The full story of Minton Cronkhite and Crovan Railway Models is told and profusely illustrated in the June 1966 Model Railroader magazine. Download as a pdf file : The Locomotives of Minton Cronkhite
The following notes have been sourced from posts to online forums :
Scratchbuilt locos and rolling stock from shop drawings.
Had a large home layout with a linear design (not a bowl of spaghetti).
Handlaid track in Q-gauge because it was more accurate than standard O-scale track, laid curves with correct spiral easements.
Complete automated signalling system.
Operated using timetables and train orders.
And this was in 1936.
Cronkhite co-founded Crovan Railway Models, one of the very first US manufacturers of scale model railroad locomotives and rolling stock.
He also built several display layouts for the ATSF which were exhibited at World's Fairs, and in 1941, his layout at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry opened, bringing model railroading to generations for over 60 years.
The 1933 Chicago World's Fair layout really kicked off scale model railroading in the US, almost every "pioneer" like Al Kalmbach (who started Model Railroader shortly afterwords), Linn Westcott, Bill Walthers, etc. say that seeing that layout really got them interested in what could be done with scale model trains.
Cronkhite was an avid model builder who, by the time he was 40 in 1928, had sold a successful business and made enough profit that he could pretty well become a full-time model railroader. He was also a ham radio operator, which required electronic skills that doubtless applied to model railroading as well.
Cronkhite was modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1928, when he displayed a large exhibit in O scale, called “The Miniature Fair of the Iron Horse” in Greenwich, Connecticut. Around that same time, Cronkhite teamed with neighbor H. B. Vanderhoef and Carl Otto Nowack to open Crovan Scale Models, which manufactured O scale trains.
A 1932 fire destroyed the company’s building, and with it, the business.
Minton Cronkhite died in 1971.
Crovan Railway Models PRR K4, originally outside 3rd rail, now 2 rail Image captured from a YouTube video |
Popular Mechanics, November 1935 |
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