This was originally published in the August, 2000 issue of The OO Road.

Some of you may know that there is a new, searchable database of model railroad magazine articles in the Model Railroader web site on the internet. Recently I was looking in my magazine collection for the articles that came up on OO from a search of that database, and found that I actually had very few of them. I did however find an article by Hugh Richard Nason (the founder of Nason) in the June 1935 issue of Model Craftsman that I had not previously noted on scratch building an OO gauge 12 section Pullman.

I have [or had at the date of the writing of this article, in 2000] only one other issue of Model Craftsman from 1935, the April issue, and soon I turned to it. In it I quickly found myself looking at the face of a real OO pioneer, Fred Grimke (p. 9). At that time he was chairman of the New York Society of Model Engineers; the article is a report on their annual show. Only three divisions of railroad models are noted in 1935; OO, O, and #1 or larger models. No HO! [The “good old days”].

Why is Grimke significant to American OO? According to an article by Linn H. Westcott in the January, 1949 issue of Model Railroader Grimke “introduced OO gauge into this country” (p. 17). He was certainly one of the very first people interested in the new scale; by early 1931 he had launched with Harry Thuillez the first American OO gauge manufacturer, Thuillgrim Models. The March, 1931 issue of The Modelmaker notes that at the third annual exhibition of the NYSME “Thuillgrim’s two ‘OO’ Gauge locomotives certainly attracted the most attention” (p. 43).

The cover of this issue of The Modelmaker illustrated two Thuillgrim OO models; a B&A Berkshire and a NYC Hudson. The printing makes the photos grainy, but they look good!. The Hudson model was constructed by Edwin Schwoebli, who later was involved with Nason. Advertisements show that Thuillgrim also planned to produce locomotives including the following: 0-8-0, 2-8-2, 2-10-4, 4-4-0, 4-4-2, 4-6-2, 4-8-2, and “electric type locomotives of latest design.” These models are thought to have never been produced, but it is thought that they did produce limited amounts of couplers, freight car truck side frames, and body hardware for freight and passenger cars. Also, the partner of Grimke, Harry Thuillez, advertised blueprints for the PRR D76B dining car back in 1930; this was actually the very first advertisement mentioning American OO, in the July, 1930 issue of The Modelmaker.

Thuillgrim seems to have produced very few models. But Fred Grimke nevertheless certainly made a mark in American OO early on and may actually be, if Linn Westcott was correct, the person to crown as “The Father of American OO.”