Antique layout

[Eriediamond]

Last night I attended our club meeting and this past week an old layout was donated to us from a widow who's husband recently passed. This layout is a 4x8 with an extra foot added to one 8 foot side for a small yard. This layout is a bare layout, no structures or scenery, flat single level with atlas flex track and switches spiked down on homesote with no road bed under the tracks. The track is a combination of the old brass rail flex track with fiber ties and plastic ties. All wired, so we assume it was operational at one time. Also two huge computor boxes full of rolling stock, locos and structures and boxes of spikes, track nails, old brass railjoiners and misc stuff. The track plan is quite complex, consisting of a double loop main line with crossovers and a lot of sidings and the mention yard and a turntable installed on it. As close as we can determine, this layout was built back in the middle to late fifties and then stored for the past forty years or so, but still it is in fairly good shape. We had some discussion on what to do with it, ranging from chuck it to restoring it and adding scenery or in other words try to complete it. Several of us voiced that we should only restore the track work so trains could be run, but stop at that point, and only add scenery and structures from that era of modeling. I'll give the reason in a moment. Our club is located in an old depot that was donated by the CXS railroad to the town Historical Society. We club members have and are restoring the depot which will become a museum open to the public. We already have a temporary tin-plate Lionel operating layout along with our temporary HO scale layout. I say temporary because once the new floor is installed in the warehouse part of the depot we are going to build our large permanent HO layout and have areas for the various scale model railroads to show whats available in our hobby. Also we have members interested in tin-plate, G and N scale so they will have their own interests to work with. Our thoughts on doing this is to give the younger people an idea of how far this hobby has come since those days and this would fit in nicely as a working museum piece. Thought I'd post this to get some ideas from others outside of our club. Thanks in advance for any responces.

[johngraser]

Eriediamond,

I'd recomend fixing the track to use until your club puts in a permanent layout. After the permanent layout is finished you could donate it to a child that dosn't have any train equipment but has a interest in trains.

John

[cacole]

So, what's your question? Are you asking what you should do with that layout?

We had a similar situation at the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club in Sierra Vista, Arizona, recently. A 90+ year-old man gave us an HO-scale 4x8 foot layout, rolling stock, scenery, etc. that he built in the late 1920s to early '30s, and had not touched since then. Many of the items are either homemade or are unassembled wood and metal kits from companies that are long gone. The track is all brass flex track with fiber crossties and hand-made turnouts. One item is an unpainted metal kit that has to be soldered together to make a depot. The rolling stock has some type of brass hook and loop coupler that no one in the club has any knowledge of. Most of the assembled items are either wood or metal, including a cattle car made from individual pieces of wood glued together. Some items have manufacturer names on them, such as Varney, Roundhouse, LaBelle, etc..

We intend to leave everything exactly as is and set it up as a historic display, under plexiglass, of how model railroading used to be in the days before plastic, with an appropriate plaque indicating who built it and when.

Only one of the locomotives, a Mantua all-metal Pacific from some time around the 1930s, could be made to run, and we are using it on the main club layout to pull a couple of passenger coaches.

[Anonymous]

If I was in your situation, I'd try to get it running and create a layout that looks like one from that time period to give visitors an idea of how model railroading has changed over the years. It would be really interesting to see and also a very fun project to work on.

[Eriediamond]

cacole, That's kind of our line of thinking, Thanks. By the way, those old brass loop-hook couplers are old "Mantua" type, commonly used before the NMRA horn-hook coupler was introduced back in the fifties. The uncoupling devise was a thin brass strip with an upwards bow in it like a ramp installed between the rails that would lift the hook part when backed over it to disconnect the coupler. About the only other alternative to those couplers were nonoperating dummy knuckle couplers until Kadee came along. Thanks

[Anonymous]

I would try to restore it to the full extent. I have never really appriciated layouts that are on display that are not done well and I am sure others feel the same. My suggestion is to get it running, scenic it , detail it and build some structures for it. It might be good to develope an operating sceme and let visitors run a short operating session.

