Tom Daniel, Designer of Laser Cut Structure Kits

Ad snippet for a Tom Daniel designed Wood Freight Depot; MR Jan '99

While wandering around looking for some notes on Tom Daniel's Bad Water Western layout I ran across this interview with him in the February 2000 issue of Scale Auto Enthusiast. Near the end of the article he mentions what he was up to circa 2000 or so:

""I've done a lot of different designs since," Daniel says. A series of model-railroad scenery backdrops was among them. Daniel, an avid model railroader, designed those for his own company, HO West. Model railroad giant Wm. K. Walthers later purchased those designs, and continue to produce them under the Instant Horizons name. Daniel also designed HO scale buildings for Model Expo, and did some design work for Bburango."

This post's lead image is an ad for one of those HO scale structures that Model Expo ran in the January and February 1999 issues of Model Railroader. Regarding the featured Wood Freight Depot, the ad copy has this to say:

"New design by Tom Daniel is based on his boyhood memories of America during World War II. Although the Wood Freight Depot does not replicate a specific prototype, it combines many realistic elements for an authentic railroad atmosphere."

That's sort of an interesting tie in back to Tom Daniel's recollection of working in old boxcars from that era that he recounted in his May '72 RM article, An Inside Look at Boxcar Details.

I'll let the completist in me wrap up this post. There appear to be ads for Tom Daniel designed structures in these issues of Model Railroader: Mar '96, July '98, Nov '98, Jan '99, Feb '99, Mar '99, Nov '99, Dec '99, and Mar 2000. The upshot is his designs had been around for awhile before the Scale Auto Enthusiast article was published.

The search continues.