I recently bought the back issues of Railroad Model Craftsman magazines containing articles by the late, great Paul E. Larson. He had a huge file of professional quality photos and discussed his insights into real railroading as applied to our model railroads. However, in the July, 1967, issue of RMC I found an article by the late Hal Cartens, editor and publisher, with the headline “Sabotage Hits NYSME Layout.” (Strangely, I’d had no idea about this until I built a library of RMC some years ago, as I’d seen no reference to the incident in Model Railroader at the time.)
The New York Society of Model Engineers had impressive model railroads in both HO and 17/64" O in their headquarters in the former waiting room of theLackawanna Railroad’s disused Passenger Terminal in Hoboken, NJ. On the night of April 27, 1967, a vandal or vandals broke into the building and sabotaged the O scale model railroad. The HO railroad and the extensive archives weren’t touched. This person singled out the O scale layout, destroying the catenary system, which had taken five years to complete, plus extensive special trackwork of crossings, turnouts, and dozens of double slip-switches. Strangely, no rolling stock was touched.