Q: I’m interested in John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid and want a lot of info, such as a locomotive roster and surviving locomotives. A lot of forums from 10 years ago are available, but all of the photo links are broken and many never truly answer the question. I want to make one place where you can get hard facts and information on the G-D Line. On to my first question: Besides 4-10-0 No. 34, what other locomotives survived the fire? — Trainman2005, via the MR Forums
A: You’re correct. Gorre & Daphetid engine No. 34 is preserved at the Model Railroader offices in Brookfield, Wis. A label with the model states, “John Allen kitbashed Gorre & Daphetid 4-10-0 No. 34 around 1950. The epitome of the G-D Line motive power, it appears in many photographs in Model Railroader magazine and in the Kalmbach book Model Railroading with John Allen by Linn Westcott. It is displayed here at the wish of its last owner, the late Cliff Robinson of Dallas, Texas.”
To learn more about what G-D Line items survived the fire after John’s passing, I reached out to former National Model Railroad Association President Charlie Getz. He replied, “Well, the answer is complex. Almost all ‘survived’ as blackened lumps. Bob DuPont of the Pacific Coast Region secured them from the property, probably by way of two neighbor kids who apparently salvaged boxes of stuff after the fire, possibly slightly larcenously.
“Bob Brown, Editor of Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette, and I retrieved all of those items from them a few years back for the National Model Railroad Association, saving some and auctioning off the scraps to NMRA members. A passenger car was saved for The Magic of Scale Model Railroading exhibit at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Three engines, the best of the sorry lot, were sent to Japan where Kenichi Matsumoto restored them.”
You can learn more about this in Charlie’s article “Miracle in Monterey: The restoration of G-D Line No. 10” on pages 30 through 35 of the February 2020 issue of Model Railroader.
“Kenichi received No. 9 as thanks from the NMRA, legal owners of all G-D Line items, including the copyright to the name,” Charlie continued. “Engines No. 10 and 8, as reconstructed, are on display in Sacramento at the exhibit. I have a cigar box with the burnt remains of the HOn3 stuff. I’m not aware of any other items.”
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