A scene on the Malamute & Klondike |
Back in 2010, I wondered what the oldest home layout in my hometown of Winnipeg was.
After a bit of research, I discovered the oldest layout--by which I meant the oldest layout in the same home and in the same basic condition as when it started--was 60 years old.
I didn't mention the owner's name, but it was Don McKinnon. He started his HO scale Malamute & Klondike layout in 1950.
Over the years, he changed things and added sections, but the layout still occupied the same place in his basement, with original elements intact.
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One of Don's cars on the M & M Sub. |
Don died earlier this year; this summer, his layout was dismantled. The oldest layout, at 63 years, is gone.
A piece of it lives on on the M & M Sub. I won't run it in regular service; it's too old for my early 1990s time frame. But it will be a memory for me of Don, and the Malamute & Klondike.
Now the oldest layout in Winnipeg is one that was started in 1968. The next oldest was begun in 1969.
Compared to them, the Manitoba & Minnesota Subdivision is pretty young. Next year it will mark its 20th anniversary.
As I noted in that earlier blog, we will likely never see layouts that old again. Today, people are much more mobile; the chances that Canadians will stay in the same house for 65 years, as Don did, are remote.
But here's to the Malamute & Klondike, now gone like so many others, but living on in memory.
Thanks to Don's friend Marvin Fetch for the photos.
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