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Everything Old Is New Again.

Dinosaurs have been showing up on layouts ever since John Allen installed "Emma" -his 'organic switcher' Stegosaurus- on the old Gorre & Daphetid layout, and I've just found a way for even the most hide- bound realist to have one -or more- on theirs too!

Turns out that the famed (well, semi-famed) Cabazon dinosaurs are easily visible from the Union Pacific mainline.

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(Note tracks in foreground.)

So while exploring the area last weekend I discovered that there's now a dinosaur museum attached to the iconic concrete dinos that have overlooked Interstate 10 for Lo these many years. Not just *ANY* museum, mind you, but a *creationist* dinosaur museum, complete with free booklets explaining why people must have lived alongside them up until The Flood, and that evolution is a myth propagated by secular humanist commies.

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Now, you would probably think that a creationist dinosaur museum was an odd enough concept in and of itself, but no; apparently the owners want or need more business than normal dinosaur fans -who, alas, tend to be almost exclusively secular humanist commies- can generate, and so have decided to try to corner the big Palm Springs Gay Christian Paleontologist market by flying a Gay Pride flag first in line out by the parking lot.

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Understand; I'm not recommending that *you* install a creationist dinosaur museum on your layout: first of all, nobody who wasn't from California would *ever* believe it had a prototype, and secondly I can't for the life of me think what sort of car loads you'd drop off there anyway. But it's certainly an object lesson for anyone who's ever poo-pooed the occasional saurian that shows up on a model railroad layout, thinking that there could never be any such an occurance in real life!

(Now: I wonder where I could find a bunch of accurately-scaled 1/87th sized dinosaurs... Perhaps confine them in a large pen behind a meat- packing industry yclept "Jurrasic Pork". Cattle cars and *lots* of cars full of greenery in, and plenty of meat reefers out... Hummm!)

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil
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I would prefer to spend my time and money modeling a lost and forgotten valley somewhere deep in the mountains of Tibet, a "Lost Horizon" if you will, where the Jurassic beasts were isolated and didn't become extinct. I would not want to do anything that might suggest that the creationists have a legitimate argument. I could spend time modeling spectacular mountain scenery and geologic uplift.

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John E. Hubbard

Reply to
NICHE541

It's a bit of a stretch, but there's the dinosaur park on the hill overlooking Rapid City, SD with DM&E tracks about 3/10 mile north.

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Val

Turns out that the famed (well, semi-famed) Cabazon dinosaurs are easily visible from the Union Pacific mainline.

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(Note tracks in foreground.)

Reply to
Val

I'd bet you could find a bunch of small plastic dinosaurs in the toy section of your favorite department store. I haven't looked for any but my teaches

1st grade and it seems like those kids ALWAYS have them to play with... and according to her, they ae pretty small to boot.

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel

Actually, I just found several *extremely* well-done HO gauge dinos at a place named Pegasus Hobbies in Montclair CA., about 30 miles west of me.

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They came 6 to a bag with no name attached, although a small label proclaims "Made in China". For a nominal sum I got 1 Brachiosaur, 1 Triceratops, 1 T-Rex, 1 T-Battar, 1 Spinosaurus, and 1 Velociraptor, complete with feathers. All six came nicely pre-painted, and required only extremely simple assembly to ready them for the layout.

Alas, the Velociraptor is to a much larger scale than the others, but the others are spot-on for HO gauge, with the two Tyranosaurs scaling out at circa 40' each, the Spinosaur at around 50', the Triceratops at about 30' and the Brachiosaur at circa 100'. I may take a few photos with a 40' boxcar for comparison purposes and post 'em to Flickr for anyone who's interested.

Jurrasic Pork, here we come!

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

Why not harness them TO the 40' boxcar??!? You could probably easily make a harness out of some old ChartPak tape or even very thin strips of Evergreen Styrene. But then again, what does a dino harness look like??!?

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel

John Allen answered that question for us, as he did so many others.

In one of his Varney ad photos that regularly graced the back cover of Model Railroader Magazine he shows us "Emma", his stegosaurus, dragging a Varney power truck off of a flat car by way of being attached to it with, yes, a dinosaur harness. The photo is reproduced on page 69 of the book "Model Railroading With John Allen", by Lynn Wescott.

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

I don't remember how long the ad campaign lasted, but I think it was back during the early '50s. I remember seeing the ads myself, but I sold all my really old back issures of MR about ten years ago at a club benefit, so I can't go look them up any more.

They probably figure that most modern model railroaders have never heard of John Allen and wouldn't willingly pay the freight (railroad pun intended) for a reprint. And if you recall that the book originally cost $22.00 when it was first published back in 1981 and extrapolate modern costs including inflation, they may well be correct.

Your best bet is probably a swap meet or eBay, where there are two copies up for auction right now.

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

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