they just draw a cartoonish garage door on the “innovative tunnel insert”, like those old Heljan store front inserts from the 1970s face-palm.
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but that’s a serious example of ugly to me. Makes me start singing “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles!
oldline1
When I saw the October cover it took me a few seconds to realize that it was a layout picture! Well done Jason!!
Yes, the juxtaposition of the Turbo picture and the Civil War headline was a bit strange.
Dave
I read the entire October issue today while waiting for my wife in the Eye Doctor’s office.
The two layout tours were top notch this month and were both interesting to read. As usual, I read Trains Of Thought first as it usually puts me in a railroady mood.
I really miss Bull Session. I think they ended that column decades ago. It as always enjoyable reading.
The cover photograph was beautiful, and it was a different image from the one in Trackside Photos. The grafitti on the cover has always annoyed me, but I know it has to be there. When you look at Model Railroader covers from the 1950s there was much less text on them, but the pictures were often terrible.
-Kevin
Well, since this thread got bumped anyway…I have also read the issue through-out, and two things about the “Freight Cars of the '70s, Part 3”…, well…
1st, on the opening image, would that GN livery have been that clean and shiny 4 to 5 years into the BN era (the Railbox having 2 panel consolidated stencils dates this to 1974 or later). OK, this is a nitpick I admit.
2nd, why did the boxcars return under “Popular Subjects” - wasn’t this mostly covered in part 1? OK, the side notes on wagon-top boxcars and ribbed sided boxcar was interesting, but a little more discussion of covered hoppers and tank cars would have useful.
Still, a pretty decent series all-in-all.
The yellow-dot U1 inspection symbol on the RBOX car dates it to at least 1978 (also RBOX series 31000-32449 built by Pullman Standard 12/1978 - 03/1979). Given that note of the equipment in the photo was weathered, I didn’t take it as illustrating how finished models would appear.
Bravo to MR for getting us in the Halloween mood early.
Is this Kalmbach’s “just-in-case-the-end-is-nigh” plan, where the October issue of MR is available in August? They could probably save ink by simply deleting the cover dates, and those on every page, too.
While I never had an MR subscription, I bought it faithfully from my various local hobbyshops, from the early '60s up until I retired in the early 2000s.
I did go through my entire collection of MR, though, copying articles of interest, which I keep for reference in a binder.
I gave the entire collection of them (which included quite a few issues from the '50s) to a friend.
I also did the same for RMC, although eventually did get a subscription in the late '80s. I let it lapse a couple of years ago, as by then, there was little of interest in them, at least for me.
I also bought Kalmbach’s TRAINS magazine every month, and while I’ve saved a few issues, the bulk of them, over 40 years-worth, went to another friend.
I also bought, again at hobbyshops, Kalmbach’s Classic Trains, from its inception in 2000 until 2016.
Mainliner Modeler was another favourite, but due to its higher price, I bought only those issues which had something of major interest to me, so that collection is fairly small.I no longer buy train magazines at all, as I have neither the money, nor the time to read them, although I do dip into the ones I have when there’s information pertinent to a project on which I might be working. Right now, it happens to be an RMC from September, 2002.
Wayne
Getting back to the cover, there are 4 round porthole looking things on the front. The two upper appear to be lights, the lower left has something in it (can’t tell what it is), and the lower right looks like an empty hole.
Anyone know what is in the left, and what is supposed to go into the right?
See Ed’s picture of the Turbo at Spadina earlier in this thread.
On the original ‘demo’ UA Turbos as built, I thought the upper two lights were headlights and the bottom two red ‘taillights’. As I recall, all four could be provided with headlights for higher-speed visibility or better grade-crossing warning, although I know of no example that actually ran that way, even the speed-record train.
Per Jason at Rapido, who seems to know as much about the Turbo Train as anyone, and the way they modeled it, the upper two are headlights, the lower left is a white gyralite, and the lower right is a red tail end gyralite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a3iZoSck5k
Skip to 4:10 to hear him talk about the lights.
–Randy
Plot thickens. I see at least one CN turbo with the white light on the right – it can’t be a flipped negative because the CN noodle reads correctly. Both the 1970 promo film and the Pathe publicity film show trains with this configuration.
All the United States early-prototype shots I can find only show the right side of the train, with the left either in shadow or the light off. I find I do not remember in all the times I rode or watched the PC or Amtrak trains (east of New Haven) that the effect of a Gyralite or other oscillating beam was visible either leading or trailing – of course this was grade-separated. We need video!
The ‘demo train’ that toured the United States in '71 definitely had a white light in the lower left position by the time it was in the West, although I can’t tell from the available photos if it moved. The real proof (for United States practice) might be from videos of the Potomac Turbo ‘Harley’s Hornet’ service where if ever there was a need for a Gyralite that would be it; I’m almost certain there was a white light lower left by that time…
There are also publicity shots of the train from Sikorsky Aircraft, which I have but can’t get to, that pretty clearly show the nose. I’m sure Ed and others have these too. Blueprints of the trains should also call out the options.
Yep, I’ve got one around, too. Just to remember where I put it [:$]
Here’s another look:
Penn-Central_Turbo by Edmund, on Flickr
I’ll have to check later. I believe on my HO models the top two are headlights. lower left Gyralight, lower right, red marker light.
Turbo_UA_52 by Edmund, on Flickr
This photo shows the marker on the left.
Cheers, Ed
I have found pictures from 1967 testing, at Princeton Junction, that show the lower left nose light as white, set further back than the upper headlight behind a wider chrome bezel. It would make sense for this to be a rotary light of some kind that faces the beam forward if not rotating.
Makes sense too that if the anti collision light is on the left in United States practice it would be opposite for Canadian left-hand running.
The pictures I have seen show a similar rim, darker in color, on the red marker in lower right; a couple of pictures hint at a rotating reflector behind the red lens but I see no pictures that show it – the UA publicity shots have uniform red.
I am pretty surely wrong on the two lower lights both being red at any time.