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a “vertical yard” and placed on track as called for. Boxcars and reefers predom- inate to serve the needs of the citizens of Thomasburg, including billboard reefers whose ICC ban was overturned in the Thomasburg courts.


years ago Tom found an AHM two-rail O scale train set at a swap meet and pur- chased it for his young daughter so she could have her own trains. He found some compatible turnouts and mounted its sectional track on a board for her. It kept her occupied and diverted her in- terest from Tom’s layout. At the time Tom eyed the heft of O scale and thought that someday he might make the leap to the larger scale, and over the succeeding years he collected a stash of AHM-Roco track and turnouts.


By the time he retired in 1999, Tom was operating an almost-complete HO version of the Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway and had just finished a book on its history. He was looking for a new challenge and thought of those packed-away O scale trains. He began to formulate a plan for an O scale urban switching railroad. Knowing there is little market for used track and struc- tures, and hesitant to destroy it, he of- fered the old layout to a friend, who was interested. Soon afterward the HO rail- road departed in a rented truck, freeing up the space.


Tom first designed a linear yard overlooked by a “Railroad Avenue” backdrop based upon prototype recol- lections. Because he had many file cab- inets of railroad research materials and steam locomotive photos, he built the layout to fit above the cabinets. Ceiling, backdrop and lighting work preceded the benchwork.


His original plan had been to model a heavy electric railroad, but two things caused a change in plans. First was the realization that trying to throw turnouts, manually uncouple cars, and address derailments under a maze of catenary would be problematic, partic- ularly at the layout’s height of 60 inch- es. That coincided with the discovery of Rich Yoder Models small brass O scale, center cab diesel switching locomo- tives. Tom would have preferred steam, but found a limited availability of ap- RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN


propriate switch engines. The diesels were perfect for the sharp-radius curves and No. 3¹/₂ turnouts of the AHM track. Limiting freight car lengths to 40 feet worked well, and these rolling stock selections dictated the layout’s time period of 1955. His in- terest in catenary kept it in the layout’s scheme over the mainline, and Tom de- signed and built it from N scale rail and joiners, turned upside-down and sol- dered to provide a smooth path for loco- motive pantographs and accommodate his limited soldering skills.


Tom likes to build large structures and designed Thomasburg as a free- lanced, medium-sized industrial city where (imaginary) mainline trains dropped off and picked up cars at the yard and the switchers worked the city industries. Phase II of the railroad was crossing the Katherine River on a tres- tle below the dam to a portion of the city’s industrial district. A grand Art Deco station handles the railroad’s pas- senger traffic. (Visitors to the layout find that they have just missed seeing one of the road’s sleek, electrically-pow- ered mainline passenger trains, and the next one isn’t scheduled until a few minutes after their departure.) The road’s name, the Utopia & Infinity Railway, was chosen to suggest its un- limited possibilities. In keeping with the celestial theme, Infinity Route pas- senger trains are named for the planets as inspired by Gustav Holst. Under-the-layout staging was planned and constructed, but it was found less feasible for operations and car storage. Shipment-oriented car cards were planned for industrial switching, using the Micro-Mark sys- tem of shipment and car cards, but Tom finds it easier to use the system to gen- erate the switch lists which he uses to operate. So that the cars make less fre- quent reappearances Tom has accumu- lated a stable of over 100 freight cars; they are stored alongside the layout in


Layout construction is of plywood and Homasote® sheets over L-girder frame- work on the Phase I area and over the mushroom-shaped inside-braced trestle bents on the Phase II section. Power is 12-volt d.c. using a Titan IV radio-con- trolled wireless throttle. The layout is wired very simply as one large block and would lend itself to DCC operation should that bug ever bite. Right now the weight of the O scale locomotives mini- mizes electrical contact problems, and DCC is not contemplated. The couplers are from Kadee and are uncoupled with magnets between the rails and hand- held picks.


The scenery focuses on large-as-pos-


sible industrial structures surrounded by smaller structures to round out the urban scene. Structure names are planned to include recognizable busi- nesses of the time, like Montgomery Ward, A&P, Woolworths, and Cities Service Oil intermixed with local busi- nesses, as-is typical in any town. There are numerous hidden meanings to the business names and scenes, and adver- tising signs abound. Tom finds these give a particular realism to the scenes. He considers himself to be a very aver- age modeler, more interested in overall effect than in building contest quality models, but the quality level is high throughout the railroad.


Scenery is the water-soluble “Frary- Hayden system” with earth from screened granite taken at a nearby cut in the road. The ballast is salvaged from hopper car spills at local 3M Company roof granule plant. The fo- liage includes lichen from the area which Tom processed. For trees in the industrial


Trees®, most unpainted and unflocked to look like volunteer, scraggly brush. Before he started on the layout, little did Tom know that O scale modeling would involve attacking large sheets of styrene with a full-sized saw or making tanks from PVC pipe. Much of this do- it-himself philosophy harkens back to Tom’s early model building days and the influence of his heroes, Frank Ellison and John Allen.


district he used Super-


Like Ellison, Tom has named many of his businesses for friends and rela- tives, and like Allen, the railroad is re- plete with humor. Consider the name of the town and ask him where Thomasburg is. He will look you straight in the eye and tell you that it is somewhere between Utopia and Infinity, his own infinite utopia.


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