Shortly after coming to town about 40 years ago, I met a pediatrician who had a 'big' train with an engine and two cars that ran along a track in one of his exam rooms. It was placed up near the ceiling and while I don't know the details, the cars were perhaps 12-16" long and the cowboy western type of steamer engine was that long with two drives and maybe 10" tall. It was a hit with the kids to say the least. The nurse would start it and would slowly run back and forth, with auto reverse.
My barber did the same with his time (then) between haircuts and had it running a good 100' track around the shop. I recall he was talking about finding a specialty piece to control the rate and do auto reverse.
A local ham had some enormous sized track, maybe this was the O size that Chief-David is talking about, that ran around his 1 acre garden in the back of his house lot. Smaller kids could actually ride in the little car, sort of.
Some time after meeting the pediatrician I was asked to help with two projects. Little did I know that his entire basement was thousands of hours of work with him and the local club in an enormous setup. He was a stickler for realism, and one part had an old wooden ship a couple feet long that rocked slowly and while it did, he had audio playing of creaking wood. He wanted an incoming thunderstorm over a SouthWestern canyon scene have the lighting, but delayed thunder. I helped with getting a storm track of real thunder, then delaying the thunder audio onto the second stereo track, while picking off the first track and when it exceeded a certain voltage, would cause a flicker on a small strobe. Thus it avoided the movie cliche of having lighting and thunder at the same time. Our final project was to make a radio tower have the old fashioned red lights that would increase in brightness and then slowly fade as they pulsed. LEDs of course came on quick and off quick (more like today's tower's strobes) but he wanted the old look. Going back to a rice (flea) bulb and a small RC circuit we got what he wanted.
To say the least, this was his passion and those who helped learned to lay track with individual rails. His airbrushing for the cars was incredible. The scenes were as perfect as any I could recall, with the little corner stores having small coke cans turned from brass rod and painted rather than just a glob of paint on the counter.
I heard he developed severe dementia after he retired and had no family capable of or interested in, maintaining the setup. I recall racks of very expensive engines (literally hundreds of dollars each, which was a ton of money then and now) he had painted and were stored on the walls where there was room.
I wonder what ever happened to the setup. I know a local mall had a larger scale than his little stuff, and was fun to watch but after maybe 10 years it was gone one day when we went down to look at it.
Things change. I hope there are younger people with an interest in this (not just trains but learning electronics, painting, airbrushing, scene building) but it doesn't fit today's mobile lifestyle. Sort of like trying to find a local amateur group that has the old style roots.
Thanks for triggering the memories and refreshing those brain cells that haven't recalled this stuff in decades.
Dale
