Frank Ellison

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Frank Ellison (1887-1964) was a famous model railroader. His layout was a free-lance system called the Delta Lines.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he wrote a series of articles for Model Railroader on "The Art of Model Railroading", later collected into a book Frank Ellison on Model Railroading (Fawcett Books, Greenwich CT, 1954). He worked for many years in theatre, and this influenced his ideas about model railroad design. He claimed that the layout was a stage on which the trains were the actors. The work of transporting people and hauling freight was the drama that the model railroader reenacted whenever he ran his trains. Buildings, bridges, roads, hills and rivers, townscapes and factories were for him no more than a stage set for the trains, which he generally modelled to a much higher standard than these ancillary items.

The book referred to above starts with eight chapters on how railroads accomplished their work. The next four chapters deal with benchwork and track, with the goal of making trains run reliably. The final four chapters deal with scenery and buildings: the lead chapter, "The Illusion of Distance", illustrates Ellison's philosophy perfectly: model railroaders are creators of illusions, which, if done well, will entertain not only their creators but also their family, friends, and the public.

Ellison wrote that "the art of model railroading consists of condensing everything to within reasonable proportion", with no elements dominating over the others. He also held that all elements of a layout should contribute to its fundamental purpose, which is good train operation. He took his own photographs using flood lighting and a large format view camera. Careful examination of these photos reveals no evidence of a model signalling system on the Delta Lines, which would be consistent with his philosophy.

The Delta Lines at its maximum extent would accommodate from six to seventeen operators, all of whom were personal friends with no formal club organization. They met weekly on Saturdays, organized like the operating staff of a real railroad, and boasted attendance averaging 97 per cent. Like most O gauge systems of its era, the Delta Lines was hand-built of separate ties and rail and used outside third rail for power supply. Electric power was flat DC, provided by rechargeable batteries that had been scavanged from retired sleeping cars. The scenery was also hand-constructed, using methods that were common in museums and theatre stages: many structures painted on flats, instead of modeled, and artificial perspective where needed to create the illusion of distance. Operations used an accelerated clock to increase the apparent lengths of runs.

From the introduction to a reprint of excerpts from "The Art of Model Railroading" in the July 1976 Model Railroader:

Frank C. Ellison was over the years, a railroad telegrapher, vaudeville marimbaist, stage designer, storyteller, model railroader, model railroad author, and above all, a gentleman.

While the Delta Lines was arguably the greatest model railroad of our time, in 1956 this great layout was disassembled and put in storage. In 1959 the layout was sold to a new owner but was heavily damaged in a truck accident during a heavy rainstorm during its transportation to Boston. While the layout is no more, today many original pieces of the layout remain in the hands of private collectors.