About the author

My name is Lennart Elg. I am married to Ritva, and we have one daughter, Anne-Marie, born in 1979. We live in Åkersberga, a small coastal town just north of Stockholm, Sweden. When I am not modeling I am a senior analyst with VINNOVA, a government agency working with innovation policy. We spent all our vacations cruising the Baltic onboard s/y Necessity, our 28ft sloop, and I also dabble in local politics.

I started out with a Märklin trainset as a kid, but gave it up when I discovered girls. After settling down I rediscovered trains in the form of an Eggerbahn HOn30" trainset, back in the early 70's, and I have been into narrow gauge ever since. Soon after, I discovered Frary & Hayden and moved on to modeling American prototypes in HOn30". A photo of my very first kitbashed locomotive, a crude HOn30" saddle tank based on a Rivarossi/AHM N scale docksider, was published in the Railroad Modeler, which was a real boost to my ego..

The mechanical aspects of modeling have never been my strong point, and N scale locos were not that reliable in those days, so after a few years I moved to On30". In search of a prototype I stumbled on the Yosemite Short Line.

Very little information was available about this little line, but in search for more information I got to know some of the real experts on Western railroad history. Doug Richter put me on the right track from the start. Ted Wurm has been a constant help and inspiration over the years. What really got me hooked was my first trip to California in 1984, when Rick Mugele walked me along the abandoned YSL roadbed out of Quartz, just south of Jamestown. If you know where to look, you can still see the old roadbed as an unnaturally straight line in a meadow southeast of Jamestown. We also found some trestle abutments still in place, and you can follow cuts in the hillside above the Tuolumne River, where the grade was to be built..

When Bachmann released their large scale side-tank Porter I caught the large scale fever, like som many others. Except for the gauge, this was a correct model of two 18-ton Porters ordered for the Yosemite Short Line.

While learning more about California narrow gauge history I had become increasingly fascinated by its logging railroads, with lots of interesting homegrown equipment and old-fashioned ingenuity. In the end I sold off my On30" stuff (all to one happy customer who has taken good care of it) and started modeling logging in large scale under the Sloat Lumber Co. name. My first project was to rebuild a Bachmann Porter as a close replica of Sloat Lumber #4. This resulted in an article in the March 1996 Outdoor Railroader.

From a model-building point of view large scale has unlimited detailing potential and I had a lot of fun, but two factors led me to re-evaluate my choice. First, there is a lot of confusion about what scale will prevail for "serious" large scale modeling. Second, I realized that if I wanted to see my models run the space I have available is hopelessly inadequate.

For a while I experimented in Sn3 (about the only scale I had not tried yet..), but when Bachmann released their On30" Shay it was love at first sight. