That’s the day Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, the event that precipitated World War I, and the rest, as they say, is history.
He uses his layout as a teaching tool, and all the little vignettes and scenes that tell the tale are fascinating. You have to really look through the website to appreciate his work and historical accuracy. Check out the photos in the “Story” section. The thing I found most compelling was his many, many figures. Impressive. I only hope mine look as good, someday.
Here is a story in the Denver Post about him - it even has an Oscar tie-in!
The problem, aside from the need for very little movement (how far does a train travel in one minute? Even the Shinkansen only covers about three kilometers, and my mainline is longer than that) is picking a historically significant minute.
I guess that someone who wanted to use the idea could model the Oahu RR at 8:04 AM, 7 December 1941 - with Arizona erupting like a volcano on the backdrop.
As for this one-time professional warrior, I think I’ll settle for modeling the nice, peaceful place that I model, and the entire month. One minute is just too limiting, and war isn’t much fun either.
As a teaching tool I think that is a neat idea…the idea that one can tell what was going on down to the last minute maybe not so much as picky as all that but, surely to goodness his version could be just as right as any of ours…
We might know something about what happened around that time simply by looking at things like train schedules and the like…as well as people’s memoirs/diaries, if any existed at the time…
Me, I’d rather suspend my disbelief long enough to allow that moment to sink in…