keywords = model rail train Z HO scale Ztrack Western Fruit Express WFEX Great Northern GN Pennsylvania Kiesel Pennsy PRR Berlinerwerke Vest Pocket Degnon Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal BEDT Marion River Carry schnable Strombecker railroading museum
Updated:  18 Nov 2009, 19:50  ET
(Created:  09 May 2005)
[Ref:  This is mrr1.html   (URL http://home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/mrr1.html )]

S. Berliner, III's

Model Railroad Continuation Page 1

Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher

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MODEL RAILROADING

This site has now been visited times since the counter was installed.

NOTE:  Page size is limited by HTML to some 30kB; thus, I am forced to add this page and a continuation page 2 to the main MRR page, et seq., and separate pages to fit the lengthy Berlinerwerke sagas (HO and Z scales).

NOTE:  I regret that some of my internal links refuse to work; if they don't, please click "Back" and scroll.

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SCALE and GAUGE

The BERLINERWERKE SAGA, the story of the HO Berlinerwerke pike,
is now combined with the story of the Horseshoe Curve on its own separate page.

The full Z-scale pike story, the BERLINERWERKE-Z SAGA
now appears on its own page, as well, but has had to be continued onto two more pages.

Visit these courtesy and official home pages:

Sunrise Trail Chapter
NRHS (National Railway Historical Society)

Ztrack Magazine
The Newsletter for Z Scale Model Railroading
Z-Scale is only 1:220 with rails only ¼" apart!
It is about 2½ times smaller than HO!
Please Note:  This courtesy home page has been moved to a new Z-Scale page!

Long Island Live Steamers

Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal Railroad

Degnon Terminal Railroad, plus
    Murrer's Sidings
    Kearney Sidings

    Marion River Carry Railroad Page (now on its own page).

New York & Atlantic Railway

MODEL RAILROADING - continued

Model Railroading Miscellany

Here's an oddity, more toy RR than model RR, but a puzzlement to me nevertheless; a contractor tearing out our kitchen for a complete rebuild found these pieces between walls of ca. 1950 and ca. 1980:

(02 Dec 2008 photo by and © 2008 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Well - mystery solved!  On 18 Nov 2009, David Helber advised that the tender "is part of the 1997 Burger King sales premium offering linked with the Disney animated movie of the same name.  It was a selectively compressed representation of the Russian train in that film, snow and all."  Mr. Helber thought he remembered "the cars as having been given away or sold for a nominal sum with children's meals, but that there was an entire battery-powered set with track that was sold outright as a single item (unusual for burger premiums)".  Oh, 'tis true, 'tis true; eBay has listings for such.  Thanks muchly, Mr. Helber.   (18 Nov 09)

Here's the box in which such a set came:

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** - This North American P-51D Mustang model, NL51PT Petie 3rd, clearly was built to 1':12" scale but is equally clearly a 1:87.1 model:

(photos from, courtesy of, and © 2006 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

My first "model" railroad was a gigantic, two-level Lionel O-scale monstrosity (with no scenery) my dad built "for me", hinged over my bed and too heavy for me to raise and lower; my mother was afraid it would drop on me one night and crush me!  Here are two 1941 photos of it I found in an old family album:

(1941 photos by S. Berliner, Jr. and © 2006 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

When someone saw it and wanted it badly, Dad sold it on the spot for $1,000, a simply-staggering amount ca. 1940 or 41!  Between Pearl Harbor and Christmas, 1941, he drove me down to Woodbury Junction, New Jersey (due east of Philadephia), to John Tyler's (thus the later TYCO) Mantua* plant, where we picked up their HO starter set for a whole $25!  That included an oval of flex track on black fiber ties, with black-oxide steel rails (I still have two halves of one section), a primitive power pack, a brass-and-Zamac Roundhouse Goat 0-4-0 camelback (so-called - it's actually a Mother Hubbard), a string of wood-and-metal freight cars, and a brass bobber caboose/crummy/hack/cabin car.  The cars were a silver Texaco single dome {?} tanker, a reddish Baby Ruth boxcar, a blue-and-white old Dutch Cleanser boxcar, and my pride and joy, a yellow Great Northern/Western Fruit Express (GN/WFEX) reefer with Rocky, the GN Mountain Goat, in a circle.  The box was about 18" long by 12" deep by 1½" high, blue with red piping, with an off-white label in the center with black and red printing.  In addition to the track, I still have a few bits of the old Mantua loop-and-hook couplers in my junk box, (plus an O-scale dummy knuckle coupler); all the rest is LONG gone.  The track was set up on the carpet on occasion and did not bear up well under that punishment.  I have since replaced the loco and the bobber (NOT second childhood stuff - I never left the first one) and the GN/WFEX reefer led to "reefer madness"; I'm not a collector, as such, but see my GN/WFEX page line-up!

* - on 13 Dec 2001, I reported that Mantua had gone out of the model railroad business (per MR, Jan 2002, p. 47, Industry News); well, Model Power has brought back Mantua as their Mantua Classics line!

Speaking of old Mantua models, ooops!  At the Great South Bay Model RR Show on Sunday, 07 Dec 2007, I was wandering the aisles and spotted this for $10:

08/09 Jan 07 photos by and © 2007 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved

23 Oct 04 photo by and © 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved

08/09 Jan 07 photos by and © 2007 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved

Ca. 1959, my dad decided to build his own little layout with which to putter but he lived in a moderate-sized apartment in New York City and had no room for a decent model RR, so he devised a fold-down pike that nested in an alcove in the dining room:

(ca. 1959/60 photos by S. Berliner, Jr. and © 2006 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

[Minox 16mm micro-camera photos, thumb and all!}

When he was in the hospital in 1963, I made Dad a lap-top layout in early N scale, mounted on a 2' x 3' piece of "fluff" board (like ceiling tile), with a thin layer of cardboard to hold spikes, which he could hold on his lap in bed.  When he recovered, he brought that gem home, beefed it up, and made friends with Charlie Merzbach, the importer of Arnold Rapido (see MRR page 3), and the Rapido and some Treble-O-'Lectric stuff kept him busy for many delightful convalescing hours.

Now, as to that ancient (62 years old) section of steel Flextrack, here it is, still spiked to a piece of ¼" x 1-⁵/8" x 18¼" pine (still true as a die!) with the ends turned up for use as a display track at shows:

(13 Jan 03 photo by and © 2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
{sorry, I can't find my missing close-up lenses}

I (SB,III) bought my first brass locomotive from Willis Hobbies founder, the late Karl Boehringer, for a whole, whopping $7.50, ca. 1961.  Here she is today, configured as an 0-6-0T yard goat, still cranking on her original brushes:

(photo by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III - All rights reserved)

Note the price stamped on the original box ($10.75);
now THAT was a bargain for brass, even at full price!
By today's standards, at that deep discount, it's a miracle
(and a testimony to his outstanding service)
that Karl survived in the business!

I suppose I should blacken the frame one of these days.

The only problem I have with this engine is that the phosphor bronze wipers I fashioned to replace the originals keep burning off.

The engine was called a "Convertible" because it could be configured as a (take your choice):

0-4-0T    0-6-0T
0-4-2T    0-6-2T
2-4-0T    2-6-0T
2-4-2T    2-6-2T

but the lead and trailing trucks were quite "ungovernable" and not worth the trouble of rerailing constantly; thus, the 0-6-0T configuration.

I heard from a member of the Large Scale Central who is building a freelance boxcab in 7/8"=1' scale; their site has almost 700 photos posted that took up quite a bit of my time - I heartily recommend it to you.

© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 - All rights reserved.