The Fabulous Franklin and South Manchester Railroad
February 10th, 2007
The modeling talents of George Sellios (of the famed FS&M) heavily
influenced the building of the BS&T. When searching for the
FS&M / George Sellios, I was disappointed with the amount of
information available. At one time, Ken Spranza's horailroad.com was
one of the few sites with FS&M photos, as was James A. Powell's
trevinocircle.com, and the aforementioned Gotham Subdivision by Matt
Gidley. Recently, George Sellios made policy changes for visitors to
the FS&M requesting that no photos be taken, and in turn, George
has started offering an image CD with pictures of his newest creation,
Filmore Yard. The CD is available online from his
FineScaleMiniatures.com website. As such, it is likely that we wont
see many more new photos of the FS&M on the web.
When visiting the BS&T for the first time, I distinctly remember seeing a tattered copy of The Fabulous Franklin and South Manchester Railroad, and when thumbing through its pages, was struck with how heavily the BS&T had been influenced by its contents. Cheeky company names, humorous vignettes, and trash-a-plenty were but a few of the details that the BS&T gleamed from its pages. Fine Scale Miniatures offered the book, but since has stopped carrying it. It was only by chance that I recently discovered that Model Railroading still had copies of the book available! I ordered a copy just before Christmas, and it arrived promptly. Looking back over the pages, I recalled how inspirational the book was, and that it made an invaluable addition to my modeling library. Since then I have visited the Model Railroading site only to find they no longer offer the book, and that now the only available copies are used on Amazon.com.
Linn Wescott's Magic of Model Railroading with John Allen was a classic publication, and now having been out of print for quite some time, is typically valued at $200+ used from online vendors. Methinks it would be prudent to get a copy of the Fabulous Franklin and South Manchester Railroad before it become more invaluable then it already is...
The Grimstad Line website is the fine creation of Tore Hjellset – the webmaster and modeler. With a great gallery of detailed photos, and a clean, easy-to-navigate design, the GL is an inspirational model railroading resource. The most striking feature of the site and its contents is how manageable everything is. Tore has designed a simple, yet highly effective track plan that takes up a modest space, has researched the history of the railroad and used it as his base blueprint, and has executed the entire project with some impressive modeling. Lucky for the viewers Tore also seems to be quite a good photographer as well! 
While looking over some of the past winners of the annual Model Railroader Magazine photo content, it dawned on me to actually search online to see if the winners had website. I was pleased to discover that Charlie Comstock, of Bear Creek and South Jackson fame had a fantastic site! Loaded with tons of outstanding photos, the site has a wealth of information and inspiring images. One of the outstanding aspects of the site is Charlie’s simple photography tutorials, where he outlines the basics of taking model railroad photos. Likewise, it was also nice to see the winning photograph from MR alongside his other entries, as well as additional images from the layout – helped put things in perspective. A truly outstanding site!
While cruising through a number of my bookmarks, I rediscovered a link to Joe Fugate’s Siskiyou Line website and was happy I had found it. Likely one of the most advanced websites catering to model railroading, the Siskyou site is professionally designed and feature rich. Offering an online forum, outstanding modeling photos, free tutorials, clinics, events calendars, and a number of videos for purchase, browsing the site is a complete online experience. Joe’s modeling talents are top-notch, as well as his photography skills, so looking over the gallery section is a true pleasure. I found myself browsing this site for quite some time, constantly switching back and forth between the terrific images and the engaging text. If either you want to indulge in terrific modeling, or catch a glimpse of how a great website runs, is worth visiting the Siskyou Line website.
I ran across this site several years ago and immediately fell in love with it. Well designed and thoughtfully arranged, the Gothan City Sub site is virtual repository of George Sellios’ Franklin and South Manchester Railroad images. Matt Gidley, the webmaster, has a number of photos of his own outstanding modeling efforts, as well as how-to articles, a great gallery section, and a progress blog. (He lives in an old church!) No doubt if you’ve ever searched for FS&M images you will have come across this site, but if not, it’s certainly worth the visit!
This well designed and thoughtfully constructed website is a pleasure to explore! Handsome, and intuitively organised, users can sift through dozens of outstanding photographs of the two respective railroads. The modeling is top-notch, and highlighted by close-up photographs and several tutorials. The railroad has also enjoyed a number of reviews by Finescale Railroader Magazine, which covered completed portions of the layout, as well as some construction articles on several of the layouts structures and rolling stock. To top it all off, the site even includes a set of ‘free’ downloads; rail passes, and photos that you can take advantage of. An inspirational and beautiful layout!
The Clarksville Baltimore and Ohio website is a charming website that photo-documents the modeling talents of a father-son team. Based only loosely on prototype modeling, the CBO is a haven for family interaction - emphasizing the importance of learning and quality family time. The site itself points out that you will likely find “other layouts on the web that have much higher quality modeling than oursâ€Â, however the site should be commended for its total honesty in presentation. There is some nice modeling work, tanks, and dinosaurs… What more do you need?
The Model of Cliffside gallery is a photographic overview of the modeling talents of Jim Scancarelli. Set during the s World War II, the imaginary town of Cliffside is loosely based on the real town of Cliffside, constructed as a series of permanent dioramas that do their best to capture the essence of the original town, but liberally changed through artistic licence.
The LE&I represents a fictitious railroad that runs through Canada - along the northern shore of Lake Erie from New York State to Michigan, and is called the Lake Erie & International (LE&I). A club layout, the LE&I website features a public events schedule, membership information and a photo gallery. The gallery portion of the website has a series of large images depicting some detail work, and overall layout shots that provide a good sense of the scale of the layout, as well as the quality of modeling work. Visit the LE&I at 