O Scale Motor News Chronicle June 6 D-Day

I like these posts Richard. Always something interesting.

I love the Packard staff cars.  

 

I have only one military staff car on my layout.  It is a Lionel era-era inspection vehicle, which I think was a late '30s Buick, which died, so I put wheels and axles from a diecast car I converted to "streets into it and painted it olive drab.  The inspection car has toolboxes built into the back of the front fenders and they look very military, so it fits nicely in its new role.  

My layout period is just prior to WWII, so none of this is appropriate, but there has

been a lot offered from the WWII period, if you model it.  If you modeled Fort Knox

or some other military installation with train lines into it, filled the roads with

armored vehicles and the rails with troop cars and flats loaded with armor, you'd

have a different "theme" based on "steam's finest hour".  With an airport serving

AAF fighters and C-47 cargo planes, it would easily fill your basement, with room

left maybe just for a civilian RR station on the edge of the "base".

Oh, yes, and there is the guy in the dealer hall at York who sells all those armor loaded flats.

Richard:  Thanx for starting this special topic.  Perfect timing with this, the 70th anniversary of the beginning of taking our world back again.

 

As for my own military trains, I do, of course, own a group of 12 of the WWII troop cars from Weaver.  To compliment that train, I also have about six or eight flat cars to carry the military vehicles, including tanks, personnel carriers, jeeps and even an amphibious vehicle.  Weaver also offered their flat car in O.D. with some of the wooden crates, also in O.D. and marked with military data.  To accommodate the officers of the traveling battalion I have two O.D. Pullmans also signed for U. S. Army.  But I don't have a military staff car, a civilian vehicle painted O.D. for the commanding officer to ride around in.  Gonna hafta watch out for a good vehicle to strap down on another flat.

 

My only problem with the "troop train" is that there are about 30 cars in total and, while it does make a nice looking train, it really is too long for my own layout, which, by siding length, is limited to about 12 or 15 cars.  On a larger modular layout, I once had the whole train stretched out behind a Berkshire and looking like we were going to war again.

 

Paul Fischer

I model on On30, and my soon-to-begin-construction layout will take place in the US in 1943:

My primary hobby was always military history (I'm also a former US Army Captain, yeah, I never got enough of it, I guess). This shot gives you an idea what I do on many weekends in the summer time:

I’m for sure not where I thought I’d be on this day. Last year, my plan was to have been standing at Omaha Beach this very morning. There was a WW2 vehicle convoy going from there to Germany in a 2-week event where everyone lives as a WW2 GI. Their original plan when announced in 2013 was to be to be leaving Normandy tomorrow to head East, following the 2nd Armored Division's route in 1944. I was invited to be one of the few Americans to go along, portraying a War Correspondent (see the photo below, from a display I put on at a large event in Portland last summer). But they changed their plans (they’re now doing that in August and won’t be going anywhere near Normandy) and that and my nehpew getitng married this past month threw off the whole reason I was going to go and the wedidng killed the vacation time I had for this. I know several people who went to France for this week. So now, my plan is to be there in 5 years for the 75th anniversary. My ‘bucket list’ of places I must see sometime in my life is very short, and Normandy is right at the top of that list (Been to most of the other WW2 battlefields in Europe and some in the Pacific).

Anyone interested in this period might enjoy Maury Klein's, A Call to Arms, about how the US organized and ran the war on the industrial and national economy basis here at home.  It sounds bizarre I know, but this 900 page tome on how we set up boards to decide who built what (Ford built B-24s, Kaiser built Liberty Ships, etc.), and how steel, aluminum, copper, tolulen and rubber were allocated when there was never enough, etc., is absolutely fascinating.  It really brings home what it was like to live in America at that time, when the country felt its back to the wall and the term "I'm unemployed" was not only non-existent, but considered unpatriotic.  

On our way back from Spencer,NC we stopped at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford,VA off I-81. Very impressive.

Here's another staff car by Rextoys, a 1935 Ford painted for the U.S. Navy. This model is also made painted for the Army, as a taxi, and in various civilian colors. 

 

 

Art from the 1943 Pennsylvania Railroad Calender

When smoke meant Industrial might.

This reflected the attitude of the nation.

 

I have always loved that picture.  It would have been tough to breathe, but it is a very cool depiction of America in those days.

 

Art

Great posts. I always look forward to your posts Richard.