John Shankland Layout

Boy a blast from the past. A few years ago we started going to Florida for a winter break. I thought of that layout and looked for some info. on it to see if it was anywhere near where we were staying. I couldn’t find any info. . The layout I believe featured Proto 1 engines with an elaborate computer setup that switched powered blocks automatically. With the arrival of DCS before completion I wonder if it just got bogged down. It was kind of obsolete control wise before it was finished.

There was another layout that was near our friends that we visited. North of Tampa. It was being built in a Quonset hut. Visible from the road and being built in stages. Then being reassembled in a future permanent location. High end with all craftsman like structures. I believe it was called the Fowler Dream Layout. My friend sent me a link to a local TV news station that did a feature on it. You can Google it but looks like the page never changes.

John Shankland was one of the people who implemented Dr. Bruce Chubb's Computer/Model Railroad Interface (C/MRI) on his layout.  (One of the very few among 3-rail O scalers, I believe.)   He did some innovative work with C/MRI and was very helpful to other members of the group.  His last post to the group was in November of 2006.  Although the details are foggy in my memory, I recall that he ran into a problem using TMCC with C/MRI.  IIRC, when he turned on the TMCC signal (connected the base to the track), it caused glitches in the functioning of the C/MRI (which worked perfectly until he also tried to use TMCC).  I may be wrong, but something is knocking around in my memory that he got discouraged from the incompatibility problems and not being able to find a workable solution.

The info. I gathered from an internet search is that John moved to Melbourne, FL. Most of the pictures appear to be of his original Chicago layout - and the track plan is much larger than what was shown in the TM video; there's also photos I didn't recognize from the video.

I heard of the Bruce Chubb's model rr interface, maybe it was from the video. The internet photos show some of the circuitry - very complicated looking, yet from what I learned from the video the system was state of the art. As I think about the advantages of such a system, perhaps an operator can power a train more realistically, though I would think any speed control system would need to be deactivated.

Wow, Paul……..thank you for making my brain re-insert a 5.25” floppy…….that was a great layout and I will get it out this weekend to look at it again!

Peter