Finding the Layout of a long lost friend...

Best wishes in your search Mason.

You should visit a library for archives of the Pocono Record. Find his obituary and look for names of relatives. Then, try to contact them. What did Aunt and Uncle do with everything? There's always boxes of photos in closets and attics. Start with them.

If I could be of  any encouragement may I suggest something.  I too have a lost youthful contact with trains.  Now as an adult I have collected all that which was most special when a child.

I gave up on getting the exact pieces I desired but rather got that which I could get from my lingering memories.

After all, it was not necessarily a singular particular item  but a similar example of each item I could find that rekindles the memories of yesteryear.

Plus when I think about it, it was not so much the trains but the memories of the precious, patient, loving, committed adults that sought to bring me joy.

Tom Tee posted:

If I could be of  any encouragement may I suggest something.  I too have a lost youthful contact with trains.  Now as an adult I have collected all that which was most special when a child.

I gave up on getting the exact pieces I desired but rather got that which I could get from my lingering memories.

After all, it was not necessarily a singular particular item  but a similar example of each item I could find that rekindles the memories of yesteryear.

Plus when I think about it, it was not so much the trains but the memories of the precious, patient, loving, committed adults that sought to bring me joy.

Although I do not remember much about his layout or remember much from his collection I did have a certain nostalgic feeling when i finished painting my Revell Big Boy, a feeling of victory for some reason. I finally did get a big boy after 12 long years of waiting. I have an HO AFT but it's not the same as the O scale Lionel one he had with the unprototypical tender and unrealistic look of it that, when I see one on ebay, makes me think of the earlier years where I didn't care about how realistic a model should be. I still don't care, I respect the model of the Daylight that he once had because it's probably what is pushing me to post things like these, wherever his may be I will still look up to it. Hell, I couldn't even tell whether it was a GS2 or a GS4. Maybe I'll just get the O gauge Daylight with the unprototypical tender and call it quits because I know there probably isn't a single soul that has pictures or memories of his old layout. I do thank him for the emotional attachment to the Daylight, Big Boy, and Blue Comet.  That is one of the models that I have that he didn't, The Blue Comet, he always talked about getting one according to my father  but never had the chance. I remember as a child looking at the MTH (probably PS1) Blue Comet in the rear of the catalog and saying "I want that one" Hehe I guess that the Railking version did it for me in recent years.