Dear mid-60s Buick owners with a passion for things Buick,
You may remember me
ribbin' Iain that he now needs a model railroad layout to go along with his digital calipers. Oddly enough, this prompted a PM from Tony reporting that he has a bit of Buick memorabilia that was searching for a good home with a suitable train nut. The picture of my layout convinced Tony that I clearly was
da' nut! . .
At first I was a bit concerned. My model railroad layout has a rural logging theme and not any old bit of railroad material would fit on it. However, I patiently waited to see what was coming my way.
Yesterday a box arrived all the way from
da' right coast to
da' left coast where I live. When I opened it up this is what a found!
What is this "Buick Railroad" you ask? Buick's facilities in Flint Michigan were so large that Buick had it own rails between the various buildings. Rails need to be serviced by locomotives, so yes indeed Buick had its own industrial railroad. Of course it was tiny by any railroad standards, but still, it was probably more cost effective for Buick to accept blocks of freight cars and have their own crews switch them into position than to have larger railroads do all this switching for Buick.
Here is another picture of the hat taken on the other side of the logging camp on my layout:
According to Tony, there was a fellow who belonged to the Buick Club of America to was very keen at getting his hands on any sort of memorabilia related to Buick and one of those items was this hat. This fellow sold to a member of the Long Island Buick Club of America (and friend of Tony) this hat along with vast collection of other Buick collectibles. Tony's friend finally decided to head out west to avoid the harsh Atlantic seaboard winters. At the time of his departure, Tony picked up quite a few useful items (like some choice Nailhead parts!) A few years later, Tony's friend ended up unloading some more collectables and offered them to Tony for the price of shipping. Included in that stash was this hat. Here is one last view on top of my layout's roundhouse:
Tony has been looking for a suitable train nut to give this hat a good home and
what do ya' know! - he found one!
Thanks Tony for thinking about me and taking the time and expense to ship it over to me. As you can see the brim has suffered a bit over the years, but this sort of a thing is a keeper even if you really shouldn't wear it anymore. After all, if I need a cap for my head - I've already got exactly the cap for the job!
Thanks again Tony and I hope everyone enjoyed a little slice of Buick trivia and nice story about a bit of Buick finding a good home!
Cheers, Edouard
