Sooner or later, somebody's going to tell me to sit down and shut up.
Until that happens, though, here's another installment on SHABBONA RR
Bob Nicholson
SHABBONA RR 6 - Into the '80's
1979 started with a humongous blizzard on New Years Day. Then, Santa
Fe sent me to Joliet to work a road switcher job. Between the two, I
didn't get back to Ft. Madison or Lacon for about two months. That put
a definite crimp in any model railroad activity!
The house at Lacon went on the market in February of 1979 in order to
move to Ft. Madison. Layout construction was dormant for that reason,
but by laying sections of flex track across the kitchen counter, I
could at least run locomotives back and forth, and dream of the Big
Day. I also built the Locomotive Workshop SW-1 from the Waukesha S Fest.
SHABBONA decided its interests would be better served with a
passenger train presence. A couple of small "pike-size" trains, made
up of one locomotive and a basic three-car trainset, each with a
combination of older heavyweight and newer streamlined equipment, was
plausible. The purchasing department ordered two Beveridge PA power
units and a dummy chassis for a PB-1, to serve as a "backup" for the
PA's, in anticipation of this service. These nice running units had
all the style and class of their prototype counterparts, but too much
overhang for the 36" radius curves I had set as a minimum so I sold
them. I still wonder what they might have looked like in black with
white zebra stripes.
In 1980, the house in Lacon was still on the market, so any layout
construction was still moribund. That was probably just as well,
because I really didn't have a firm idea for a layout design, anyway.
I only knew what kind of layout I wanted, you know, the Layout to End
All Layouts (John Allen, step aside!). Unknown dimensions of any
future basement, though, made even layout design speculative, at best.
Progress was at a standstill.
1980 was the year Don Heimburger took S scale "on the road". In
August, we loaded the Mazda pickup (32MPG loaded, no "hybrid
technology", no catalytic convertor, unleaded gas) and headed for the
NMRA convention in Orlando, FL. At first, interest was languorous, at
best - some even referred to our exhibit as a "traveling dog and pony
show". Then, some convention attendees, many of whom did not know that
S still existed, began to gather around for a closer look. A few
exhibitors, taking note of the rising activity around our booth, came
over for their own "squinted eyeball test".
The ball really began to roll, though, when Bruce Giles and Jettie
Pageant of Alco Models came by with some serious questions about S
scale and its potential. We talked again at the Model Railroad
Industry Show in Cincinatti, OH, that October. In 1981, at the Model
Railroad Industry Show in Pittsburgh, PA, they had the pilot model for
a brass S scale Alco RS-3 they proposed to import.
By the time of the Chicago "S" Fest in November, 1981, the
first-ever imported brass S scale standard gauge locomotive, in the
form of the Alco RS-3 roadswitcher, was a reality. SHABBONA RR took
delivery of two in anticipation of a projected increase in traffic.
The trips to Orlando, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh had been a success, In
January, 1982, SHABBONA took delivery of an Alco Models imported brass
Alco RS-2, a natural outgrowth of the RS-3 project, but the ball still
wasn't ready to stop rolling. That same January, Don received a
telephone call that eventually had the greatest impact on SHABBONA up
to that time.
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