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.
Dan Metzger
wp8thsub BrianinBuffalo I thought it was the Security Gate article. 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.
BrianinBuffalo I thought it was the Security Gate article.
I thought it was the Security Gate article.
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!
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
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...
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
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
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.
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
Dave
Just be glad you don't have to press "2" for English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_ALEdDUB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqFS1GZL4s
http://s73.photobucket.com/user/steemtrayn/media/MovingcoalontheDCM.mp4.html?sort=3&o=27
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!
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 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?
Modelling HO Scale with a focus on the West and Midwest USA
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
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
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
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.
There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....
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.
Enjoy
Paul
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Read : Magnetic wall.
Dennis Blank Jr.
CEO,COO,CFO,CMO,Bossman,Slavedriver,Engineer,Trackforeman,Grunt. Birdsboro & Reading Railroad
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
NP2626 Wow, it sure appears many of you are unhappy people! Does the magazine do anything you like? I held off on reading this post about the April Fools Joke as it spoils the fun. Now it appears the biggest enjoyment people get from the joke, is from being the first to spoil it for everyone else. However, it does give an opportunity for those of you with crappy attitudes, to show them to the rest of us!
Wow, it sure appears many of you are unhappy people! Does the magazine do anything you like? I held off on reading this post about the April Fools Joke as it spoils the fun. Now it appears the biggest enjoyment people get from the joke, is from being the first to spoil it for everyone else. However, it does give an opportunity for those of you with crappy attitudes, to show them to the rest of us!
Only SERIOUS humor is allowed in this hobby.
Now WHO let all the clowns in?
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
How could it not be? A padlock under the table? Seriously? No. April fools.
rrinker Can;t do away with humor, life doesn't have to be dead serious all the time. We are only as old as we think we are. Deny if you want, but even if you operate via strictly prototypical rules and methods, you're still playing with trains. --Randy
Can;t do away with humor, life doesn't have to be dead serious all the time. We are only as old as we think we are. Deny if you want, but even if you operate via strictly prototypical rules and methods, you're still playing with trains.
--Randy
I like humor as much as anyone however practical jokes and April Fools jokes where you try to see if you can get one or more people to believe something that is not true haven't fit my definition of humor since the fourth grade.
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
rrinker I think it's more the quality of the joke - I don't think anything has topped the classic MR one on the pressurized basement. Several good followups came from readers who claimed to have tried it, too. One of the better ones in more recent years was probably the No-Trak modular spec. Totally plausible, really, making modules or places where the tracks have been removed and turned to trails. Can;t do away with humor, life doesn't have to be dead serious all the time. We are only as old as we think we are. Deny if you want, but even if you operate via strictly prototypical rules and methods, you're still playing with trains. --Randy
I think it's more the quality of the joke - I don't think anything has topped the classic MR one on the pressurized basement. Several good followups came from readers who claimed to have tried it, too.
One of the better ones in more recent years was probably the No-Trak modular spec. Totally plausible, really, making modules or places where the tracks have been removed and turned to trails.
I remember reading the story about the model railroader who pressurized his basement just so he could remove the columns holding up his main floor and not have to build curved track around them. And oh yeah, the dude had to wear a deep sea diver's suit to work on the layout! I was just a kid back then but they got me. Took me a few years to realize the article was an April Fools gag... Haven't thought about that piece forever! Thanks for reminding me.
I haven't found it yet.
Personally, I enjoyed it even though it took me in until almost the end. That made it funnier.
jmbjmb Hey, we used pennies to weight my son's pinewood derby car a couple year's ago. Cheap and easy to measure out. One the subject of April Fools jokes, I guess I don't get most of the jokes anymore. Perhaps it comes from working in Dilbert Land, but we have many things that have got to be a joke, yet are dead serious, I can no longer tell humor from an operating policy.
Hey, we used pennies to weight my son's pinewood derby car a couple year's ago. Cheap and easy to measure out.
One the subject of April Fools jokes, I guess I don't get most of the jokes anymore. Perhaps it comes from working in Dilbert Land, but we have many things that have got to be a joke, yet are dead serious, I can no longer tell humor from an operating policy.
We used pennies to weigh down the arm my sister's Barbie record player to keep it from skipping. I think they used a 10 penny nail for a needle.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR