Article in Model Railroader Magazine

Many years ago I saw an article in Model Railroader magazine, it was a fiction piece. A guy goes into an old building where he sees a steam locomotive cab next to an HO layout. The controls in the steam loco control the HO loco on the layout and everything sounded, smelled, and felt just like driving the steam loco for real. I believe the old engineer had wanted to run a steam loco one last time, and some stranger brought him to this old building. Well, some time later he went back to the old building and there was no sign whatsoever that the loco cab or the HO layout had ever been there. A very strange but engaging story. My question is, does anyone else remember this article, and if so, do you have it, or do you know where I can get a copy of it? Thanks so much for your time. You can contact me at charleypete1957@yahoo.com. Thanks again.
Charlie

 

I've been a continuous MR subscriber since 1947 and I don't remember that...then again, I don't remember all that much of what I did over the past 60 years. :rn-confused:

 

I remember where someone took a real EMD control stand and modified it to control an ho layout with parts from a MRC 501, but dont remember where I saw that article at. I dont remember the article you are questioning either, sorry.

 

I do remember this article. I don't know what year it might have been- but I would not be surprised if it was in an APRIL issue.
I am too lazy to look myslef but I would try to MR index, with an eye out for a story in an APRIL issue.

 

Well at least I know I'm not imagining things, as someone else remembers the article also. I don't remember how many times I read that thing, it was just fascinating. I also recall an article about using medical syringes connected together with tubing and filled with water and used as a hydraulic system to activate turnouts and other functional devices on a layout. My last dealings with anything model railroading was back in the day of the TAT IV throttle. I can only imagine how good the throttles are these days. By the way, I did check out the MR Index link, but only found about three real categories that they've indexed. I may have to dig deeper to find the article. Thanks guys for your interest and your answers. I really need to get in here more often. Will see ya later.

 

The article was in MR. I think it was the 60's or 70's. I'll try to look in MR's index and see if I can find it. I want to say the author was Jim Findley(?).

Glenn

I checked the index. Try Sept 1971 page 42. I wish I could verify it for you, but I lost all of my '71 and earlier MR's in a flood in 1998. I'm pretty sure that is the right article.

 

Hey BrassHat, I appreciate the reply. I'll go look for this as soon as I can get with my uncle who has a huge stack of MR magazines from that era. I don't know why that article has stuck in my mind all these years, kind of like a haunting or something. Anyway, I appreciate your interest. Maybe there's a way I could copy that article and post it somewhere on this site. I might look in to that. Thanks again.

 

I DO have a big stock of MRs, almost complete for well over 40 years.

I tried this reference. It is titled "Beautiful Unsullied Steam" and is about an American modeler living in Souel Korea trying to find space in a tiny Korean house for a layout (top priority) and also to live (merely secondary). The living conditions are made more bearable by the fact that there is a real steam railroad that runs nearby, and sometimes the engineer waves!

Interesting, but not what you sought...

 

Im lost without my MRR magazenes or trains or walthers
or railpace
sorry to hear about that WCWBrassHat

 

I think I remember it. The guy goes into the house and there is a cross compound air compressor there. all the cars and engines are barely detailed, but they all have full brake rigging. Somehow the guy has managed to hook up the air compressor to the model train.

Its from back in the 1970's.

Dave H.

 

Well you remember more about that part of it than I do. Seems to me the old steam engineer was fulfilled a wish to run a steam loco just one more time before he passed on. Best I remember, the whole room shook, the steam, the smoke, everything was there, even the fire in the boiler, but the actual steam cab didn't go anywhere, but everything he did in the cab, every control worked the layout off to the side, a very interesting story. Years later when I was in the Navy on board a minesweeper, it inspired me to design a simulator for the engine room controls of the minesweeper, where the controls would act and function just like the real thing with all the gauges responding like they would in the actual engine room according to changes in throttle, propeller pitch, etc. Well I hope I can find this article some day. Thanks for the input.