Up today is an eBay find, a Scale-Craft stock car that was built by David Sacks and lettered in honor of his friend George Crowley.

He had done the same thing with a Pullman I used to own, lettered in honor of Newton Guerin. Both men were friends from his New Jersey days – a topic covered in more depth in the book, but for a nice follow up post and a photo of several of the New Jersey OO gaugers this post has more.

And for more background on Sacks this article would also be a good read, he was very active in OO for a lifetime and New Jersey was the last hotbed of activity, documented in a series of newspaper articles.

At one point I had a large group of models by Sacks, which have now gone on to a third owner. Those when they got to me were in rather sad shape from storage in an outbuilding, and I know that I and the owners after me have spent time restoring them to operation and better appearance. (See here for example).

Which is all to say I was pleasantly surprised when this stock car showed up in a lot on eBay, as it has never been restored and is in great shape. I had a string of similar stock cars lettered for his Green Brook which looked not so good, HEAVY paint job, chipping decals, etc. This Crowley car is in the same “signature” style lettered simply with alphabet decals, but with a nice, neat paint job. He did use ladder stock to make the foot stirrups rather than the provided S-C stamping, and a cast brake cylinder rather than the toy-like SC turning.

It must have brought him some enjoyment to remember his friends with models in their honor. An idea that might spice up your own modeling as well.