One of the greats: Harry Roberts, and his fantastic operating accessories

I worked for a School Bus company. Many years ago a teacher use to hire a bus to take her elementary class to see her fathers trains as sort of a field trip around Christmas time. One year I tagged along expecting to see a large Lionel layout. I could hear the trains running before I walked in. But they sounded different. My jaw dropped when I entered the room. You had to duck under.  All O Scale brass.  Layout was around the walls with just a few scattered buildings. No scenery. After the kids left I talked a bit with him. He did have a large working detailed animated structure. After studying it a bit. I asked if was built  by Harry Roberts. He said yes and was surprised that I knew of him. He mentioned he had a lot of his stuff stored away.  The layout although in a beautiful good size room was only temporary. He purchased parts of a layout and was going to set up everything in a new house. Harry had already passed. Always wondered if the mentioned layout was parts of his. The new house got tied up in red tape and no idea what happened with all of it.

@Paul Kallus posted:

........the operating coal breaker (large structure) whereby coal was unloaded into hoppers, where they were then pulled to various stations around the layout, e.g., a power plant with rotary coal dump.

This was sold at his estate auction; there was an under the layout operating screw mechanism that captured the coal that was delivered at one location which returned it to the coal breaker.  I remember seeing it - huge system that sold moderately as few had and ever will have the required space for it.

I purchased a lot of stuff that day (and probably should have bought more...) and I'm still working through the box of brass tubing and rod that was buried in one of the boxes of "stuff".

Dan McCaffery was another O scale modeler who built many of Harry's buildings. As I recall Harry was a chain smoker.

Harry had a farm in Delaware.  His railroad used an auger mechanism (similar to that used for grain or feed) to return delivered coal from a barge on the layout back to a bin at the mine.   In addition to being an innovator, Harry was an early adaptor of digital control.  During a visit to his railroad a group of us from the DC area ran his trains using Dynatrol throttles - a predecessor digital control system to NMRA's DCC. I was impressed with not having to fiddle with block selectors when running multiple locomotives on the same track.  That experience led me to explore using DCC on a mine branch on my existing DC layout, and a few years later going fully DCC following a move to a new house.   

It gives me a nice feeling to know at least some of Harry's RR items lives on, via you guys and your layouts. I wonder how much else of the neat RR "stuff" that's been made or customized by our brothers who've passed on lives on, somewhere, someplace in trainworld. Some or a lot of it undoubtedly takes a lot of TLC to restore and get used again...thinking of Frank Ellison's layout that was transported and damaged in transit. I recall Fred Dole telling a story in a past OGR and/or video that he had done work with those buildings.

Many of Frank Ellison's Delta Lines pieces remain ....

Please see link for video of one of Frank's Mikado's running between Raymondale and Donaldson

Cheers Carey

https://youtu.be/jHA6GleifUM

Thank you for sharing that video, Carey. What a wonderful view of O-scale history in action.

I saw one of Harry Roberts 100 ton 3 bay hoppers at the Chicago show, last weekend for $100.   Not too bad looking of a car.

Here is one of my 5 Harry Roberts hopper cars

I knew Harry well enough to exchange favors.  He was a loyal friend to many.  BTW, the "coal" was rape seed.

Ed

I'm a big fan of the Harry Roberts 100T hoppers. I used to be able to find them for less than $50 but not likely anymore, if they can be found at all. They are really nicely detailed cars, especially for their age.

John

I built a refinery for Harry in his later days. It was about ten feet long. He let me build it however I saw fit. It was my first major model. I got to see his rotary dump along with his operating grain silos that could be loaded and unloaded. It was a great experience working for him.