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RPM Chicagoland Photos

Tim O'Connor
 


The Delta Lines!! Hugely influential. My Dad's HO scale dream layout (never built) was
based on the Delta Lines design (O scale). When I bought my first house, I also came up
with a ridiculously ambitious track plan based on the DL. In those days I could "duck
under" without injuring myself. :-) And then along came John Armstrong...

Question: Who first popularized "shelf" style, "walk around" model railroads? A major
RPM milestone, IMO.

Tim O'


Peter Ness wrote

 > I know... that Frank Ellison was writing articles on prototype modeling in the 1930's
--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts
Peter Ness
 

Tin O’Connor wrote:

“Question: Who first popularized "shelf" style, "walk around" model railroads? A major RPM milestone, IMO.”

 

Tough question, popularized it…the Lionel display layouts in NYC were somewhat walk around and some department store layouts were true walk arounds. If by popularized the meaning is shared across a great number of modelers then it may have been John Allen, John Armstrong or even David Barrows?

 

There were a lot of early layouts where the center was the “operators pit”, and if you forget that and just look at the track plan, it was possible to walk around the outside of the layout…back then, it just wasn’t viewed from that perspective.

 

I think the development of portable throttle technology heavily influenced the popularity of walk arounds…in that case it would be a “what” and not a “who”?

 

Peter Ness

 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io [mailto:main@RealSTMFC.groups.io] On Behalf Of Tim O'Connor
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 9:50 PM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] RPM Chicagoland Photos

 


The Delta Lines!! Hugely influential. My Dad's HO scale dream layout (never built) was
based on the Delta Lines design (O scale). When I bought my first house, I also came up
with a ridiculously ambitious track plan based on the DL. In those days I could "duck
under" without injuring myself. :-) And then along came John Armstrong...

Question: Who first popularized "shelf" style, "walk around" model railroads? A major
RPM milestone, IMO.

Tim O'


Peter Ness wrote

 > I know... that Frank Ellison was writing articles on prototype modeling in the 1930's


--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

lstt100
 

Tim,

NEB&W and the Midwest Railroad Modelers club in Batavia, started in 1977, were a couple of the early walk-around shelf type layouts.  Layout concept for MRRM layout can be attributed to Bill Neale, Bill Danaby and a host of other members.  NEB&W had some scenes depicting prototype scenes by modeled a freelance railroad.  The MRRM club in Batavia was generic midwest scenery and also freelance.   Batavia club had homemade walk around throttles using radio control airplane controllers and progressive block control.

Early layouts modeling specific prototype scenes and using some form of walk around were Jack Burgess YV and Bob Rivard's Soo Line layout based on the Twin CIties.  I'm sure others can add to the list of prototype specific layouts, with specific scenes, constructed during the 1970's.

Dan Holbrook
Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...>
 

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 11:23 AM, lstt100 wrote:
NEB&W and the Midwest Railroad Modelers club in Batavia, started in 1977, were a couple of the early walk-around shelf type layouts. 
Walk around layouts go back much further than that. I was a member of the Garfield-Clarendon club in Chicago in the late sixties, and the layout they had been building since 1963 was a large free-standing walk around design. While the layout was free standing in a large room in the Clarendon Park field house, it had a multi-lobed shape and the mainline was designed to follow the fascia so a crewman could follow the train. Mainline engineers sat at fixed "cabs" on an elevated platform along one side of the room; power was routed to their train via what was known as progressive cab control, which made use of telephone Co. stepping relays to keep the engineer's throttle connected to the block his train was in. While the engineer's location was fixed, tower operators were located in the aisles near the track they controlled and took care of both setting routes through X-overs and also could take local control of the train to do lineside switching. The layout came down in 1974 when the Chicago Park District decided to remodel the field house, and the club's new layout, in different space, adopted some form of walk around control, but the 1963 layout would have adapted nicely to more modern control if it would have survived.

Even earlier, when I was a kid in the fifties, the house two doors down had a rather large 00 (yes, American 00, 1:76) layout that the boys' grandfather had built. The layout was a hi-bred; there was the typical dense oval, but then the double track mainline took off along the basement walls, eventually coming together into a four track mainline on a shelf along the wall to a loop at the other end of the basement. Control was the typical fixed location panel, however, but you could see the entire run from the panel.

Dennis Storzek
Tim O'Connor
 

Dennis and all

Although definitely not a "walk around" layout you reminded me of the Tech Model Railroad Club
at MIT - from their Wikipedia page:

  "At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by
   the mid-1950s. It was called the ARRC (Automatic Railroad Running Computer). It could run a train
   over the entire set of track, in both directions, without manual intervention, throwing switches
   and powering tracks ahead of the train."

The club is still active, although the layout was relocated sometime in the last 20 years or so.

I think the Pasadena CA model railroad club layouts (more than one) have used some form of progressive
cab control as well, which was still in use when I visited in 1993. Probably DCC, nowadays. The layout
I saw was another of those "walk inside" designs.

