by Chris Lane, Editor

Time does indeed fly. If you had told me all issue of the On30 Annual this year, I would those years ago I would be producing the 20thhave had a mixture of disbelief and hope that it would come to pass. That is how I find myself as I finish this issue: proud, humbled, excited, nostalgic, thankful, determined and most of all, grateful. Grateful for the opportunities this magazine has provided me, and grateful for you readers, some of whom, have been with me for every issue. Words can scarcely express how pleased I am that this publication found an audience and that audience remains as inspired and inspiring as ever. So let’s take a look back at the incredible journey this has been and then look ahead a bit. But first, everyone probably needs a little context as to how this publication came to be and that story starts with my story.

My Background

I was born in Colorado, and have lived here for all of my 63 years with the exception of early grade school years as my father pursued all the dead dinosaur graveyards out west in the oil business, and a six year stint in Utah. We lived in the then sleepy town of Sandy, minutes away from the Alta and Snowbird ski areas, and a mile from where ex-Silver City Shay No. 4 was abandoned in Little Cottonwood Canyon before World War II.

I came from the womb liking trains, but it was there in Utah (and via books and magazines about Colorado) that my love for trains and especially narrow gauge blossomed. I mean who goes from Lionel directly into On3? Weird kids like me, that’s who! I bought a Simpson 24′ logging flat and a Main Line Models Rio Grande Southern stockcar and assembled the kits. In the early 1970s, Salt Lake City had two really good hobby shops; Douglas Models and Keith’s Hobby House. Jack Douglas was a narrow gauge fan and wrote The Silverton Train, a pictorial that every narrow gauge fan owned at that time, and he was an early narrow gauge mentor. He would slip detail castings and magazines for me into the bag of whatever my model railroader father was purchasing, and he would make a point of engaging me about narrow gauge subjects. Keith also fostered my interest, but in different ways. As a rule, he didn’t care for kids in his shop, but my father was a very good customer and I showed enough interest and knew how to behave, so he warmed to me over time. It was Keith that called me over to show me my first Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette (now published by White River Productions). It was issue No. 2 — the hard to find one! I was hooked and have been reading it ever since. That publication has had no small influence on me, and I was, and continue to be, passionate about it 50 years in. My brother reminded me just last week that I once punched him for stepping on a Gazette issue and creasing the cover.

Reading the Gazette and other railroad publications fueled my desire to be a contributor to the hobby and the move back to Denver in 1976 turbo-charged that desire. Rubbing elbows with the greats of the hobby like Allen J. Brewster on Saturday mornings at Caboose Hobbies cemented my interest in narrow gauge modeling and attending the first Narrow Gauge Convention in Denver in 1982 transformed me into a full-blown “NG Nut.”

The genesis of the Annual

Fast forward a few years; I had graduated college, had a brief rock music career, gotten married, had two sons, worked in the printing industry (including on a magazine then known as The Railfan Photographer, now known as Trains & Railroads of the Past, also published by White River Productions), and had ended up as the Advertising Sales Manager for Model Railroading magazine in 1994. There I got to meet many in the industry including the late Lee Riley of Bachmann Trains, who ended up becoming a dear friend.

I also discovered that there were many narrow gauge enthusiasts like Riley and I in the industry. The late Fred Hamilton of Model Railroader, the late Gordon Cannon of Cannon & Co., (he was the original art director for the Gazette and owned Cannon Scale Models who produced beautiful logging models), the other Riley, George B., who has served as Associate Editor for the On30 Annual for years, but was working for Life-Like at the time, among others.

Fast forward a few more years. I had seen the samples of Bachmann’s On30 2-6-0 mogul in Lee Riley’s inner sanctum and he and I had kept in touch about them. As a Colorado & Southern modeler, I had grasped the basis for that locomotive as soon as I saw it and was excited about using it in On3. Bachmann introduced the line at the Kansas City NMRA convention in 1998, and Lee presented me with a set as a “thank you” for my support in years past. I got it home and I got seriously excited about its possibilities for old-school On3 modelers like me, but also as an entry point for what I had identified as a seriously under served market segment; those who liked narrow gauge, but the bar for entry (brass locos, handlaid track, craftsman rolling stock kits, etc.) was relatively high. I exported my excitement to the boys at Caboose Hobbies and they touted the new trains loudly at the National Narrow Gauge Convention in Colorado Springs that fall. Soon, I could see interest in On30 building on the internet in discussion groups and I spent quite a bit of time answering questions and helping people explore the possibilities in narrow gauge for themselves.

