October Trolleyville Times

Rich Allman's Marvelous Home Layout!
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by George Huckaby & Richard Allman

Richard Allman is a physician and also a traction modeler. He is on the clinical faculty of the Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He had been married to his wife Suzanne for 49 years and has two children, one a high school teacher in New England and the other a Presbyterian pastor in South Dakota.

Richard and George Huckaby have known each other for years because we are the same age and grew up in the Philadelphia area in the 1950 and 1960s long before the current "instant gratification" generation. Yes, we had television sets but they were the size of a small refrigerator and you turned them on fifteen minutes before the program you wanted to watch so it would "warm up". A lot changed when vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors and integrated circuits. Today's cellphones have tons more computing capability than the Apollo astronauts that went to the Moon in the late 1960s. ' section.

We are telling you all this because we are going to show you photos of the marvelous layout that he has built over many years in the basement of his suburban Philadelphia home. It started with two 5' by 9' sections connected in an 'L' shape. Over the years, he added a 4' by 7' yard section and finally a 2.5' by 6' section. He had lots of help and advice over the years from modelers, model railroad businesses and railroad associations. In the beginning of this year, he reduced his working days to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and will now have more time for his electric railway hobby.

An overview of just a portion of this layout showing eight model cars from Illinois Terminal, Lehigh Valley Transit, Boston and Philadelphia.

Trolleyville is beginning to phase out the use of the term "traction". It was created years ago when there were cable cars. They were called " cable traction" since the cable under the street dragged the car along. when the electric cars came, they got the name "electric traction" and only the last word stuck. It seems meaningless to a millennial riding the Expo Line in Los Angeles on a car made in Japan last year by KinkiSharyo. So Trolleyville now calls this portion of the hobby, Urban Electric Railway Modeling [UERM] to distinguish from modeling of main line electric railroads of which there are plenty around the world!

We are bringing this layout to you because it signifies the past fun of model railroading....building things.....not laser cut, computer produced kits that fit together perfectly but basically raw materials that you measured, cut, assembled and then painted and finished yourself. Because of the cost of housing and the steadily declining amount of "discretionary funds", the large, well developed permanent home layout may become a thing of the past along with the train around the Christmas Tree.

Model railroading in HO scale, especially those of us who like urban electric railway modeling, did not embrace ready-to-run models until after 2000. In the 1950s, there were hand crafted brass models, but you had to prepare, prime, paint and letter them. The Bachmann, Bowser, Con-Cor, and other small manufacturers changed all that but by that time, the amount of people in the hobby was declining at almost an exponential rate.

In the "loop" area of the layout, many years of Boston's trolleys are represented. From left to right are ex-Dallas PCC 3334 (1959), Center-Entrance Car 6118 (1919), Boston air-electric PCC 3123 (1945), "Picture-Window" PCC 3283 (1951) and Type 4 car 5203 (1911). Boston still uses the word "Type" to designate its light rail vehicle fleet. The 120 KinkiSharyo cars are now Type 7 and the 95 AnsaldoBredas cars are Type 8. The new Siemens cars coming soon have been designated Type 9s.

We wish we could share and convey the joy and pride one gets in building something that takes some time to complete but most people can not appreciate something that they have never experienced. When Richard looks at this, he can enjoy remembering the hours that be spent building this himself. He did not buy it or have some contractor build it. Too bad many will never know and feel that sense of accomplishment!

Richard and George both grew up watching and riding the trolleys of Philadelphia which were plentiful until 1955 when the first four routes, 7, 57, 63 and 70 were converted to bus on Sunday, May 29th. Route 54 was converted one week later. The steady decline continued until 1959 when there were only 14 streetcar lines in Philadelphia and four suburban lines. Today those numbers are 6 and 3. We both were taken to see the large O scale layout that was in the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station in downtown Philadelphia. But only Richard had grandparents in Roxbury (Boston area), hence the myriad of Boston trolleys. However, we both started our HO scale trolley layouts with a Mantua single truck trolley and a Pennsylvania Scale Models (later Bowser) trolley.

Richard's layout was first shown in the August 2010 issue of the Times, and we had some more views of it recently in the September 2018 issue. So we are just going to show you some scenes on his layout and remind you that a lot of this was hand-built by Richard.

One of Boston Electric Railway's 405 unique center entrance cars, #6118, built in 1919, with its also unique trolley pole placement, with Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company 1932 Brill in the background!

The Seaver Street extension is the culmination of a longtime aspiration to build something very personal and unique. It entailed complex but not insane track work and overhead construction and a steep learning curve with scratch building the structure on the northwest corner of Seaver Street and Humboldt Avenue. This building was constructed in 1898 as a private residence by Simon Goldsmith. It was sold to the Roxbury Young Men’s Hebrew Association in 1918. They sold to the Berean Adventist Church in 1962 where it is still a vibrant faith community. The apartment house at 100 Seaver Street still stands and a replica model is on the layout, built from a modified kit by CMR of Baltimore.

The brick building in the center of the previous photo, 108 Seaver Street, was entirely scratch built. Located on the corner of Seaver and Humboldt in Roxbury, the prototype building was the Roxbury Young Men's Hebrew Association (RYMHA). They had acquired the building from the estate of the original owner, Simon Goldsmith, around 1918. Simon's home has been designed by architect H. H. Hathaway. the building was sold to the Berean Adventist Church in 1962 and they still own it. Most of the other structures on the layout are kits, plastic, laser wood cut or Hydrocal.

Richard gave us a list of those who helped him along the way, both with historical accuracy and modeling help and advice . they is very lengthy but worthy of printing here. He has thanked and acknowledged them in other venues. They include:

Annie & Barney Allman, grandparents, whose selfless lives and love were the backdrop for the layout;
An Arcadia Book on Roxbury which had the plans for the "loop" area of the layout
Bradley Clarke, books on Boston trolleys and electric buses (called trackless trolleys);
Bob Dietrich, indispensable friend, mentor and co-conspirator with all things traction [UERM]-related;
Jim Harr, Stella Scale Models;
George Huckaby of Custom Traxx; materials and advice;
The Jamaica Plains Historical Society; photos of 108 Seaver Street;
George LaRue, East Penn Traction Club;
Charlie Long, modeler;
Mark Matta, son-in-law, brainstorm and permanently link the yard portion to the main layout;
Fred Sauerberger, fellow physician, East Penn Traction Club;
Jeff Springer of Custom Model Railroads;
Leo Sullivan, photographs;
Don Tichy, windows, doors and railings;
Tony Tieuli, modeler, Bay State Model Railroad Museum;
Charlie Pitts, modeler, Bay State Model Railroad Museum;
Brian Weisman of Jason’s Brass Poles.

We have noted that the Baby Boomers are retiring at an enormous rate. Some might have some available time on their hands and some money in their pockets. They might think about getting involved in something that has been an enormously rewarding source of pleasure and camaraderie. There are very few unfixable mistakes, and the available tools now available make things so much simpler. Think about the hand tools that the generation before us had. The invention of the Dremel was a game changer! Then came all the Micro Mark tools that make our work easier, faster and more accurate. We invite you to try a smallish product and see if you get hooked!