Editing Mallory Hope Ferrell’s articles on the Eureka & Palisade/Eureka Nevada Railroads in the September/October 2016, through March/April 2017 GAZETTEs was a pleasure because his articles are always such a good read, and these railroads were such neat 3-foot lines. But, seeing the late Ted Wurm’s photo of Motorcar #23 (bottom of page 60 in the January/February 2017 issue) brought back memories.
I knew Ted. He was an early GAZETTE author, and often shared photos from his collection with me. One of these photos was that one at the bottom of page 60. It reminded me of an On3 model of #23 built by Gene Deimling, and myself back in 1973. I described our model in the July 1973 Finelines. You can access Finelines in Benchmark Publications 50th Anniversary DVD.
Actually, Gene did most of the work on #23. He made the body from styrene, and I added the interior and a mechanism made from a Micro-Motor and Grandt Line gears. I don’t remember which one of us painted the model. I ran #23 from time to time, until I converted my layout to DCC, and have never gotten around to adding a decoder. So, #23 sits in a glass case in my layout room.
Gene went on to build detailed Proto-48 freight cars, and he and I lost touch. I thought readers might be interested in our model, and have included the plans I drew for the Finelines article, and some of the photos I took of our model.
—Bob Brown