Around 2002 Marty McGuirk, formerly of Kalmbach Media, moved to Colorado to work with InterMountain Railway Co. He had a strong interest in the Chili Line branch of the Denver & Rio Grande Western and was starting an Sn3 layout in his home. We discussed combining our publishing experience and narrow gauge interest into a new publication, and I went so far as to design the basic layout for the magazine. Ultimately, we decided a general narrow gauge magazine in a space where the Gazette existed and had for almost 30 years at that point didn’t make sense. But the notion simmered.

About this same time editor Randy Lee, myself, Don Strait and a few others bought Model Railroading from the former publisher and set out to grow the title. We had run some On30 material in the magazine and had also started to produce books and I felt the time was right to introduce a title aimed specifically at people with interest in On30. I identified that was two groups of people. One group was hobbyists like myself; experienced narrow gauge modelers looking to try something different. The other group was larger and much less experienced with narrow gauge and often had worked in different scales other than O. This group needed some direction on proportions and some of the basics of narrow gauge. But mainly they needed permission. By that I mean I had noted on many of the online forums the question was asked over and over, “Is this OK? Is this a reasonable way to model narrow gauge?” That told me it was my turn to inspire and teach, just as the Gazette had done for me and so many others. The best part was it was not a direct competition for Bob Brown, the owner and editor of the Gazette but rather a supplement to narrow gauge modeling and hopefully, a vehicle to grow that segment of the hobby.

Early on, I noticed the snobbery that can exist in other areas of the hobby was virtually non-existent in On30. Want to strictly model the Rio Grande Southern, but in On30? Great! Some south-of-the-border silliness in model form? Olé. Stick-by-stick scratchbuilt models? You bet! East coast logging? Of course. Fanciful critters and railbuses? Why not! The readers of the magazine have been exposed to all of that and much, much more and they have been proven to be a inclusive and open-minded audience. When I attended the National Narrow Gauge convention in Durango in 2006 with a standing room only meeting of On30 modelers (a meeting I conduct to this day at NG conventions), and later, On30 modelers won a slew of awards in the model contest, I knew On30 was here to stay and I had made the right decision. And here we are 20 issues later, still modeling and enjoying On30. So let’s look back at those 20 issues and review where we’ve been, and maybe get some clues as to where we might be headed in the future.

My Twenty Year Journey in On30

I have always found narrow gauge particularly compelling since it incorporates railroading on a more human level while capturing the classic look of the prototype. My first ventures in the subject initially were in HOn30 using AHM’s imported MiniTrains products. These affordable, small industrial HO scale models used the then-new 9mm track. By the time I had left for college, I wanted something larger even though my financial condition had not markedly improved. Since I had a ready collection of HO scale track and a number of small HO scale steam locomotives, I was spurred on to venture into On30 through the articles by Gordon North and Bill Livingston.

I cobbled together a passable 0-6-0 tank engine using an MDC HO scale model combined with parts from a failed build of an On30 Grandt Line Porter. This seminal locomotive headed a rake of Grandt Line’s then newly-released On30 Koppel side dump cars.

A 0-4-0 saddle tank followed using a Peco die-cast quarry engine body kit married to a Hornby 0-4-0 acquired secondhand at a train show. These were followed by a rake of British outline carriages and wagons assembled from Peco O 16.5 kits. Over the intervening years, my collection of On30 models continued to grow with a scratchbuilt car here and there, along other secondhand acquisitions.

Bachmann Train’s entry in to On30 in the late 1990s really brought the scale/gauge combination out of the closet, taking the category from a poor man’s attempt to model narrow-gauge into the mainstream with support from a major manufacturer around which a number of smaller specialized producers have grown to support this category.

Chris Lane and I have had both a professional and personal relationship going back to the 1990s, so when he announced that he was working on an On30 magazine in 2004, I was immediately on board, offering any assistance that I might render. The Isle of Fenwick On30 micro-layout was my first feature in the first On30 Annual in 2006. Ironically, this layout allowed me to pull my earlier British outline models out of storage along with a then recently-released Bachmann 0-4-0 Porter to bring that project to life.

Since then, I have produced at least one feature in nearly every issue of the On30 Annual save one. These ranged from a layout on a dining room table which caught fire in my back yard, to projects covering new products, equipment and structure construction along with layouts spotlighting every type of narrow-gauge railroading from California’s Grass Valley to Colorado gold and silver mining, down east two-footers, and Appalachian logging.

In the twenty years of the On30 Annual I have seen the category mature with spectacular layouts reaching their zenith and world class modelers sharing their projects with the On30 and even larger model railroad community. While focused on On30, this publication promotes the best in model building and design which is the goal of every model railroader despite their specific chosen interests.

In the past twenty years I have gone from a contributor and fellow traveler to Associate Editor of the On30 Annual. While each year has provided its own set of challenges, it also has provided new opportunities and growth which has kept both myself and this publication fresh and vibrant.

—George B. Riley, Associate Editor