Model Railroader
- Frank Ellison (Delta Lines). Ellison viewed a model railroad as a stage, and the trains
as actors. He was a pioneer in operations, describing one of the first card order systems, and writing articles
about the roles played by various types of trains.
- The Delta Lines layout was not build to "museum"
or "contest" standards. Instead structures were a 3-D cardboard backdrop and the trains, representative
actors themselves, may have been secondary characters compared to those running their controls. The fun of the
layout was all in the operation. Following his death, the layout was dismantled and sold. Rumor has it that buildings
and equipment were damaged en route to a new northern home (re: the Sam Sachs/Da-Laur Hobbies/Boston Museum of
Transportation tale); others remember seeing "pieces" of the layout at swap meets over 20 years ago.
No documentation exists in our files to say one story is truer than the other. Fitting in a way, to quote Shakespeare's
Prospero "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted
into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial
pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded
with a sleep" [The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2]. We have never seen a single photo of
a post-Ellison Delta Lines arrive here at OSN though many have mentioned a building
or car at some location. After the operation ended, Frank Ellison's stage and his players faded into history. OGR
or others may have articles of the passing of the Delta Lines equipment (or even photos), check this on the magazine
index below.
- Frank Ellison’s concept of a "smile"
is a result of using fast clocks. The length of a smile depends on the ratio of the clock. A model train running
at a scale 60 mph covers a scale mile in one real minute. It travels a smile in one "fast clock minute".
Divide a scale mile by the clock ratio to get the length of a smile.
- He called his scale mileposts — "smileposts."
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Author partial
bibliography
- "The Art of Model Railroading" series
republished in Model Railroader, August 1965 to Jan. 1966.
- Frank Ellison on Model Railroads by Frank Ellison. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Publications,
1954. 144 p. illus. LOC# 54014833 Hard to find. This is a reprint of articles published in MR in 1949 and 1950.
- Frank Ellison on Model Railroads by Frank Ellison. New York, Arco Publishing Co., 1954.
144 p. illus. LOC# 54012466 Hard to find.
- A facsimile of a journal of a trip down East, August 1858 by
Frank Ellison; foreword by Isaac Oelgart.
Journal of a Trip Down East, August 1858. Dallas: Somesuch Press, 1981. viii, [10],
33, [10] p.; 70 mm. LOC# 82213880
- see partial list at The Model Train Magazine Index
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