"What you said about Frank's Spiral Hill is true. I always delight in reading your accounts of the good ol' days, when you guys used to help each other dig basements, and whatever. Seemed like someone always had (has) the necessary skills to pull a project at hand out of the mud at critical times!"
Dear Bob, I was not among the early "Delaware Valley" group that dug out John Bortz's basement, Dick Karnes' was. Where I'm most fortunate, is that I still have a pretty good memory and remember all the stories they told as we sat around and talked about the things we did to get our model railroads up and running, the visiting of other clubs, the different conventions and parties we attended. I was really overwhelmed with my model railroad elders and remember them well, in some cases I can sit here and see them, I can remember what they said about one another as well as many different situations in S gauge. Like the problem between the S Gauge Herald and Don's, S Gaugian in the early years.. All that is over now, but I kid you not, Frank Titman was the heart of S Gauge in the early years and the heart of our club. Frank, is deeply missed in our group and our club is struggling to find itself in his absence. But with Jamie (Bothwell) doing what he did this past year, gave us a great moral boost, we do have some real, good S scale modelers with great layouts in our club. Bert Mahr, Dave Heine, Roy Hoffman, and Fred Rouse [SSL&S] have terrific scale layouts. I believe Matt Lacko most likely has the most S Gauge models in our group, he has been buying them up for as long a I've known Matt, and that has to be at least 50 years. We have other LVSG active members, but they do not have layouts. ( I don't want to leave out Barry Mertz, Frank's protégé. Barry has encountered much sickness and has left the group, I hope temporarily. Barry has a very large S Scale layout). Frank (Titman) always got excited about a new Locomotive, a kit, or a new freight car coming out, and he would get our group together and we would buy about 100 of them, so we could get a discount. 8>) Frank was also like a hobby shop to us, we bought loads of model railroad equipment from him over the years. And please don't forget Frank's Lehigh Valley Model kits. Frank not only designed each kit, but he also labored in putting each kit in the box and as you know that was not an easy task. Another true story, then I'm quitting; A very popular S scale model railroader [LG] back in the early years [1960 - 1970's] became very sick and died. He gave Frank all of his equipment and told Frank to sell them, or whatever, and to keep the money for himself because all that Frank did for him and others in S gauge.. The full story to all this would take up several pages .... but ain't it neat! Yes, that's why I'm still in S gauge, I too am so thankful for all of your friendships' over the years. G'nite! Bill (Fraley)
