In the early 1950s Fawcett published “Prize Model Railroad Layouts” edited by Al Kalmbach. The layout articles were supposedly based upon articles published in Model Railroader. is this factual? i have found some but not all of the layouts in issues of tge magazine A list of the magazine article titles and issues would be nice.
Thanks. Charles
This book:
Not all the articles are about built model railroad layouts. Some are on layout building and track planning ideas. These are the layouts in the book:
Pine Cone Valley Railroad
Tri Company Railroad
The Rocky River
Ute Short Line
Tanne-Hill Railroad
Florencedale-Eddiesville Railroad
Saint Denis Lines
The Swan Lines
Centerville Cutoff
Pikesville Railroad
Aberjona Valley Railroad
Incredible Interstate Central
Gorre And Daphetid
Chitlin Valley
Huff’n Puff Railroad
BC&E Railroad
Wellington Lines
Madder Valley Railroad
B&R Railroad
Jersey Coast & Western
Turtle Creek & Western
Potomac & Western
Rock Canyon & Western
There are about a dozen more articles in the book that are not model railroad layout features.
Interesting as I looked this old book over… I planned to call my next STRATTON AND GILLETTE layout the “Centerville Cutoff of the SGRR”, similar to one in this book. I wonder if an old memory crept up and suggested than name to me.
I believe only one of these layouts was ever memorialized as an NMRA Heritage car. Other than in this book, there are only two layouts I have heard of elsewhere.
-Kevin
An interesting list of model layouts, Kevin.
I see Madder Valley Railway made its way into the book. It is still ‘running’, preserved at Pendon Museum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6kUFlpj3sw&ab_channel=PENDONMUSEUM
I wonder if any other layouts are still operational?
David
I see Fawcett says it’s from MR 1946-52. Could be two things that are making some articles hard to find in the MR archives.
First maybe the articles are expanded versions of MR articles that weren’t actually layout tour articles, but were about how Bob Smith laid track on his AB&C shortline, and it was expanded in the Fawcett book to being about the AB&C. Could be the original story was in like “Boomer Trail” or some other column too.
Second, maybe Fawcett assumed the articles were all from MR articles, but maybe they were from another publication. Kalmbach for a while published a magazine called “Model Trains” (IIRC) that was geared more towards beginners. Maybe some of the articles were in there, and Fawcett just assumed all the articles from Kalmbach were from MR issues.
The Aberjona Valley was built and owned by Irving Blackburn, whose name used to appear in the magazines (MR and RMC) quite often back in the 1950s and before, both in articles and letters to the editor.
The Turtle Creek & Western (not to be confused with the more recent Turtle Creek project railroad built by Jim Kelly, a series that included free Turtle Creek decals in an issue of MR) is a really familiar name to me but I cannot place who the layout owner was.
Dave Nelson