My good friend and narrow gauge buddy, Tony Hannold peacefully passed away last Friday, 15 April 2022.
Tony was a nationally known railroader with an life-long interest in narrow gauge and short-line railroads. He also was an avid model railroader who built both large scale and On30 models and layouts which were featured in magazines.
Over his 45 plus year railroad career, Tony created, owned, managed, and ran a variety of short-line railroads starting with the Narragansett Dock Railroad in southern Rhode Island, running 8 miles from West Kingston, RI to Narragansett Pier. He then moved to manage the nine-mile short-line Bath and Hammondsport Railroad located in the Fingerlakes Region of New York State.
When Conrail abandoned trackage in the Delmarva region in the late 1970’s; Tony created and ran two short-lines; the Maryland and Delaware RR and the Virginia and Maryland RR.
In 1986, he founded the very successful Arkansas and Missouri Railroad, a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas. The A&M operates 139.5 miles of line from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Monett, Missouri.
Tony loved ALCo locomotives and operated them on both the Maryland and Delaware and A&M. He would search for used units, purchase, renovate and operate them. Several articles were published about their refurbishment for use on the A&M.
When Tony sold the A&M and retired, he was presented with a bell from one of his beloved C-420s. Tony’s wife gave me the bell several months ago and it now resides in my train room.
Tony was also a craftsman. He created beautiful wood furniture; restored a 1928 36' wood power boat; built several large (indoor and outdoor) layouts; and scratch-built large scale and narrow gauge freight and passenger cars. He particularly liked modelling logging railroads with their unique home built equipment.
Two of his large scale models:
Some photos of his final On30 layout:
