EMD Displays – Cutaway Model Diesel Shop

EMD not only designed and sold locomotives, they also designed and provided contracting services for Diesel Locomotive servicing facilities, and the tools and equipment required to operate them. The locomotive shops were featured in an EMD advertising catalog titled FACILITIES, profusely illustrated with black and white line drawings by their staff artists. The EMD designed diesel shops, including the Erie Railroad diesel shop in Marion, Ohio, were the subject of a series of articles in Railroad Model Craftsman magazine a dozen years ago. EMD’s use of models was also covered in a RMC article in the same time period.

To promote this service, EMD built a 1/48 scale (model railroad “O” scale) cutaway model of an EMD designed servicing facility that was basically similar to one of the shops shown in the FACILITIES catalog. This model included a cutaway of the side and roof to show the servicing tracks, storeroom, workshop areas, locker rooms, and the oil storage tanks in the basement. The locomotives in the shop were General Models (later All Nation) NW2 and F3 cast “O” scale models that were readily available in hobby shops at the time. The shop and its base were transportable in a station wagon or pickup truck. The display was shown at trade shows and open house events. The eventual disposition of the model diesel shop is not currently known.

In my experience, it seems like very few museums have a display of this type, showing the servicing of locomotives, either diesel or steam. The construction of this model and level of detailing are easily compatible with current model railroad practice, and building such a display might be practical for a museum working with a local model railroad club, with the result enhancing recognition of both organizations.

General Models (All Nation) NW2 and F3 locomotives as used in this display are frequently available on eBay auctions. The white metal Comet Authenticast 1/48 scale machine tools for the shop are no longer in production but are also occasionally available on eBay auctions. There are now fairly accurate 1/48 scale resin models of EMD 567 diesel engines that are available for display in the shop.

PC

Well, about all I can add is: Gee Whiz, how about that ??

Of the ten articles I originally wrote for RyPN, seven are listed in the Articles Index, and all have lost their cover photos and intros. Some of the seven work otherwise. I will confess to being useless when it comes to debugging (synonymous with using) software, so I have only provided copies of everything, and not even tried to help.

If writing and posting your articles here doesn't work out, maybe it would be better if you just WRITE A BOOK. It seems like a no-brainer to me that somebody ought to publish it, but if it at least exists in some sort of cyber archival format, those who are sufficiently interested would have the option of publishing single copies on demand, and paying you a user's fee. I have a friend who works in management with Deutsche Bahn, who has done a few of these one-offs for me. One I know for sure, he shot with a Canon digital camera, and laid out on his phone. The final copy is 16" by 20" glossy, and the quality is excellent. It's good enough to compare with 2 1/4" film work, back in the day when they still made prints by shining light through pieces of film onto sheets of paper. Even if his computer goes nuts (what are the odds ??) and erases everything, or some other cyber mishap zaps his files, or they suddenly become "obsolete", I still have one Hell of a coffee table book.

Sammy, Thanks very much for your thoughts on this.

Unfortunately the railroad book market it not what it used to be. There was a printing of a popular railroad photo book title of 7000 back in the 1980s and they all sold out in about four months, but that book had dozens of showings of a PowerPoint program for many years prior to printing, that helped to promote it. Nowadays a printing of 1000 books is considered "big".

I have written dozens of documenting data sheets for EMD, Detroit Diesel, Cleveland Diesel, Caterpillar, Alco, Wabtec and FM diesel related displays. I plan on printing and binding them and giving the resulting paper to the Barriger Library so it will be archived and available in the future. If I were to publish it, it would definitely be self-published, you unfortunately can't justify the time and complexity of meetings and correspondence with editors and committees over projects with such a small market as we have nowadays.

PC