Wednesday, April 02, 2008

A little on the Wakeling Story....

I woke up Sunday morning and decided I was going to read some of 400 ro 500 TTOS Bulletins and Quarterlies that were in my dresser next to my bed (no, clothes in there, sorry).

I especially like the 70's. I guess it is because of the truly youthful exhuberance these organizations had. There really was no committee this or bylaws that. There's always a little bit of the admisitrivia but it definitely is nowhere near what it is now. Most of it is just musing about trains. I love Rich Hackers columns on tinplate and some of John Daniel's articles are just spectacular (kind of like his trains).

I think I was looking at March, 1977 and the below flyer fell out. Now I know this is going to get covered in an upcoming book (the story about Wakeling) and I know there were some great shots in a recent TCA Quarterly of a mint Wakeling Inspector so I won't go too much into the history. Suffice to say, I do like John Daniel's vision. By the way, for you newbies it is John Daniel, not Daniels. And JAD is not named exclusively after him, he had other business partners that helped him sell as well as produce.

At any rate this Wakeling advertisement is just plain tantalizing. I have a few of these and they are every bit as great as the says, maybe even better. This is what happens when train collectors and people that are "do'ers" think outside of that box. Not everything needs to be from Lionel or Flyer from the 1930's. I have waxed on about this before so I'll spare everyone the jabber.

The manufacture of these was top notch. Much of the work was done by Dick Mayer of Rich Art fame. These are just huge curve balls because they do have historical prototypes, they are made out of metal and look absolutely glorious.

Does anyone have any pics they can send in? A few variations are out there....

At any rate, I'm glad I woke up and decided to go through some Bulletins. This just fell out of one. I wonder what else will fall out!?
Marc



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