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Manhattan Modelers | Premiere Issue

Mar 10, 2023 12:46 pm

Newsletter Premier Issue | March 2023

Welcome !

I’m so happy to have you along for the beginning of this group. Heath Hurwitz and I have been planning this for a while now and are very pleased that we are finally really getting things rolling. One of the issues that I have had since first moving to the city in 2001 has been that, despite being surrounded by people, it has been hard for me to find other modelers to talk with. The goal of forming this group is to find a community to share advice and resources. As I’m sure you know, it is very easy to be a “Lone Wolf” modeler but having a community is both inspiring and much more fun.

As far as where we are now. In a week we have signed up about a dozen members for Manhattan Modelers. We hope to have an in person meeting to greet everyone and really start the conversation.

One of the constant stumbling blocks that has really slowed us down from starting this effort sooner is finding an in-person place to meet. While the group is small, we could probably meet at a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop. I found a Boardgame Cafe that might be a fun option but that requires a $10 a head cover charge. Playing some railroad related game or bringing an Inglenook switching puzzle layout along would be a fun start. My local public library branch has meeting rooms but require $140 for a 2-hour meeting. Does anyone know a place that would accommodate our group, like a church or other such location? If you have any leads, please write to ManhattanModelers@gmail.com

Where we may go. As of 2021, there were 1.629 million people just in Manhattan. There are 8.468 million people in NYC overall. There must be more than a dozen model railroaders in NYC. We hope to show that this is a great hobby for people with limited space. Let’s find those hidden hobbyists and bring them together to find a community.

Representing modelers of all eras, all scales, and all prototypes, but united by the unique characteristics of our space constraints.

We want this group to be open and flexible and we want you to feel like you have a say in the way Manhattan Modelers develops. I would like to include your voices in this newsletter and would be happy to accept any submissions and suggestions for the future at ManhattanModelers@gmail.com.

To get the conversation going I asked Dan to write a bit about his modeling journey and how the constraints of the city has affected it.

- Andy Estep

And You May Ask Yourself…. Well, How Did I Get Here?

by Dan Free

My adventure in Modeling, Manhattan Style began with downsizing from 7 ½” gauge live steam when I first moved to the City. For almost 20 years, I was true to the advice I always was happy to volunteer to other modelers, “Pick one scale, and stick with it.” Living in the City, the choice seemed obvious: N scale, in T-track modules and Kato Uni-track that could easily be stored away. My focus is/was varied – US, UK, German and Japanese prototypes, but the unifying theme being all 19^th century from roughly the US Civil War to a cut-off of World War I. (Z scale was not an option that appealed to me due to lack of offerings in that era.)

All went along as planned until about 3 years ago, when I bought a German half-timbered house kit advertised on eBay as N scale which, when constructed, looked strangely over-scale. Research revealed that I had in fact purchased a TT scale kit – a scale I’d always been curious about – and soon I found myself scouring eBay for cheap, used German TT rolling stock. TT is a scale well suited for smaller spaces, ‘N scale that you can see…” and provides more robust performance than N when it comes to “small” (relatively) 19^th century locos. I was pleased that much of the TT equipment on eBay was of German origin, and looked as if it had been seen in a hobby shop window by a US tourist in the 1970s/80s, brought back as a souvenir, run a time or two, and then promptly put in a drawer and forgotten. As there is little market for it, older rolling stock could often be purchased on the cheap and tweaked, re-painted, re-decaled, and/or reconditioned to present-day standards. That kept me busy for a couple of years – the attached photo shows a WWI Prussian hospital train that I repurposed from regular Prussian coaching stock (as occurred in prototype) from eBay purchases in the $5 to $8 range per car. The question of operating space was solved by cutting up a 4’x8’ sheet of quarter inch plywood to suitable size to work as an overlay for the sofa coffee-table – and, being ¼” ply, it’s thin enough to slide behind a dresser out of sight when not in use.

While this was going on (and as my eyes aged), I became more and more curious about O scale, lured by Dapol UK offering the LBSC Terrier locos at a reasonable price (for O gauge). Getting to know Andy of our group (who is farther down the line in O scale than I am) helped tip the balance and I now have a long list of kits to complete in O scale. Operating space is more of a challenge, and at this stage we’re talking absolute minimum radius curves on the apartment floor when I want to run equipment – an ad hoc arrangement known to me as the Chelsea Short Line. One of my first O scale projects was building a rake of Slaters British goods wagons from kits. Next followed the re-conversion of one of the old AHM 0-6-0T ‘yardgoat’ locos sold in the 60s (another eBay bargain) back into a Prussian T3 class loco as running around 1890 to 1910. Curious about the differences between modeling in O as compared to TT and N, I next turned to an 1890s era US flagstop station (by Ameri-Towne) to get a feel for modeling structures in this scale with full interiors. The result has been a total re-build, with only the four stone walls of the kit actually being used. The second photo shows the model as it nears completion.

So, insofar as the old saying “Do as I say, not as I do” goes, I’m guilty as charged; now having rolling stock in 3 gauges packed away in closets, under-bed storage, and every other un-occupied surface in the crib. Own it! – but may this serve as a cautionary tale – read over your eBay listings very carefully.