I realized I'm missing a 50s requirement for my layout

How about paper clips?  

Oh yeah they will look great! 

Don't forget the Lucille Ball and Ethel Merman figures! 

 

 

I've still got one on my chimney!

How's that UHF working for you Roy?  

In about a year, I'll have one back up on mine.

 

J White

 

Certainly, you meant Vivian Vance...

 

 

and not Ethel Merman...

 

Vivian Vance played Ethel Mertz.

Specifically, Vivian Vance as; Ethel Roberta Louise Mae Mertz, and Lucille Ball as; Lucille Esmeralda "Lucy" McGillicuddy Ricardo.

I always liked the Plasticville antennas.

You'll also need a TV station.

We didn't get cable until sometime in the 1970's.  Used an antenna with a rotor.  I wish i still had the rotor part, I think it would work great to power a turn table.

Even though it's a combination VHF/UHF antenna, still only so-so. Gotta go up there and see if anything is corroded. Somehow, going up on the roof is not as much fun as it used to be. 

They are still available. Try Homedepot.com.

 

Interesting idea. Not sure they would be precise enough, but the controller would be really nice.

We had an antenna for FM reception long after we got cable.

Details like roof antennas really make a layout pop.  Great idea.

The fall is even less fun!

Not just the residential homes, but the downtown buildings. Many businesses had apartments, owners lived above, or sold TVs. All needing reception. Many times the roofs were cluttered with each tenent having his own.

Try google search for Model Memories. They make catenary poles and wire for PRR and New Haven in HO and O gauges. They also make rooftop TV antennas.

In the 50's we had a 50 foot antenna on our roof with 3 sets of guy wires, most of the houses had them and after a big pacific storm it was always fun to count how many were blown down.  My grandfather's farm over in the central valley had about a 70 foot lattice tower so he could get stations from SF and LA.....DaveB

I remember reading in one of the mags where someone had done that, worked pretty good IIRC.

50s???

I saw plenty of them in the late 90s in my hometown in Florida.

Cable didn't come in to where I lived until the late 1980s.

Long before I could recall it happening (maybe before I was born, but I've never asked, and I think I will ask next time I call my folks), Dad put up an old telephone pole and mounted a TV antenna atop it, next to the house. A simple cable ran from that, through a caulked hole in the wall of the house, under the floorboards and through a small sealed hole in the floor of the living room. It had alligator clips at the end, and whenever lightning got close or we went away for more than a day for anything, we'd disconnect it to prevent lightning damage. In that part of the country, there's more lightning than almost anywhere else on Earth.

 

Don't forget to put one on every house (keeping up with the Joneses and all that) and also make each a little different. I haven't thought about something that small.