Never realizing that to this day how fortunate I was to live close to
Walter Graeff's Hobby Shop on Florence St. in Lebanon, Pa.
Walter was a marvelous very friendly man, also a very successful attorney
and politician. Many times I with my son Jeff, and many others, we would
travel to the Hobby Shop and just talk with Walter. Walter was a very firm
believer in American Flyer S Gauge. Come Christmas time his shop was packed
full of American Flyer and Lionel train sets.
Walter felt that we needed more than American Flyer equipment and he had
designed all the ACE equipment we use to this day to chop up American Flyer
trains to make our equipment more prototypical. He had plenty of
encouragement from us and his ACE business was pretty big time for modelers
wanting to go to S Scale. Yes, it was more high rail when compared to the
scale models we have today, but were he living, he would be very happy with
what is happening in S scale today. I remember his talking to the various
Tool & Die makers about his wheel sets and he wasn't afraid of spending
money to get what he wanted. I still have a lot of his wheel sets that were
flops, and I have a lot of his stuff that is still like new, most likely
will never use them again.
I might say that Walter Greaff is the man who most likely got us all started
in going S scale. Somewhere in my archives I have a tape where I interviewed
Walter at the Silver Spring convention. I'll have to play it back and listen
to what he had to say way back then about the future of S gauge.
Many, many, of us as Bob (Nicholson) has shown on this list, still run
American Flyer scale conversions and most observers are not the wiser. (Yes,
Raleigh, even the cabooses have become more valuable and make good scale
conversions.)
Boy, rereading this shows me I'm old, and there is no doubt about my being
sentimental about all the good times I've had modeling in S gauge over the
years, but, yes, darn it, I miss each and every one of my friends who have
passed on to the big model railroad in the sky, and I also miss those whom I
can't get to see in person, every day.
Thank heavens for this S List!
"S"ee Ya,
Bill (Fraley)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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