The August 1982 MR describes Jim Findley's layout, the Tioga Pass. A sidebar descirbes him as a retired serviceman, 59, living in the Dallas area. He wrote the letters from Jim from 1967 to 1971.
Enjoy
Paul
Most of what I know about Jim Findley comes from my reading about John Allen. They were good friends and Jim not only was an operator on the G&D but also did some work on it as well. One well know picture of him shows him sticking up through one of the access hatches on the G&D with his face reflected in one of the many scenic mirrors on the layout, destroying the carefully created illusion. If memory serves, Jim was a career serviceman although I can't recall which branch. I remember reading an article in one of the magazines in which his own small layout was featured. I believe he lived in a mobile home and didn't have space for a large layout of his own but it was a well thought out track plan. I believe he stated that even if he had more room, it would have been used for larger yards and passing sidings, but schematically he would have built the same railroad.
Perhaps these links can be of help.
G&D Files
Resources - Tioga Pass
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Findley was a great friend of John Allen, and in fact was visiting Allen when he died. There are a number of structure articles by him in the 1960s through the 1980s, and often those structures would be on the cover of MR. Some of his structures were on John Allen's layout.
One excellent article was the Kimchi Gas Works, April 1970 MR. This was one of those large expanding gas tanks that many cities used to have before the advent of natural gas in pipelines. It took a subsequent letter to the editor for someone to point out that Findley had made a wonderful pun -- Kimchi is a sort of spicy pickled cabbage that, well, makes the eater into a gas works!
Dave Nelson
You might find some information in the below link.
http://www.google.com/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Jim+Findley+model+railroad&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Looking back through some of my fathers old issues of MR from the late sixties I noticed a column called "Letters From Jim" about an American modeller living in Korea. Each issue had a one page story covering the building of his Tioga Pass RR accompanied by a humorous cartoon of Jim and his Korean friend Kim. Since I don't have the entire series I was wondering if anyone could tell me more about this person? Did he ever finish the layout?