Departures of note

Frank Cararas Ellison, a New Orleans model railroader, built the O scale Delta Lines layout in his Lakeview district home and, from 1934 to 1956, became the public face of the hobby through hundreds of magazine articles. He conceived of the layout as a stage on which trains were the actors, with buildings, bridges, and scenery serving only as a backdrop. His philosophy, distilled in his 1954 book Frank Ellison on Model Railroading, held that the art of model railroading lies in condensing everything to reasonable proportion, with no element dominating, and that all elements should serve the fundamental purpose of good train operation.

Ellison's career before model railroading was varied: he worked as a railroad telegrapher, vaudeville marimbaist, stage designer, and storyteller. As part of 'The Three Ellisons,' he, his late wife, and his brother performed a classical music act on a xylophone he and his father built, touring the Orpheum circuit and sharing billing with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They also participated, by her invitation, in Sarah Bernhardt's final program. His theatre experience directly shaped his model railroad design, and he took his own photographs using flood lighting and a large format view camera.

The Delta Lines, at its maximum extent, accommodated six to seventeen operators, all personal friends who met weekly on Saturdays, organized like the operating staff of a real railroad, with attendance averaging 97 percent. The layout was hand-built with separate ties and rail, used outside third rail for power, and ran on flat direct current from rechargeable batteries scavenged from retired full-size railroad passenger cars. Scenery was hand-constructed using museum and theatre methods, including painted flats and artificial perspective to create the illusion of distance, and operations used an accelerated clock to lengthen apparent runs.

After his wife died in 1954, Ellison curtailed most of his writing. In 1956, the Delta Lines was disassembled and put in storage as he prepared to sell his house and move to Baton Rouge to be near his son. In 1959, the layout was sold to a new owner in Boston, but it was heavily damaged and largely destroyed when the truck transporting it was involved in a major accident during a heavy rainstorm. Ellison died after a brief illness at midnight at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge on September 30, 1964. Today, many original pieces of the layout remain in the hands of private collectors.