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Reply to "Stoney Creek branch of the ET&WNC, in On30"

The late Lee Riley, a prominent employee of Bachmann, was instrumental in convincing the well known manufacturer to begin production of On30 model trains at affordable prices.  It worked too!  I really do miss visiting with Lee when he'd be present at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany, each year.

In the 80s on leave from my then employer, Deutsche Bundesbahn, I went with my mother and step-dad on a trip to North Carolina, where they had a trailer house in Johnson City that had been purchased from a co-worker of my step-dad.  I talked them into a day trip so I could visit the East Tennessee Railroad where they were operating with some Alco RS32 Diesel road switchers.  The employees were very accomodating and your typically friendly Carolina folks.  I got the grand tour of the office and shop building.

Joe, I so badly wish I could have met Lee Riley. He's single-handedly responsible for getting me back into the hobby. I'd left in total disgust after a series of insane experiences with a modular group in my hometown in Florida. Years later, Riley's Baldwin ten-wheelers came out in On30, the very prototype I'd always wanted in a scale smaller than G (I'd had one of those, too but it was too big for a layout). Were it not for him, I might never have gotten back into the hobby and met a lot of great people!

As for the RS-32s, I have a photo of one of them going past the Porter Fireless 0-6-0 at the North American rayon mill at Elizabethton. My parents grew up just east of there so we'd go up there every year to visit. the place is like a second home to me.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

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