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APRIL FOOL-MR

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Posted by Burlington Northern #24 on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 12:13 PM

I still can't find it, you can all start laughing at me now because I can't seem to find it or I've read it and didn't get it. 

SP&S modeler, 1960's give or take a decade or two for some equipment.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/SGTDUPREY?feature=guide 

Gary DuPrey

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Posted by MerrilyWeRollAlong on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 1:13 PM

Burlington Northern #24

I still can't find it, you can all start laughing at me now because I can't seem to find it or I've read it and didn't get it. 

No worries. Here's a clue: You should fiddle through the magazine again until you are drawn to a title like magnet to metal.

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Posted by vsmith on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 1:16 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ugSKW4-QQ

Perhaps the Best April Fools joke ever, broadcast by the BBC in 1957.

You'd be surprised by how many people thought it was real.  Although I thought this was one of the better ones more recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyYbIhBRmg

   Have fun with your trains

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Posted by maxman on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 1:48 PM

MerrilyWeRollAlong

Burlington Northern #24

I still can't find it, you can all start laughing at me now because I can't seem to find it or I've read it and didn't get it. 

No worries. Here's a clue: You should fiddle through the magazine again until you are drawn to a title like magnet to metal.

 
Yes, it will be like the movie, Fatal Attraction.
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Posted by Burlington Northern #24 on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 3:41 PM

maxman

MerrilyWeRollAlong

Burlington Northern #24

I still can't find it, you can all start laughing at me now because I can't seem to find it or I've read it and didn't get it. 

No worries. Here's a clue: You should fiddle through the magazine again until you are drawn to a title like magnet to metal.

 
Yes, it will be like the movie, Fatal Attraction.

Ok, I will take another look.

SP&S modeler, 1960's give or take a decade or two for some equipment.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/SGTDUPREY?feature=guide 

Gary DuPrey

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Posted by rdgk1se3019 on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 7:45 PM

Read : Magnetic wall.

Dennis Blank Jr.

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Posted by jmbjmb on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 10:54 PM

Burlington Northern #24

maxman

MerrilyWeRollAlong

Burlington Northern #24

I still can't find it, you can all start laughing at me now because I can't seem to find it or I've read it and didn't get it. 

No worries. Here's a clue: You should fiddle through the magazine again until you are drawn to a title like magnet to metal.

 
Yes, it will be like the movie, Fatal Attraction.

Ok, I will take another look.

Hey, I read right past it too until seeing this thread.  But the best April Fools joke was the lunar railroad.  Or was that a real article?

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Posted by MisterBeasley on Thursday, March 7, 2013 7:04 AM

I held off reading this thread, and then sat down last night with the magazine, not reading the articles but rather looking for the joke.  Honestly, I thought it was the padlocked panel for the gates until I got to the magnetic wall.

My all-time favorites in MR were the guy who set up sprinklers to provide real rain on his layout, the guy who required his op-session operators to shovel hundreds of pounds of real coal before the steam engine would run, and of course, who can forget 5-DCC?

Outside of the hobby, my favorite remains the NPR economics correspondent's story on cheese mining, set at the Lombardi Cheese Mine in Wisconsin and the Parmesan Mine in Italy, including the classic quote from a miner, "People just have crazy ideas.  Some people think cheese comes from cows!  There's only one way to get cheese, and that's to dig it out of the ground."

How about it, Cody?  Could you get some cheese hoppers and convert that gravel pit to cheddar?

It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse. 

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Posted by IRONROOSTER on Thursday, March 7, 2013 10:58 AM

MisterBeasley

I held off reading this thread, and then sat down last night with the magazine, not reading the articles but rather looking for the joke.  Honestly, I thought it was the padlocked panel for the gates until I got to the magnetic wall.

My all-time favorites in MR were the guy who set up sprinklers to provide real rain on his layout, the guy who required his op-session operators to shovel hundreds of pounds of real coal before the steam engine would run, and of course, who can forget 5-DCC?

Outside of the hobby, my favorite remains the NPR economics correspondent's story on cheese mining, set at the Lombardi Cheese Mine in Wisconsin and the Parmesan Mine in Italy, including the classic quote from a miner, "People just have crazy ideas.  Some people think cheese comes from cows!  There's only one way to get cheese, and that's to dig it out of the ground."

How about it, Cody?  Could you get some cheese hoppers and convert that gravel pit to cheddar?

I love it!!  Hoppers full of cheese chunks.  Weathered hoppers that are cheesey colored plus cheesey stains on the ties.  The slogan on the cars would "Route of Chuckie Cheese".  The logo would be a mouse holding a cheese wedge.  The water tanks would be fondue pots.  The railroad's name would be the West Cheddar Railway.  The main town would be Brie.

Laugh Laugh Laugh Laugh

Enjoy

Paul

If you're having fun, you're doing it the right way.
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Posted by HaroldA on Saturday, March 9, 2013 2:10 PM

Call me gullible -  but i started to read it and actually thought the guy was on to something.....but then came the magnetic wall and I it all seemed a little strange.  Then I figured it for what it was.....

Personally, I like the MR attempt at humor at least once a year. 

Now speaking of using a magnetic wall.....who was the comedian that impaled himself on a velcro wall??  Maybe that idea would work a little better.

There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....

