Whilst cleaning out drawers in the closet of my former teenage room from another decade and another century, I found several model railroading magazines.
Amongst them was a $1.50 copy of December 1980 Railroad Model Craftsman (sorry MR). In it is 12 (count 'em…12) pages devoted to the rememberance of John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid. 12 pages! ANd COLOR too![;)] It covered the first G&D (less than 4x8) which was worked into the mamoth floor-ceiling about 28’x24’ scenicked behemoth from old 35mm (before fire ravaged its home). The article was well done, but claimed to only be only part 1. I doubt I will find part 2 anywhere. BUT then, I thought I already had all the misc. train mags from there. WHo knows, I still have more drawers to look in…[:-^]
I remember when RMC was running that series on the G&D. Seems to me they spread it out to like every other issue for the majority of the next year. There were a lot of really good shots of the G&D in all of it’s incarnations, plus trackplans as I recall. I might have to dig these out when I go down to the shop in the morning now…
This may be of interest to you or others. In the Jan 1969 issue of MR on page 46 there is an article that is severel pages long with color pictures of John Allen’s Gorre and Daphetid layout. The article was written by John himself.
In the April 1973 issue of MR the “At The Throttle” column is a tribute to John Allen written by Lynn Westcott. It has black and white photos and track plans. John died of a heart on 1 January, 1973 at the age of 59. He lived alone and ten days after his death (while the house was vacent) it was destroyed by fire. The entire layout was lost.
At a swap meet couple of years ago I happened to pick up a truss rod Overton coach and a truss rod ventilated wooden box car, both lettered for the Gorre and Daphetid Railroad. They were in mint condition without weathering. Were they Johns? Were they salvaged from the fire? Who knows but they are running on my V and T line now
It’s amazing where you can find things related to railroading. My wife dragged me to a yard sale in which I detest going to most of the time. Anyway, we went to a house with all the posterboard signs at the street corners leading the way to the sale. I was thinking to myself; “here we go again…she’s gonna buy other people’s junk that they’ve already deemed as junk or it wouldn’t be in a yard sale in the first place.” So we walk in the place and low and behold the guy was a railroad worker and did I ever scarf up on the train stuff. He had a bunch of MRR mags and MRC mags. Conger brakeman’s lanterns, and a bunch of SP memoribilia like hats, tool bags and other odds and ends. Maybe i ought to go to more yard sales…chuck