Since January, we’ve been nominating people to establish a Model Railroader Hall of Fame. Just to be clear, this isn’t a Model Railroader magazine Hall of Fame, but a Hall of Fame for all model railroaders.
This idea had been percolating in my mind since a couple of middle-aged model railroaders came to visit the old Model Railroader offices at 21027 Crossroads Circle in Waukesha, Wis. We would offer tours to see the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy model railroad, as well as various project layouts we had around the office, and always included a stop at the display cabinet outside our offices.
Inside the cabinet are artifacts that help chart the history of model railroading. One of them is a steam locomotive from John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid model railroad. When I showed it to the modelers, I was expecting an expression of awe, or appreciation at least, but instead I was met with a blank look on both of their faces, and a question from one of them, “Who?”
These were guys who were clearly modelers. They appreciated everything they saw, but John’s name was new to them. It occurred to me that other great names were probably also unknown to them and others.
One of the great things about this hobby is all of the people who have worked out best practices for building a successful model railroad. From scenery, to wiring, to benchwork, to structure and rolling stock construction, someone has probably tackled something similar to what you want to do and shared his or her experiences so we could all learn without frustrating trial and error.
In presenting the nominees for the inaugural class, we wanted to be sure to include the folks who made the big contributions. The plan is to start with a dozen inductees and add to this list every year. We want this to be a Hall of Fame for all model railroaders, and with that in mind, we our readers to vote in the Model Railroader Hall of Fame to help us choose the first 12.
Voting is still open on our website, but it will be closing soon so we can get the initial class into our December issue. So if you haven’t voted yet, or if someone was nominated later in the year who you’d like to vote for, go to Trains.com and check out the survey pages to vote in the Model Railroader Hall of Fame.
Here, in the order they were nominated, are this year’s candidates:
January: Al Kalmbach, founder and first editor and publisher of Model Railroader magazine; Linn Westcott, innovator and longtime MR editor; W. Allen McClelland, builder of the landmark Virginian & Ohio model railroad and operations pioneer. Vote here.
February: John H. Armstrong, the Dean of Track Planning and an accomplished O scale modeler; John Allen, builder of the Gorre & Daphetid and a pioneer in model railroad photography and weathering; Gordon Odegard, an MR associate editor known for his craftsmanship as a modeler and as a railroad draftsman. Vote here.
March: Art Curren, known for his embracing of the concept of kitbashing (rearranging and combining kit parts into a different model than the manufacturer intended); Andy Sperandeo, the MR executive editor who was a familiar sight at model railroad operating sessions and did much to promote that aspect of the hobby through his “The Operators” column; Jack Work, a prolific author and master craftsman whose articles inspired many to build his projects even many years after the articles first appeared. Vote here.
April: Gilbert A. Freitag, creator of the HO scale Stony Creek & Western, an excellent modeler and also a first-class ambassador for the hobby; Iain Rice, a proponent of compact model railroads whose beautiful watercolor renderings of track plans graced MR for years; Frank C. Ellison, author of The Art of Model Railroading, who helped define what a model railroad is and how to operate it once it was built. Vote here.
May: Malcolm Furlow, who burst onto the model railroad scene with his narrow-gauge modeling in the 1980s and quickly became very popular; Dick Elwell, whose Hoosic Valley HO scale model railroad was an inspiration to many, as was his willingness to help others with their projects; John Pryke, a prolific MR author who modeled the New York, New Haven & Hartford in his native New England. Vote here.
June: Irvin “Irv” Athearn, founder of Athearn Trains, which helped build the hobby by supplying rolling stock for many HO scale modelers from the 1960s to today; Joshua Lionel Cowen, whose three-rail Lionel Trains were the first introduction to the hobby for many model railroaders; William K. Walthers, a manufacturer and retailer who helped build the hobby through the mail-order hobby store that bears his name, and still sells a significant portion of the material used in most of the model railroads in North America. Vote here.
July: Victor Roseman (known in his bylines as V.S. Roseman), a prolific writer who loved to teach about his favorite hobby; Dean Freytag, known for his steel mill modeling and for repurposing found items into details on his models; Harold H. “Hal” Carstens, editor and publisher of Railroad Model Craftsman for much of its history. Vote here.
August: James D. Hediger, the longest-serving editor at Model Railroader, with more than 42 years on the masthead when he retired in 2015, and an innovator who built one of the first double-deck model railroads; Michael R. Stephens, a second-generation Kalmbach employee who helped develop the World’s Greatest Hobby promotion and served as president of Athearn Trains and vice president at Wm. K. Walthers Inc.; George H. Drury, well known for his passenger car and station modeling, who also created the David P. Morgan Memorial Library at Kalmbach, and now Firecrown. Vote here.
September: Jim Fitzgerald, known as “Mr. Ntrak,” who was one of the first modelers to dig into the idea of standards for modular railroads; Cliff Robinson, who hosted numerous modelers on his HO scale Marquette Union Terminal (MUT) and helped many of them become notable modelers themselves; Whit Towers, author of more than 100 articles in the hobby press, who also helped spread the word about model railroading through many positions in the National Model Railroad Association, including as editor of the NMRA Bulletin. Vote here.
