Who Was Model Railroader Mags: "The Layout Doctor"?

[Capt. Grimek]

oops. Sorry, you guys were right. It was a Nov. '61 issue of RMC. I had purchased a pile of older mags at my hobby shop for a buck ea. and the cover was missing and it didn't register.

I remember Schopp's name vaguely from my teenaged years reading RMC. One attraction for this layout (besides that it might be made to fit into my small room) was that it wasn't a pile of spaghetti. It has a loop to loop arrangement with a long yard (mostly ladder) in the middle section. It is multi leveled and has nice/varied operational posibilities. It is true that the train will eventually go through the same scene twice but in an 8X16' room it's kind of hard not to unless you go with a point to point layout, no?

It has the ability to run trains separately on the upper level and lower levels respectively
and a few other attractions. The center yard section is only 18" wide. The end loops will probably require some access hatches but I'm willing to put up with a couple if it means getting a design I like into this room...

I have a guy coming over to talk with me about what I want and look at my space.
He's the "track plan man" for our local NMRA division. I'd like to discuss possiblilites
of using this plan.

I'll see if I can get my wife to help me post a pic of the plan and maybe even the description of the "run". I'd appreciate comments. It's a shelf based/walk around (along)
design. I'll probably try for an L or U shape to fit the longer of the two versions into my space.

Thanks for letting me know who the "Layout Doctor" was/were. Hopefully my new friend can spot any overly optimistic design elements Mr. Schopp may have included!

If I can figure out how to post pics of the track plan ( the copyright must be public domain by now?) I may start a new thread for comments on shortfalls/advantages.
I'll title it: The Rumpus Room Layout: comments please?
Hope you'll be williing to provide some feedback for me.
Thanks everyone.

[R. T. POTEET]

Wrong mag!

Bill Schopp was The Layout Doctor and that by-line was confined to RMC. To be honest with you I don't recall ever having encountered a Bill Schopp article in any mag other than RMC. Until health issues forced his retirement sometime in, I believe, the late '60s hardly an issue of RMC rolled off the presses without something by Bill Schopp in it; he was, if nothing else, a very prolific writer.

The Layout Doctor series originally got started as a critique of track plans sent in to the magazine by readers. Eventually Schopp's orientation evolved into layout design because, as he said in one of his Layout Doctor features, the same old nonsense kept showing up over-and-over-and-over again.

Unlike John Armstrong, Schopps layouts were quite frequently around-the-room shelf layouts with a center operating pit and these layouts almost always added "mileage" through a multi-lap concept; only once-through-a-scene wasn't Bill Schopp. His designs may not have been as sophisticated as John Armstrong's, nevertheless some could be quite interesting and I have given close scrutiny to one from the March(?) 1968 Craftsman as a potential design for a future layout.

In addition to layout design he published numerous articles dealing with kitbashing steam locomotives usually through boiler swapping. Some of these kitbashes were tongue-in-cheek; he once, for instance, kitbashed a PRR Northern simply because he had a Northern mechanism and Pennsy boiler left over from some prior kitbash project.

[tomikawaTT]

I recall the "Layout Doctor's" designs as suffering from problems which could usually be solved by increasing length and width by about 20%.  Unfotunately, the reach-in distances aren't so easily corrected, nor is the tendency for the good Doctor's designs to resemble a plate of spaghetti.

Many of the layout designs from a half-century ago have been superceded by more recent design developments (like staging, which was almost unknown in published plans back then.)  John Armstrong was a voice in the wilderness when he advocated 'once through each scene' design - now it's the norm.

Just my , other opinions will differ.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[cuyama]

I don't have that issue, but I think that the "Layout Doctor" was primarily Bill Schopp (along with Bill Livingston and Al Westerfield from time-to-time). But as far as I knew, the Layout Doctor series was only in Railroad Model Craftsman, not in MR. But I could be wrong, I certainly wasn't reading the magazines back in those days -- maybe he used the "Layout Doctor" pen-name in both magazines. Or maybe someone else used the name in MR.

Many of the "Layout Doctor" designs from RMC in that era are overly optimistic about what will actually fit, IMHO. Custom hand-laid turnouts are often required, radii are often pretty tight, access is often a problem, and track-to-track spacing is sometimes challenging. There's been a lot of thought given to layout design in the intervening four or five decades, so there might be better choices.

Byron
Model RR Blog

[Capt. Grimek]

I found a layout drawn by the "layout doctor" in a November 1961 issue of Model Railroader Magazine (Rumpus Room Pikes pg. 37) that is "in the running" for my final choices.

Can anyone tell me who this layout doctor was or if it was a round robin group of designers?
I'm hoping it was John Armstrong or someone of his dependability.

Any help from fellow "old timers" would be appreciated. Hey, if by any far fetched chance, anyone built this thing and has pics, let me know?

Thanks!