[Anonymous]

do a total restore in rememberence of the ones that started the hobby.

[DavidH]

cacole, I'm not sure of too many things in this world, but I am sure that the HO layout you are referring to was not built in the late 20s or early 30s! HO did not exist at that time. Going by your description of the equipment and the Mantua loop and hook couplers, I would guess the early 50s.

David

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by DavidH

cacole, I'm not sure of too many things in this world, but I am sure that the HO layout you are referring to was not built in the late 20s or early 30s! HO did not exist at that time. Going by your description of the equipment and the Mantua loop and hook couplers, I would guess the early 50s.

David

Those were my exact thoughts when I read that. Think about the evolution of this hobby. Everything is based on how small of a motor was available at the time. O scale didn't come around til the 30's, and I dont think the small motors for doing HO were available until after WW II.

Personally, I don't think there is much point doing anything more than hanging it on the wall for display. It doesn't seem like the thing to pour money into, especially if a large new club layout is in the works. Save it as a reminder of the hobby's roots, fiber ties and all.[:)]

[Anonymous]

There were HO trains in the 30's !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CNJ831]

Indeed, the old layout carcole refers to - or at least the equipment accompanying it - most probably dates from the early 1950's. In particular, the Mantua "all-metal" Pacific locomotive, if diecast and not sheet brass, was the one introduced in 1953. The hook-and-loop couplers are circa WWII, at the earliest.

Addressing the point about when HO guage came into being, most certainly there were HO locomotives in the late 1920's but they were uncommon. These were mainly custom-built and based on mechanisms imported from England. Allan Lake Rice (Eric LaNal) had a little Reading camelback of this type in 1927 or 1928. By the late 1930's Mantua was already offering kits for 0-4-0, 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 4-4-2, 4-6-2, and 2-8-0 locomotives, employing sheet brass boilers and cabs. And Varney had a similar brass line. My dad had a completed HO layout about 1938-40.

CNJ831

[Anonymous]

Hi
My sugestion would be to find copys of books from the same Era eg
Making Model Railways published 1957 UK, mind you you will want US publications
Then turn it in to a full model railway. you will find yourselves using lots of wood card shelac old army blankets ect and techneques that you would have to be an ancient
railway modeler too know..
Some of which are or still could be usfull today when the dollars are short and with a little thought can look realy good.
The club will then have a very interesting display piece.
Which although suposedly out dated rubish it is actualy an important historical piece
that could be placed in a suitable location that can be shared with people who are interested.
What ever you do don't #### @@@@ anything you will not be able to get spare parts for it, and it will be a nightmare to repair
Don't let it be destroyed we loose too much history as it is.
regards John

[Eriediamond]

Thanks for all your thoughts on this. I don't know what the club will decide to do with this layout. I have to have major surgery done on the day of or next meeting, this coming Thursday and will have a weeks stay in the hospital, so it will be up to them. Hopefully it will be cleaned up, repaired and if nothing else left for a static display. Our present medium sized HO layout is and will continue to be used for visitors to bring and run their HO trains on if they like. Same thing for our Lionel tin-plate layout. By the way, I've noticed some of you have found or converted some old rolling stock that had those old Mantua loop-hook couplers. If you don't know what to do with them or are going to throw them out, we have a lot of older cars and locos that could use them, if you would like to donate them to a worthy cause. We are a model railroad club but also we are a museum open to the public (when all the restoration work is done on our old depot). It has been quite a task as we have to stay within certain codes for today and yet meet certain other standards to maintain it to its originality. Thanks again, Ken

[Anonymous]

I would vote to trying to restore the old layout and scenic the layout with old model RR materials. I'm sure over time that more old RR materials will be donated to your club and you could use these to complete the layout over a period of time. I like the idea of restoration so that the young can see how far the hobby has progress and for the old to reminisce what it was like in the old days. A plaque could explain the difference of DC and DCC, brass rail over nickel silver, rubber band drive vs. can motors, etc.