Farewell to an N scale pioneer

Last summer we lost Jim FitzGerald, one of the N scale community’s great ­pioneers. He’d just turned 90. He was one of my personal heroes and also, I’m proud to say, a friend. My model railroading life, and I think my life in general, would have been far different were it not for him.

So many of you met Jim and knew him through the Ntrak Newsletter, which he published and edited for 40 years. It all began when he attended an Ntrak organizational meeting in 1974. Before it was over, he’d volunteered to produce a newsletter. That newsletter ­became so important because it bound together Ntrak modelers all over the country, and eventually the world.

There was news about events, both upcoming and past; photos of other modelers’ modules; information on building and detailing models of all sorts; news of new products; and more.
But Jim’s contributions soon went far beyond the newsletter. Ntrak had no ­organizational structure, no officers,
no bylaws, none of that. Jim was the glue that held it all together. He came to be called “Mr. Ntrak” by many members.

My own relationship with Jim began in the mid-1970s when I was living in North Carolina. I saw an article in the National Model Railroad Association Bulletin about Ntrak and really liked the idea. I sent a letter off to Jim in California to get the introductory brochures and prepared a presentation to give the North Raleigh Model Railroad Club, to which I belonged.

I took the floor at the meeting (the “floor” probably being in someone’s living room) and began pitching the idea that we build modules and set up an Ntrak layout one weekend at the Crabtree Mall. Within two minutes someone said “that’s fine, Jim, let’s do it,” and several more voiced their agreement. Out of inertia I kept going with the presentation. “Okay, Jim,” they said. “Stop ­already. We’re in.”

That had to be the most successful pitch I ever made, and I think it illustrates just how compelling the Ntrak idea was, especially to a round-robin club like ours that had no regular meeting place or layout. Imagine meetings like this occuring in towns and cities all across the nation, and it’s easy to understand how Ntrak grew so quickly.

The mall show Ntrak layout quickly became a reality, and I corresponded ­often with Jim about the club’s activities.

Several years later I took a job at Model Railroader and was so excited I called Jim to tell him about it. I’d written a couple of short articles for him and he said he was going to rush them into the newsletter so he could say I’d been published there first. This he did, and ­often kidded me about it in later years.

I met Jim in person in 1979 when I went to San Luis Obispo, Calif., to represent the magazine at an NMRA convention. He’d arranged to pick me up at the airport and also had planned a trip to ­Tehachapi Loop after the convention.

That day I fell in love with a mountain, and my N scale Tehachapi Pass ­layout was conceived. It began as a crude track plan I sketched on a paper napkin while we were having dinner in Lost Hills, Calif., on our way home.

I hooked up with Jim many more times over the next 25 years, and we made several more trips to Tehachapi Loop, me to gather data and take photos and him just to enjoy the day. Over the years he introduced many more visitors to the loop, and I think it took little persuasion to get him to do so.

I always loved road trips with Jim because he was such a font of information. He understood the geology of the wondrous mountains and knew all about the flora and fauna. He could tell our elevation within a few hundred feet by looking at the plants around us. He’d point out the little things, like how in the desert there’d be more vegetation along the sides of the highway because of the runoff from the road surface when those rare raindrops would come.

Jim was a very gentle and patient man, qualities that served him well when disputes arose in the Ntrak group. Often these involved the standards for the modules, particularly that third main track, which causes design and realism challenges for many modelers.

The standards did change some over the years, but Jim was very proud of the fact that a module made in the early days could still be incorporated into a layout being set up today.

No one enjoyed N scale and Ntrak more than Jim, but his contributions to model railroading went far beyond that. We began to see modular systems in other scales, and more people who didn’t have the room, resources, or perhaps even the inclination to build a home layout could participate in the hobby. Just try to imagine a train show nowadays without modular layouts. I’d really ­rather not.