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Posted by chatanuga on Sunday, March 10, 2013 1:21 PM

I think one of my favorites was one from when I was a kid where a prototype railroad decided to try magnetic knuckle couplers.  It even went into detail on the problems with shipping the magnets and how one shot out of a gondola and stuck onto the underside of a highway overpass, causing vehicles to swerve as they drove over it.  Reading it when I was a kid, I thought it had been an actual article, not realizing until sometime later that it was an April Fool's article.


Kevin

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Posted by Burlington Northern #24 on Sunday, March 10, 2013 2:57 PM

I read it and thought "that's not a bad idea" then I saw that he put the switch on the wall ext to the lightswitch and his wife accidentally turned it off. I cringed, I could hear all those cars crashing to the floor. I thought it was a good article, I really liked the coal shoveling one I thought that was great. 

SP&S modeler, 1960's give or take a decade or two for some equipment.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/SGTDUPREY?feature=guide 

Gary DuPrey

N scale model railroader 

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Posted by alexstan on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 7:34 PM

MisterBeasley

I held off reading this thread, and then sat down last night with the magazine, not reading the articles but rather looking for the joke.  Honestly, I thought it was the padlocked panel for the gates until I got to the magnetic wall.

My all-time favorites in MR were the guy who set up sprinklers to provide real rain on his layout, the guy who required his op-session operators to shovel hundreds of pounds of real coal before the steam engine would run, and of course, who can forget 5-DCC?

Outside of the hobby, my favorite remains the NPR economics correspondent's story on cheese mining, set at the Lombardi Cheese Mine in Wisconsin and the Parmesan Mine in Italy, including the classic quote from a miner, "People just have crazy ideas.  Some people think cheese comes from cows!  There's only one way to get cheese, and that's to dig it out of the ground."

How about it, Cody?  Could you get some cheese hoppers and convert that gravel pit to cheddar?



Oh good old 5-DCC, actually took me a couple of months back then to figure out that 5-DCC was actually a joke!

Modelling HO Scale with a focus on the West and Midwest USA

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Posted by Schuylkill and Susquehanna on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 8:19 PM

I had to read the issue twice before I found the joke.  So many of these are plausible, I'd be interested to see if anybody actually tried one of these.  My favorite was the "weather" being modeled on the layout.  I am SERIOUSLY considering actually doing it if I ever get more space.

 

Modeling the Pennsy and loving it!

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Posted by steemtrayn on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:29 PM

HaroldA

Now speaking of using a magnetic wall.....who was the comedian that impaled himself on a velcro wall??  Maybe that idea would work a little better.

Letterman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9uxxqKGmYg

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Posted by dknelson on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 8:30 AM

One of the most elaborate spoofs was when a guy scratchbuilt a truly beautiful looking left handed Shay locomotive.  It was a large "modern" Shay, not the little vest-pocket actual left handed Shay that truly existed.

You have to be an old timer to remember that a somewhat popular method of car forwarding involved drilling holes in the tops of your freight cars, and using a series of colored thumb tacks with letters on them as the basis for the forwarding system. 

Maybe they did not do it as an April Fool's Day joke, but someone submitted a photo of prototype cars when they still had running boards, on which someone had crafted large discs with the letters painted on them.  That was back when a popular feature was the "there's a prototype for everything" article.

Dave Nelson

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Posted by delray1967 on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 9:19 AM

I thought the joke was the $1300 CAT excavator. (top of p.13 I believe).lol

http://delray1967.shutterfly.com/pictures/5

SEMI Free-Mo@groups.io

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Posted by chutton01 on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:40 AM

I know every year this topic comes up, but did any every find a comprehensive list list of MR April fools jokes.
I can only recall a few - such as the no-track mentioned above (did that joke include both a rail trail and subway modeling, or was the subway modeling (i.e. a subway entrance on a street). seperate joke)

One joke I completely missed until I read it on these forums was the Tony Koester one (I think he was supposed switching to a Garden layout or tinplate or something), mostly because I rarely read his "Trains of Thought" column, and even if I had read it that month I would have thought "So he's switching scales, so what"

And I seem to recall one where they reviewed a prototype boxcar.

Finally, 2010 was the "Trees smooth as silk" (using silk flowers dipped in ground foam for trees), but I swear there was one recent year where some article described something almost as ridiculous looking, but that was real and there was a different April Fool's Joke in the issue - I haven't found it by searching yet...

 

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Posted by andrechapelon on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:32 PM

Finally, 2010 was the "Trees smooth as silk" (using silk flowers dipped in ground foam for trees)

That one sticks in my mind really well. As it turns out, there are a couple of Monterey Cypress trees along CA-1 between Castroville and Moss Landing that actually resemble the "tree" made of an artificial lilly dipped in ground foam so I guess that old saw about a "prototype for everything" still is true.

Andre

It's really kind of hard to support your local hobby shop when the nearest hobby shop that's worth the name is a 150 mile roundtrip.
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Posted by kbkchooch on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:41 PM

wp8thsub

BrianinBuffalo

I thought it was the Security Gate article. Laugh

I like that article, and was aware of Lance having those for some time since I follow his blog and other progress on his site.  I'm planning to add some gates similar to that to my layout.

Lance's article was a regurgitation of Wolfgang Dudler's operating gate. Mindheim's is manual yet complex. Dudler's is simpler.

http://www.westportterminal.de/moving_gates.html

Karl

NCE über alles! Thumbs Up

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Posted by dm9538 on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:44 PM

I have to admit they got me this year!! I read the article and thought interesting but odd. Guess I didn't realize it was the april issue.Crying

Dan Metzger

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