Last year I sent to Model Railroader the note below (adding here four photos) nominating Carl Appel to their hall of fame. If there was an American OO Hall of Fame, certainly Appel would be in it. What do you think?

I would like to nominate Carl Appel for consideration for the Model Railroader Hall of Fame.
His obituary that was published in the October, 1997 issue of Model Railroader (on page 22) offers this great summary of why he is significant.

Carl Appel, one of the hobby’s pioneers, died on June 24, 1997. He was 94….

Appel’s extensive OO scale Norfolk & Ohio RR was featured in the August 1948 and November 1958 issues of MODEL RAILROADER. It was one of the first home layouts to realistically reproduce a specific prototype location (the Norfolk & Western terminal at Lynchburg, Va.). Appel was an expert scratchbuilder, completing nearly a dozen N&W steam locomotives which featured sprung drivers and tiny ball bearings on the axles and in the gearboxes. Longtime MR editor Linn Westcott described these models as “exceptional.”

I personally saw the layout first in the 1980 Kalmbach publication, Classic Articles from Model Railroader. Besides the two feature articles, there was also coverage of his layout in the January, 1953 issue of MR, in the Bull Session column. There Ray L. Rhodes reported,

On a trip east recently I stopped in Allentown, Pa., to visit the OO gauge Norfolk & Ohio of Carl Appel. This pike was written up some years ago in MR as one of the outstanding scenic pikes of America [see the August, 1948 issue for more], and everything the article said about the terrific scenic work on this model road is true.

The cellar walls are masked with colored photo-murals, and when you stand there looking at it, you get the eerie sensation that the railroad is the right size, and you have suddenly become a giant towering over a real countryside.

His layout was realistic, with wide curves and an uncluttered design when that was really a novelty, on the cutting edge for his time certainly.

There is one other final reason you might want to consider Appel, he worked in American OO gauge. It is pretty much a forgotten gauge now almost exactly half way between HO and S gauges, 1/76 scale running on ¾ “ gauge track. It is not the same as British HO/OO! Manufactured in large commercial quantities by Lionel and Scale-Craft and most popular before WWII, people like Appel stuck it out well after the gauge was no longer important to the market. To honor Appel also honors the many forgotten modelers and manufacturers that worked in this gauge and scale. This was certainly the greatest layout ever built in American OO, and should at least be worth an honorable mention.

Humbly, I might also offer that I have a large website related to this scale and wrote a book on the topic. The article below presents an overview of Appel and a look at the layout in 1948.

https://americanootoday.com/?p=793

Thank you for your consideration of Appel,

John