The Persistence of Memory

This is turning into a weird obsession.

Many years ago I was going to build a layout using the old Portage Hill & Communipaw track plan. It was one of 4 projects in a Kalmbach book called Popular Model Railroads You Can Build.

Some rather major personal changes in my life put that project on hold. Although I had built the benchwork and covered it with Homasote, I never laid any track or put up any scenery.

By the time, a year ago, I decided to buckle down and get going again on a layout, I had concluded that one would not work in the basement space I've got. Instead I turned my attention to other plans, ultimately arriving at the one I'm working on now.

But I've retained a fondness for the PH&C track plan, which I got to know quite well after years of studying it.

Now here's the weird part.

I am absolutely convinced that somewhere in the last couple of years I've seen a plan, or at least part of a plan, that at least started with the PH&C design. I can see it, or something close to it, in my mind's eye.

I'm also pretty sure that the context was not a lengthy article focused on this layout, whatever it was called. My memory is that it was more likely in a group of layouts, such as a track plan collection. It also was not billed as the PH&C, and whatever textual materials I saw surrounding it made no mention of the PH&C. But I knew that track plan in its key details and I had no doubt as to its origins.

So where did I see it?

A couple of years ago I got MR's special issue, 102 Realistic Track Plans -- a great compilation of plans they had published over the last decade or so. I also have been a regular browser of the magazine's track plan database and downloaded bunches that appealed to me.

So when this recollection of seeing this PH&C-influenced plan surfaced in my mind, I combed through 102 Realistic Track Plans, I looked at every single one of the plans in the MR online database, and I've been paging through every MR in my bookshelves.

Nothing.

The other part I've been wondering about is whether perhaps it was just a snippet of an image -- albeit a completely recognizable one to me -- that was in an ad, say for track planning software or something.

Again, nothing that I can find. So far.

But then another nagging feeling grabs at me. Could I have just dreamt the whole thing? After all, I've been perusing lots of track plans lately. Even though I now know my plan for my layout, I've been poring over others, not so much second-guessing as soaking up more inspiration to influence perhaps some tiny details here and there in my layout.

So did one night I dream of looking over one of these magazines and seeing the PH&C-influenced plan, or image, that is now such a powerful memory?

I really don't need to keep obsessing about this, but I can't seem to help it. And it's driving me slightly nuts :-)...


So if anyone out there reads this and can tell me where I might have seen the image I describe, please -- help me figure it out.