Remembering Gasoline Alley

I saw horse-drawn ice delivery to a neighbor of ours in Decatur, IL up until '48 or '49. We all mobbed the guy in the heavy leather apron asking for chips while he was heaving big (over 50 pounds) blocks off the wagon and into the house to drop into the icebox.

My wife, born in the early 1950s, clearly remembers both the milkman and the iceman using horses in Montreal.

-- Cheers Roger T. See the GER at: -

Other than the horses, the driver, and the pickup being ghosts , very nice.

It does, however, remind me of a picture from MR in the early nineties, with a brewery wagon. And from the horses' feet, they were *stopped* on the grade crossing. I never did get around to writing them a nastygram about that.

Oh, and thank you - it looks like you hit all the figures with dullcote, so they look a good bit more real, and less like shiny plastic.

mark

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I recall horse drawn wagons in 1952 when I started driving. Ice wagons and junk collectors. They had water troughs at curbside.

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

Horsedrawn wagons & such are still an every day occurance in certain parts of Ohio where the Amish communities reside. Those comparisons would make for some unusual modeling scenes for sure... We travel through Amish country when we visit my mother in eastern Ohio. It isn't uncommon to see Amish buggies & wagons waiting on big, 18-wheelers to pass so that they can get onto the highways. And, while I've never seen it, there are railroad tracks in the areas as well so one could very well see a buggy or wagon waiting at a grade crossing on a train to pass.

I don't know if iceboxes are in use in their homes but I wouldn't be surprised... and that ice would have to get there somehow...

Interesting communities... interesting culture...

dlm

We were just back to see my old home north of Fort Wayne, and had lunch in Grabill. Regrettably Sauder's restaurant is closed, but the Amish culture familiar from my youth is still strong in hte area. I did see a farm that looked Amish (no horses out, but clean and neat and no power lines, either) but it had what looked like a small solar panel above one shed - may have been for hot water, though, but was so small (about 2 x 3) it looked more likely to be PV.

THere's nothing like seeing an experienced Amish hand run an 8 horse team through their paces turning a thresher around for another row.

If you are going to model a 'modern' Amish scene, don't forget the reflective triangle on the rear of the buggy. Also don't forget the Oatsmobile exhaust on the road.

On the other hand, if it's cityscenes, I remember my mom telling me how her mom (we lived in my grandmother's house till I was about 7.5) would run out when a horse-drawn wagon would come by in the back street, to sweep up the meadow muffins for her garden.

mark

And if they're near the Canadian border, to cocaine under the floor boards.

-- Cheers Roger T. See the GER at: -

I must start by saying that, no, I did not see such a meeting of buggy and train at a cross, but was in a situation where it surely must have happened on a regular basis, when I was visiting friends in western Ohio, right on the Indiana border, back around 1992. Buggies *everywhere*, with a popular corner restaurant run by the Amish (or so I believe I was told), and a clearly well-used main line running right through town, right athwart the main road, with some MOW equipment parked on a siding.