About a year ago I posted briefly about the Norfolk and Ohio layout of Carl Appel, perhaps the greatest American OO gauge layout ever built.

Since then I have come into possession a copy of his obituary that was published in Model Railroader. I was hoping with this post to be able to say what issue it was from exactly, as it came to me as a clipping. However, this issue falls in a period when I did not subscribe to the magazine and I don’t have access to the issue. My guess is probably September of 1997 [See UPDATE]. This photo of Appel is from the article by Jim Hediger. He wrote,

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.”

They also note that “Carl Appel was the fourth-generation owner of Appel Jewelers, Allentown, Pa.’s, oldest family business which was founded in 1847.” Periodically a model or two from his layout comes up on eBay, always items to keep your eye peeled for.

UPDATE: The piece quoted above on Carl Appel was published in the October, 1997 issue of Model Railroader on page 22. The photo is a scan of the photo published in MR.

Giving more detail, according to his local newspaper obituary he attended Lehigh University and had a degree in electrical engineering, taking over the family jewelry business when his father retired in 1930. From that article,

Employee Robert Bungerz, who has been with the store for 14 years, remembered Appel as dedicated to his father’s business and

” … an absolutely phenomenal employer and a big jokester,” But Bungerz noted “His (Appel’s) true love was his model railroading.”

He did have one other strong hobby interest though, and that was big game hunting.

A member of the African Safari Club, Philadelphia, Appel had a great interest in big game hunting. He and his wife went on a number of Africa and Indian safaris in the 1950s and 60s, including Tanganyika and East Africa. In his later years he became a leading advocate for game conservation and for the elimination of the use of ivory.

He had an outstanding collection of big game trophies, which included animals from Africa, India and Canada. 

Returning to the models he made, from the level of detail in the scratch built steam engines in particular it makes total sense he was a jeweler with an engineering degree! It is to be hoped that those models are still out there somewhere, a legacy of his love of American OO.