Vol. 1 Issue 4 - July 2005zz

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MANIFEST

Editor's Thoughts
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Walther's HO Modulars
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Why Todd needs just 15 more minutes - and why you do too!

MODELING

TomPM converts an IHC Camelback engine to Lehigh & New England.
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Matthyro does windows

END OF THE LINE

Have a little fun! _________________

Letter to the Editor

BACK ISSUES

Apr 2005
Jan 2005
Dec 2004
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Editor:
Ed Gagnier
Publisher:
Mike Pizzano
Art Director:
Val Fullard
Contributors:
Todd Groettum
Tom MacKintyre
Robin Matthyson

From the Cab
by EIGHTYEIGHTFAN

Fond memories..........

Everyone has them. From holding your firstborn child for the first time, your first kiss, your very first love. Some of us have very fond railroad memories, riding a train by yourself when you were a little kid. Your father taking you down to the local station to watch the trains go by. Your uncle that worked for the railroad giving you a cab ride. Those are usually the best memories, and ones that last through the years.

I have a memory something like that. I remember back in the mid sixties, growing up in the northwest corner of Connecticut. The New Haven Railroad was just a few years away from being absorbed into the Penn Central, but I still can see those orange and green RS-3's barrelling through town. Those days my father would bring me down to the station, just to watch them pass. One memory sticks in my mind still, almost forty tears later. While visiting my grandparents one hot summer day, my grandfather and my father led me through the neighboring farmer's field. We stopped at the edge of the field, with an opening in the tree line, next to the tracks. We didn't have to wait long for the New Haven freight to come. I still remember a flatcar with coils of cable. a couple of big orange boxcars with the black N and white H on the sides. I also still remember the conductor waving to us from the back of the caboose as the train disappeared around the corner. A great memory!

On my layout, forty years later, I tried to recreate this memory. I have a field, with a couple of cows grazing nearby. An old man, a middle aged man and a little boy, standing next to the tracks, watching my HO scale trains go by. Is it me, my father and grandfather.....Yes...Its a fond memory. But it could have been any one of us. Lots of model railroaders try to recreate some sort of railroading memory. Whether it be the house they grew up in that was next to the tracks, the cab ride in a steam locomotive their uncle gave them, or riding the Super Chief cross country, or younger modelers, not having the thrill of a cross country train ride, a short hop on a local commuter. Some sort of memory ends up on our layouts. Something that would bring back our youth, and bring a smile to our faces. Other people or visitors to our layouts might not get the hint, but to us, it's something that would never pass with time. Even my father still remembered that day. When I sent him a picture of the scene, the next day when he called, he asked "You remember that day when....?"

Well, my grandfather passed away years ago, my parents moved to Arizona, even the New Haven Railroad is gone. And now, 'âm all grown up, with a job and a mortgage, but every time I look at that scene, sitting in the back of my layout, I'm a little boy again, standing with my father, and his father in a farmer's field on a hot summer's day, watching the trains go by.

A fond memory...........