Tim O'



NEB&W and the Midwest Railroad Modelers club in Batavia, started in 1977, were a couple of the early walk-around shelf type layouts.
Walk around layouts go back much further than that. I was a member of the Garfield-Clarendon club in Chicago in the late sixties, and the layout they had been building since 1963 was a large free-standing walk around design. While the layout was free standing in a large room in the Clarendon Park field house, it had a multi-lobed shape and the mainline was designed to follow the fascia so a crewman could follow the train. Mainline engineers sat at fixed "cabs" on an elevated platform along one side of the room; power was routed to their train via what was known as progressive cab control, which made use of telephone Co. stepping relays to keep the engineer's throttle connected to the block his train was in. While the engineer's location was fixed, tower operators were located in the aisles near the track they controlled and took care of both setting routes through X-overs and also could take local control of the train to do lineside switching. The layout came down in 1974 when the Chicago Park District decided to remodel the field house, and the club's new layout, in different space, adopted some form of walk around control, but the 1963 layout would have adapted nicely to more modern control if it would have survived.

Even earlier, when I was a kid in the fifties, the house two doors down had a rather large 00 (yes, American 00, 1:76) layout that the boys' grandfather had built. The layout was a hi-bred; there was the typical dense oval, but then the double track mainline took off along the basement walls, eventually coming together into a four track mainline on a shelf along the wall to a loop at the other end of the basement. Control was the typical fixed location panel, however, but you could see the entire run from the panel.

Dennis Storzek

--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts
Garth Groff <sarahsan@...>
 

Friends,

I seem to remember that Lynn Wescott or maybe Paul Larson first popularized this type of layout. Way back in the very 1960s MR had articles on plug-in walk-around throttles and "progressive block control". And don't forget Allen McClelland experimented carrier control of his helper engines on the V&O back then.

Yours Aye,


Garth Groff


On 10/23/18 3:53 PM, Dennis Storzek wrote:

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 11:23 AM, lstt100 wrote:
NEB&W and the Midwest Railroad Modelers club in Batavia, started in 1977, were a couple of the early walk-around shelf type layouts. 
Walk around layouts go back much further than that. I was a member of the Garfield-Clarendon club in Chicago in the late sixties, and the layout they had been building since 1963 was a large free-standing walk around design. While the layout was free standing in a large room in the Clarendon Park field house, it had a multi-lobed shape and the mainline was designed to follow the fascia so a crewman could follow the train. Mainline engineers sat at fixed "cabs" on an elevated platform along one side of the room; power was routed to their train via what was known as progressive cab control, which made use of telephone Co. stepping relays to keep the engineer's throttle connected to the block his train was in. While the engineer's location was fixed, tower operators were located in the aisles near the track they controlled and took care of both setting routes through X-overs and also could take local control of the train to do lineside switching. The layout came down in 1974 when the Chicago Park District decided to remodel the field house, and the club's new layout, in different space, adopted some form of walk around control, but the 1963 layout would have adapted nicely to more modern control if it would have survived.

Even earlier, when I was a kid in the fifties, the house two doors down had a rather large 00 (yes, American 00, 1:76) layout that the boys' grandfather had built. The layout was a hi-bred; there was the typical dense oval, but then the double track mainline took off along the basement walls, eventually coming together into a four track mainline on a shelf along the wall to a loop at the other end of the basement. Control was the typical fixed location panel, however, but you could see the entire run from the panel.

Dennis Storzek

George Courtney
 

I think John Armstrong's track plan called "The Flying Horseshoe" in MR about 1953 was the first I'd seen with a sincere, once around,plan with John's then idea's on walk around control.

George Courtney
John Hagen
 

Denis,

I remember the Batavia walk around layout well. I can’t believe it was 1974 that it was torn down though.

Of course, I have CRS so I can be very well be wrong but the two times I saw it were on WISE Div, bus tours, typically held in May, and I do not think I took any of them earlier than 1983. I wasn’t even aware they held their September – April or May meets until 1982.

Anyway, it was what I considered to be a really neat set up. On one of the tours some of us got to operate a walk around train with a club member for a bit. I was saddened when the layout was demolished.

John hagen
Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...>
 

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 10:01 PM, John Hagen wrote:
I remember the Batavia walk around layout well. I can’t believe it was 1974 that it was torn down though.
John,
If you are addressing my post, I believe you misinterpreted what I said, which was the G-C club layout I was familiar with in high school was torn down in 1974. That date from their web site. I dropped my membership about 1970 when I had to go out and work for a living :-(

The Batavia club was still going strong through the eighties, IIRC.

Dennis (two n's) Storzek
John Hagen
 

Dennis.

That is quite likely.

As I said “I could very well be wrong.” And I meant that as I often am, especially since joying the “Geezer agers” (Golden Agers? Still waiting for that).

The layout I visited was in a second story of a somewhat ramshackle appearing building in downtown Batavia. Not being of svelte proportions in those days (nor now for that matter) I suspiciously eyed the outdoor stairs and balcony we used to enter the 2nd floor. But once inside he scene was, for me at least, amazing.

While the main line cabs were on the same level as we were, the layout was one floor down.

The layout made extensive use of scenic dividers so anyone on the operating floor could only view their immediate area. All the local and/or switching run were on that using walk around controls.

I recall that the club was about the most popular destination used for the annual bus trip.  

Any earlier layout I was before my time with the WISE Division.

John Hagen

 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dennis Storzek
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 9:49 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] RPM Chicagoland Photos

 

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 10:01 PM, John Hagen wrote:

I remember the Batavia walk around layout well. I can’t believe it was 1974 that it was torn down though.

John,
If you are addressing my post, I believe you misinterpreted what I said, which was the G-C club layout I was familiar with in high school was torn down in 1974. That date from their web site. I dropped my membership about 1970 when I had to go out and work for a living :-(

The Batavia club was still going strong through the eighties, IIRC.

Dennis (two n's) Storzek

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