INTRICATE HOBBY.This maze of wires is the central operation that runs six trains, in the complex C & E Railroad in E. Carl Pieper's home. On the night that the Graphic Art's Unionist inspected the line, there was a malfunction in this "brain," but it was diagnosed and corrected by Pieper after a quick look. The complete railroad occupies a total of 2,100 square feet in the basement, which was specially constructed to house the collection and is large enough to contain four full size bowling alleys.
TRACING WIRING CIRCUIT. John Bunzick, son of Stamford local 90P cameraman G. leo Bunzick, a shopmate of E. Carl Pieper at Graphic Color Plate, works with Pieper while tracing the wiring circuit on a gate crossing signal to hook it up so that it will operate automatically. The complete wiring circuit can keep six trains running simultaneously on a half mile of track.
2 comments:
Yep, that's me in the photo a good forty years ago or so. Some details are foggy after all these years, but the layout was quite impressive. All the track was laid individually, on rail at a time. The control system included many relays underneath the layout that would shut off the power to a trailing segment of track to prevent a following train from catching up. For a young teenager, it was fun to figure out the basic wiring required and getting it all to work. As you can see in the background of the photo, Piepers had a lot of rolling stock, most of
which stayed on the wall. His pride was a chrome-plated "modern" passenger train from the 1939 New York World's fair.
We met every Friday. Each member of the club was assigned a task that varied from scenery to layout to electrical. Different kids were better at different things, of course.
Wow! I am glad that you stopped by! I'd love to speak to you by phone and get some of your recollections. Do you still play with trains?
Marc
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