Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-08-10
Roodbed for Model Train
Being Built at Union Station
Society Of Engineers Will Reproduce
Washington Baltimore Landscape for Tracks

Drop in at Union Station any
Wednesday or Friday night and yol
can see the Metropolitan Southern
Railroad moving right into the
building-tracks, pullmans, cabooses
and all.
The track is one and a quarter
inches wide. The engines ano
tenders that will soon be roaring
over it extend for a full two feet
and the freight cars rafting behind
are II inches long.
The Metropolitan Southern is the
creation Of go business and profess
sional -s4s,l VINO nve years ago re
volted from the distorted proper
tons of children's toy trains" and
enthusiastically dedicated them
selves to the task of making exact
scale models of the big cars that
hustle you off to Chicago, Little
Rock and points West.
Gathering drill presses, lathes and
collections of screw drivers, they
organized themselves into the Met
ropolitan Society of Model Engi-
neers, and have now constructed To-
comotives and rolling stock valued
at $4,000.
"Railroading is on the boom. -
they say, so they've just signed
leases for right of way on the third
floor, west wing, of the Union
Station, where their roadbed will
wind over hill and dale for some
l64 feet.
To Be Built on Framework.
1t will be built on a framework,
chest high. Bending yards of WIN
dow screen, covering it with asbestos
paste and coloring the whole with
fiat oil paints, the railroaders say
they are going to reproduce AL
the best features in the railway
landscape between here and Balti-
more, with a few Western hills
thrown in for good measure.
Farms, coal mines, lumber yards,
oil tanks and blue glass lakes will
lie along the route.
Most of the locomotives are to be
powered by electricity, but one will
actually hurry from station to sta
ton under the power of its own
steam. And spectators watching a
streamliner fit along will hear an
imitation of a Diesel engines I'M
mistakable' roar.
Heretofore the trains have done
their laundering over a smaller
track layout in an Office at Third
and R streets NE Also, some Off
GERS of the dwarf railroad worry
their wives by laying down tracks
over a good part of the floor space
at home. These trainmen are re-
tpectfully known by the others as
Brass Hats"
In the evenings all gather mer-
rlly to switch expresses from track
to track, shunt freight onto sid
1ngs and classify cars on the
hump Sometimes railroeder
derails his train at switch, sends
1t head-on into another locomotive.
or just runs it so fast that it whips
of on a curve and goes snorting
along through the hedges. Then
the man at fault is given GER
tain number of brownies" rail-
road term for dement's.
Wrecking Cars Used.
Whenever wrecks occur members
OF the society may not honorably set
the cars back on the rails by hand.
Rules of the road require use of a
specially constructed midget wreck
Ing car, with electrically controlled
crane.
OF course, if there anything that
irrltates managers of the half pint
railway, it is an implication that
they are playing"
This is no kids stuff: this is no
fools play; this is a serious engi-
neering business" Secretary Treas
urer George Herfurth said. Of
ficers take pride in pointing out