Tom Lendzion layout

Tom's layout is gone.    Most if not all the rollling stock has been sold off at Chicago and Cleveland shows.     After he died his family decided to take it down.    Two of his sons, Mark and Steve handled dismantling it and selling the stuff.     Steve is the only model railroader and is in HO and lives in his own house and is building an HO layout.    I think also, Tom's wife needed the money she could raise from selling off the stuff.    And she takes care of a couple of grandkids and this gave them a basement playroom.   

I wrote a more in depth article on Toms  Layout that was in O Scale News around issue 75 one way or the other.  

It was a great layout and operated very well and very smoothly.     One of Tom's goals was to show that a good O Scale Layout could be built without buying brass and making high investments.    He was a very talented builder and painter and most of the rolling stock was repainted and lettered.    He also used a number of kits and kitbashed stuff.    One of the more interesting projects he did was to build the old Gloorcraft/Quality Craft lumber yard kit.    Tom bought the kit at a show.   All the parts were wood.   Tom bought styrene and replaced all the wood and got his own details and used the plans to build the kit.    Then he put all the original wood parts and castings back in the box and resold the kit.    He liked building in Styrene better than wood.

PRRJIM, thanks for the info.

Doug

What a shame that the layout wasn't saved in some manner.  I too visited the layout some years before his passing and it was really great.  He had a real nice set-up and challenged the visitors with running some movements of cars that he had previously staged with a set of cards as to where each car was to be placed.  He was a talented modeler and a very generous host.  

Allegheny posted:

What a shame that the layout wasn't saved in some manner.  I too visited the layout some years before his passing and it was really great.  He had a real nice set-up and challenged the visitors with running some movements of cars that he had previously staged with a set of cards as to where each car was to be placed.  He was a talented modeler and a very generous host.  

Agreed. 

I was fortunate to visit Tom once when he was in HO (and he worked for Lionel at the time.)  His HO railroad was just as good and was an operator's railroad where locomotives with Hobbytown drives ruled. 

Rusty

The article on Tom's NYC Ypsilanti branch line was in the May 2007 Model Railroader magazine.

Doug