The Blasphemy of Bill Schopp

 In It Ain’t Railroading, But ... it’s a lot of fun, RMC, July 1960, Bill Schopp describes a model trains game he and a friend played. He starts his story with the outcome:

The Result

“…I hadn’t had so much fun with a model railroad since 1944.”

Then he goes on to outline the frame of mind you need to play the game:

The Precondition

“…you must not regard your trains, or at least the trains you run in this ‘game’ as sacred…”

Then, if you want the result, and are ok with the precondition, you’re ready to play:

Layout Schopp used for the game; RMC July '60

The Game

1. “…start a fast piece of motive power…out just ahead of…” a loco that is a lot slower.

2. Since “…the track, altho shaped like a water wings, is essentially a big oval,…” it “… was not too many laps before the faster…” loco “…got pretty close behind the slower...” loco.

3. “The idea then was, with the aid of the two passing sidings drawn, to run the faster engine around the slower one without stopping. You’d have to get just the right distance behind the slower one coming down the homestretch toward the entrance switch to the passing siding to be used. This sometimes entailed grabbing it with the hand and holding it, wheels spinning, until enough space had been opened up. There was stopping or holding sections along the track but not quite as many as drawn on the plan, so that unrailroadlike tricks had to be used.”

“Back about fifteen years before that I recall doing similar running wild with tinplate engines on various layouts we would set up.”

Any chance on the Way Out Layout?

The Summary

“What it requires is a layout with some chance of doing it, as well as a recognition on your part that all model trains are not sacred.”

If the letters-to-the-editor column is anything to go by, this piece of sacrilege appeared to pass without comment from RMC’s readers. Not so a much more seemingly benign Bill Schopp article called, Stalling at Switches, that appeared a year and a bit later in the Nov ’61 issue. In it Schopp discusses various approaches for fixing the common problem of having locos stall at switches - the summary is in the article's title :-) - that a friend of his was having on his layout. He lists 4 points that could alleviate the problem. The 4th deals with a finicky directional slide switch on the layout’s power pack as being a potential problem since these little switches had no centre off setting. He goes on to tell about an operational solution to get around the lack of a centre off position:

“This means [JDL: having no centre off that is] once you choose your direction with the slide switch, you start and stop the train by means of the speed control knob. Very realistic you may say, “just like real trains.” But also, I say, very annoying when switching. I much prefer to have toggle switches (short or bat-handled) with center-off position on my power packs. Then I can turn the speed control full-on [JDL: full-on is bolded in the text] and control direction and stopping of the train with the reverse switch. If the train is too fast, as rubber band diesels would be, I cut the speed control down to 3/4 or 1/2 speed and leave it there except for very finicky operations.”

Maybe it was the term full-on appearing in bold that caught John Allen’s eye, but the operational recommendation got him to send off a letter to the editor. In RMC’s January ’62 Safety Valve column he had this to say:

“It was a sorry surprise to read on page 43, November RMC, that a modeler of Bill Schopp’s skill and experience would say, and I quote, “… Then I can turn the speed control FULL ON and control direction with my reverse switch.” This must sound like blasphemy to each modeler who tries to run his trains in a realistic manner. An engineer would find himself quickly removed from the job if he followed this advice, on most of the model railroads with which I am acquainted.”

A couple of reflections on the above. With the benefit of looking back 60+ years, Mr. Allen failed to note that Schopp did say that if full-on was too much, then try a lower setting. I think the point Schopp was trying to make was to leave the throttle in a fixed position, but the bold text presentation of  ‘full-on’ undermined the message. More importantly though, these two excursions from orthodoxy further strengthening my thought that Schopp was model railroading’s amateur scientist. Any truly creative scientist, amateur or professional, is going to try some things now and then that might be fun and interesting but look odd to the establishment. I wonder if he played bongos?