1917 Model Railroad

My neck hurts. can you rotate the photos ?

Click on the image. Then right click on the mouse. Click on save image as. Save it. Then open it and rotate it with your controls.

Here you go. My guess is someone liked this layout and was considering copying it with modifications is the reason for the mark ups. It is a very nice layout for one this age .

These old timers knew what they wee doing !!

This is not the one in Philadelphia, that they located the house, but, of course, all the equipt. was long gone?  I am surprised there was that much equipment available in 1917 to put together as impressive a layout as that.  Definitely an affluent family.

Not just one, but two large 116 Ives stations, one with a 121 glass dome.  Some Ives signals.  A Marklin large overhead pedestrian footbridge with signals on the center span, and the triple-culvert type bridge may also be Marklin? these would have been bought pre-WW I.  The duckunder bridge looks like the American Flyer red wooden trestle bridge.  Can't tell who made the tunnel, looks like an Ives or Flyer with the white building on the side?  The trains are described as all Lionel, but it looks like they used a little of everything for accessories.

I like the big dollhouse. That's how my dad's standard gauge were set up in the attic of the farmhouse when I was a kid.  Passenger train stopped at my sister's dollhouse on the way around the loop, to give the dolls a ride.  Nobody worried about things being the right scale.

15 is a lot of switches for that size layout and that era.  We only had 4.

I believe the "well proportioned 4-4-0" was later identified as a Marklin piece. Also a schroener live steamer in the window.

Here is a better scan of the article I had in the archives. The duck-under bridge is not American Flyer, looks to be more a home built variety.

ARNO

I would like to see the transformers they used on that layout !!   That was in the early days of electric power and equipment was pretty big and heavy.  Some set ups were even crude when it came to power. Interesting.

I love looking at stuff like this.  What is old and antiqued now (if these trains survived) was modern back in 1917.  I’m often tempted to try to re-create things like this to enjoy the simplicity of trains that once were. 

I’m also curious about the transformers that were used back then. 

I never really thought about the transformers, heard from a neighbor a few magazines later a rumor about them being old trolley equipment?

I remember way back when I first read that article. 

Even though I have minimal interest in tinplate, two words came to mind: "Lucky kids."

Rusty

Obviously they were well off money-wise but to power all that track, I would guess they weren't using batteries.  Their town must have had a power house with boilers, probably for a street car line, a mill or  industrial plant of some kind. There are articles how they did it which today seem pretty dangerous and bizarre.  I have a bunch of books on street cars and a couple of old engineering books on such things.

Wow! How did I never know about this...

That's a Lionel thin rim #1912 pulling some knobby roof cars.

There is a Carrette station and Marklin telephone poles with wires connecting them.

And is that the super rare bridge as shown on the Lionel 1911 catalog?

If you download and zoom in to the first photo on page 45 you can see two transformers. One big one with a metal cover and another which looks like a Lionel unit.

Interesting crazy track plan. Too bad there are no photos of the other side of the layout.

Thanks for posting!

Just found a copy of the mag on eBay for $5. Can't believe I never had this in my archive.

Not too sure, would have to do some research but I don't think Lionel had transformers that early. Maybe Marklin or someone else. Definitely a nice layout.

The track plan shown doesn't match the very first photo directly under it. I count four parallel tracks the plan shows only three.

Ron M

I enlarged the one photo and there sure is a lot of old trains and toys to  look at. It does look like some kind of a step down transformer to the left and a box to its right that has studs or something on the top-that is the way they did it then. Love the old locos, a street car and cars plus a pile of track on the shelf.

Here is the bridge pictured on the layout compared to the 1913 Lionel catalog. I have never heard of one of these bridges being found...

Very interesting to see a layout from that far back. That's somewhat rare material.

So, an around the walls layout on narrow tables with a lift section for the door in 1917. The timing of the move out and leaving stuff behind during the depression was not a mystery.

JIM P,

Philadelphia definitely had electricity in 1917.  They needed it to build all of the Baldwin locos.

El Classico,

Very cool. Thanks for posting an interesting topic!

MrNabisco posted:

Here is the bridge pictured on the layout compared to the 1913 Lionel catalog. I have never heard of one of these bridges being found...

 Lou Redman had one and I photographed it at York a number of years ago. At the present time I can't locate the pic. An "0-gauge" version, catalog #103, showed up at the Oct. 2014 New & Unusual photo op session. The pic is in the TCQ Vol. 61-3 page 38.

Ron M

Moonman posted:

So, an around the walls layout on narrow tables with a lift section for the door in 1917. The timing of the move out and leaving stuff behind during the depression was not a mystery.

JIM P,

Philadelphia definitely had electricity in 1917.  They needed it to build all of the Baldwin locos.

El Classico,

Very cool. Thanks for posting an interesting topic!

You are welcome moonman!

And the text reads... "There is a pole line carrying electric lights and a telegraph line using standard equipment". That is cool. A working telegraph system on a toy train layout. Practice sending messages back and forth. Educational for the time period. I was looking at the photos trying to figure out where the lines went. From station to station?

Interesting stuff. The crane photo and the trolley under the benchwork in the corner really caught my eye. If the family was affluent enough for all that wonderful tinplate, it's possible they were connected to a local grid as mentioned above. There were a lot of machine shops and engineering outfits that built small steam power plants to light up parts of their neighborhoods in the early days; maybe this family had an interest in one. Running a layout on the old battery jars full of acid would have been a bit nasty I'd say, but by that date electricity was well into the public utility stage.