Mike’s world The nail boxes are now gone at State Line interlocking; in their place, is a pre-production resin mock-up of State Line Tower done by Jim Duncan with a three-D printer. Though the model is rough and not at all painted, it’s light years ahead of the nail boxes. The final model will be a centerpiece for the whole State Line interlocking scene. The upper level at this point represents the Bloomington, Illinois, end of the Illinois & St. Louis system. — Mike Schafer photo
a blast if you pulled something together — even if it’s just a tem- porary depot — for Chillicothe on my layout!”
The Chillicothe depot is now underway. Meanwhile, my atten- tion has turned to a couple of oth- er specific — and super-critical — structures on my layout. One is the famous State Line Tower at Hammond, Indiana, where the trains of ten railroads converged.
At its zenith, State Line Tower, where I hung out during my itin- erant youth in the 1960s, was the largest mechanically operated in- terlocking tower in the world. As such, it was a l-o-n-g building — about 100 feet. Currently, there is no commercial model of this oddity, and nothing comes close. It will have to be custom-built. So, the least I could do for a time was represent it with a couple of
boxes of nails and an HO-scale model of my Volkswagen Beetle, which I used to get to State Line if I didn’t take the train down there. Fortunately, a semi-custom-made, limited-run HO model of State Line Tower is rumored to be in the works, and I even have a pre- production test model of it. If you wait long enough….
The more intimidating struc- ture-building model awaits: state-
Mike’s world Tyrone Johnsen, a member of the work and operating crew on Mike’s Illinois & St. Louis, has volunteered to take on the project of building the Rock Island depot at Chillicothe, Illinois, which is also used by I&StL trains operating on Rock Island trackage rights. Working from photos of the real Rock Island depot at Chillicothe, Tyrone drew a set of plans, which he cut out and cemented to foam- core and illustration board to create this temporary model. — Mike Schafer photo
AUGUST 2015 79
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