| Volume 39 Issue 11 | July 2000 |
| Volume 39 Issue 11 | July 2000 |
Despite a little confusion between myself and our Program Chair, the annual Father’s Day layout tours came off great again this year. My thanks to Bob Fink, Wil Davis, and Bill Reese - who, along with yours truly, opened their layouts for the division. (My apologies to Bill for omitting his layouts from the maps!) This years tour was a bit poignant, unfortunately, since this will be the last public showing for the Dayton, Duluth, and Western. Bob and Marcie will be moving relatively soon, and the layout will soon be coming down. If you have access to the boxes that photocopy paper comes in, please hold onto them and get them to Bob for storage of material from the DD&W to be saved for the next layout.
Don’t forget that this month’s meeting has been moved back a week, to July 23, to accommodate the GATS show. Don’t miss it - our clinician will be Mr. Sam Swanson, late of the Southeast Region, and new member of Division 7, down in Cincinnati. Sam will present his ‘Scenic Detailing’ clinic - which has been presented at a number of regional and national conventions, as well as have some samples of his modeling work. Sam is probably the finest modeler I know, and puts on a great presentation of his techniques - I know you will enjoy this month’s program.
Sam and I met at the 1995 National convention in Atlanta, in what we like to term ‘the battle of the barns.’ We both entered barns in the off-line structures contest that year, and in a close call, Sam came out with first place and I with second. That paved the way to a friendship that has revealed that we share many common theories on model construction, an interest in science fiction and fantasy modeling, an association with Boy Scouts, and the fact that we are both engineers (although I am an aerospace engineer, and he a civil - which means that I design weapon systems, and he designs targets!)
One of the other things we have in common is researching the models that we build, both for our layouts and for contests. That common penchant has led me in an interesting direction. Over the last few years, I’ve discovered the Dayton and Troy Electric Railway. The D&T was the first link in the Lima Route, which was a route put together by several interurbans which linked Dayton with Toledo. The impetus for the project was a chance encounter at the Wright State library with Harry Christensen’s book on “The Red Devils,” which details many Ohio interurbans. The section on the D&T mentioned that the offices of the D&T were in Tippecanoe City, where I grew up and still live. I quickly came to the realization that the second D&T carbarn is only a block from my house (I can stand in my street and see it through an alley, in fact.)
The D&T research started with a trip to the Tipp City library, where there was a collection of remembrances and newspaper clippings which had a little information on the railroad. Soon afterwards, I visited the Tipp City Historical Society, where they had a couple of photos and I spoke with a lady who lived on the interurban line in Tipp on North Sixth Street.
Next were trips to the Troy and Piqua libraries and historical societies, and the Dayton library. With only six stops I was able to fill a three-ring binder with photocopies of books with photos of much of the equipment, a roster of equipment built for the D&T by the Barney and Smith car company of Dayton, and a lot of other tidbits of information. I also found out that Scott Trostel was working on a book on the Lima Route, and have kept tabs on that project as it moved towards completion (The Lima Route is now available from Cam-Tech Publishing, 937/368-2489, $49.95.)
While I was waiting for Scott’s book to come out, I managed to come up with an all-time roster which very closely paralleled Scott’s work, uncovered many of the photos which he published in his book, and discovered that I really like this facet of the hobby - prototype research. I also developed a technique of coming up with equipment drawings using photographs by scanning the photo into the computer, and using Corel Draw to edit the perspective to get a 95% accurate drawing in an afternoon’s work. I am now applying the lessons learned in the D&T research to the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton’s station in Troy, among other projects.
One of the things that we can do as part of the hobby of model railroading is to help preserve our industrial heritage in an extraordinarily accessible way. To show somebody a binder full of Dayton and Troy research is a sure way to turn them off; to build a model of the Tippecanoe property, with the freight station, carbarn, paint shed, the interchange with the CH&D, and the surrounding area makes the same material much more interesting to the average person. This is a big reason museums use miniatures, despite the expense.
I’m not saying that everybody should go out and immerse themselves in research to get their models as historically accurate as possible. One of the wonderful things about model railroading is that running a train with horn-hooks can be just as much fun as scratchbuilding everything to original blueprints. It’s according to individual preference. Prototype research is just another direction that the hobby can take you, if you let it. But be warned - it appears that it’s addictive!
See you at the meeting!
Ray
© 1999, 2000 Division 3, MCR, NMRA