Pretty short story!
Actually Charlie your post has no text in it so you have done something wrong. Try again!
Welcome to the forums!
Dave
Welcome aboard. [#welcome]
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Alright, let’s try this again.
Many years ago I found an article in a stack of Model Railroader magazines that belonged to my uncle. It was a fiction piece about an old steam loco engineer, probably retired or pushed out by modern diesel engines. He found this old warehouse that contained a steam locomotive cab just like the one he used to run. Nearby was a model railroad layout with the same type of steam loco. He discovered that he could run the loco on the layout with the steam cab controls, complete with all the sounds, the steam, the vibration, everything. He spent several happy hours there that day. He went back the next day and found no trace of the loco cab, the layout, anything, no sign any of it had ever been there. It’s been many years and some of the details may not be right, but that was the jist of the story. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could steer me in the right direction to find this article again. It would have been from the sixties or seventies. Thanks for any help I could get!
Don’t recall that one, but do remember a article about one model railroader who refurbed an F unit cab to run his railroad, and another who made a scaled down steam locomotive cab for his.
I know the story mentioned, in fact I think there are two similar ones, the second one had the guy shrinking down to scale size and running the loco on his layout. I’m pretty sure it was in the 80’s actually, but a quick scan through my DVD set didn’t find it. I tried a coupel of keywords but obviously didn;t have the right ones to locate the article in the search.
–Randy
I remember one of the MR April fool jokes decades back concerned the use of a ‘shrink ray’ (by ‘compressing’ the water in the body or something) so the modeler could become scale size and wander about on their layout, but not sure it that’s the same as yours. Also not quite the same, but don’t forget the Twilight Zone Original Series episode 'Stop Over In a Quiet Town’ , where a (human-sized) couple are trapped on a giant-little girl’s layout, so that brings us back to 1964 at the latest for that idea…
I know I read in the past of someone weighing his N scale locomotives w/ Depleted Uranium, and I am still half convinced that it wasn’t a sophisticated joke - DU has legitimate civilian uses, and the major concern in battle field usage is apparently toxic heavy metal pollution (like lead or cadmium) to the ecology (and civilians) after the battle. So the question would be “is a plastic Kato GP38-2 shell effective shielding against Alpha particles, and how does Beta emission effect DCC circuits”?
I actually just lately saw “Stopover In A Quiet Town” on late night classic Twilight Zone. Believe it or not, it was one I hadn’t EVER seen. Guess I’ll have to re-post my cry for help in finding the old MRR article. Thanks to all who responded!
Hey Rinker,
I found that article when I was a senior in high school, and I graduated in 1975. That article was old at that time, probably '65 or older, 'cause they were a collection from when my uncle was still living at home and he’s ten years older than me. For what it’s worth, I don’t imagine Beta radiation would affect any kind of electronics at the DC level.