good morning
uh hi
you mentioned model railroading that uh i've been watching a program on the Public Broadcasting Station here uh about model railroading have you ever seen that
yes
i i always turn on the TV set and it seems like i catch that program in the last five minutes and
uh well it's been very interesting
i i think it you know what i see is fascinating and i kind of enjoy it
uh
i've always had that hobby ever since i was a child
uh-huh
and uh
i refuse to get involved because i never had space for a permanent layout
yeah
and then here about five years ago we bought a big old house out in Oaktown Virginia
and there was uh there was two basements
wow
there were two two separate furnace rooms
and so i took the smaller furnace room and now it's full of trains
you should have taken the larger one huh
well uh my uh brother had a Lionel train set he was a a bit older than i and
so when i came along i was interested in uh fooling with the train and since he was was past that stage why he didn't have any objections and
uh in fact i started doing a layout uh in our garage at one time but
i got about as far as sort of painting some uh streets and things on a piece of plywood and putting up a few things and it got to be hot summertime when i gave it up
um
but uh i've always enjoyed uh the train and
you know fooling with it and all
do you still have the uh train set
he has it
he has it
yeah i mean since it was his i couldn't very well keep it forever
um
but uh actually i have had an idea not long ago uh hope to build another house some day and i was thinking i might uh incorporate some sort of a display space and ask him if he would
let me put the train up you know not not as a working type of thing but just to
put it on display
uh-huh
well those uh the early Lionels can be quite valuable
yeah i don't know what year his was bought but probably around
nineteen forty forty two maybe i'm i'm just guessing but something like that i would think
yeah
well some of those around the war years were uh kind of difficult to get a hold of because Lionel got involved in manufacturing a lot of uh uh war equipment
uh-huh
and uh i think they almost discontinued production uh in
nineteen forty two and forty three
oh really
so some of the pre-war models are quite valuable
yeah i don't know i don't know if i don't know if he knows i know there's some uh booklets and things you know showing different models and stuff
that are quite old that were with it but i don't know if they were original or if they were picked up you know in later years
well i managed to sweet talk my brother out of uh his Lionel train set that uh dated back to about nineteen thirty three
um
and uh he's kind of unhappy i've got it now
but i'm not going to give it back
yeah that's probably the way it goes sometimes
and i had a uh
post uh World War version of the Pennsylvania Electric uh GT1 locomotives
and it happened to be one of the rare paint jobs
oh
so i understand that that locomotive is worth around seven hundred and fifty dollars now
wow
so it's it's sitting on display on top of my bookcase
it has a prominent spot huh
yeah
well i think those things are neat and and as i say i watch that show and there are some uh really interesting museums around that uh have good displays and uh
i said that well if i ever took a trip i you know might ignore some of these museums because a lot of them are called childrens museums or toy museums and
um-hum
that wouldn't really catch my attention but if i knew that they had you know really good train layouts i would wanna go and see what they had
well Pennsylvania used to have uh some commercial displays
there was one place that was halfway between Harrisburg and Allenstown Pennsylvania in a community called Midway which suggest it was halfway
um
and uh
they had a huge room which was probably uh forty feet wide and a hundred and forty feet long
uh and the central portion of that room was occupied by one huge O gauge layout running uh uh Lionel train and American Flyer trains
wow
huh
and they had done a lot of work on that with uh scenery and buildings
and they had trolleys running around and uh a lot of animation in there
and uh it was in business for a long long time i don't know it it still maybe in business
it might be
yeah
well um you mentioned another hobby sailing do you have a sailboat
yes uh i bought a uh Bristol thirty five five for my wife
um
and we keep it on the Chesapeake Bay
and uh starting next weekend i'm gonna have to go down and uh
fill out for the summer season
yeah
we have a cruise plan to sail from uh Solomon to Maryland up to Philadelphia this summer
uh-huh
about a two week cruise and uh two or three lay days in Philadelphia
oh that'll be nice
they have a a new waterfront uh marina in Philadelphia it isn't as developed as uh Water Side in Norfolk or the Baltimore uh waterfront
but uh the marina is only about uh two or three blocks from the historic district
oh
so that's quite uh handy for our our youngsters we can take them up and
yeah
show them Independence Hall the Liberty Bell and uh Franklin uh
yeah and just be right there huh
Franklin Square
yeah well uh we're not uh really sailors but i want some summer soon to um
hire a sailboat with a captain since we're not you know versed in that and uh go to the Caribbean
um
well there are some uh good opportunities for that in the British Virgins
right yeah
uh that's uh that is almost an ideal sailing area uh
if you have a little even a little bit of experience uh i've seen a number of people go through a uh a cruising class in Annapolis
uh-huh
where they might get uh maybe ten or fifteen hours of sailing experience go down to uh uh British Tortolla
and charter a boat for a week
and they take it out and have a grand time
yeah
uh it's fairly sheltered waters right there and uh
you don't need any fancy navigation equipment because you can see all your destinations from one spot
right uh it just sound fascinating to me i would love to just go down i've always liked islands and water and that sort of thing anyway and um
been on a couple of big cruise ships so uh you know i kind of had seen it from that point of view but i i think i would like the sailboat
um-hum
uh i've been there several times uh the first trip uh
we flew down and uh chartered a uh Morgan uh forty five
um
and i had fun that then a few years later a guy i was racing with uh decided to take his boat down for a winter season
and so i went offshore with him to uh Saint Thomas
and then we cruised uh the American Virgins for a week before i flew home
which do you think is best American or British Virgins
i think the better sight seeing is in the uh British Virgins
uh-huh
uh there's uh some very nice places like the bass which is a uh sort of a huge monolithic rocks that you can
you can walk up the beach and into these uh enormous caverns that are partially submerged and you can wade in the pools and so forth very popular tourist spot
uh-huh
uh
the Bitter End is an excellent resort up in uh
which is very easy to get into and there's some very nice reefs in that uh vicinity if you like snorkeling and uh scuba diving
yeah yeah that's neat
and uh there are some very nice resort hotels so you can go in and uh enjoy a very classy dinner
uh the Peter Island Yacht Club is uh extremely exclusive
like uh i think they're probably charging five hundred dollars a day for a room now
ooh
that's getting up there
and uh
it's there kind of a nice place to visit uh
uh it's better being on a boat than being on land because uh your boat becomes your hotel your uh your dining room your taxi cab and uh everything else
everything
yeah that's why i think it would be neat um
well i'd recommend it
sounds good
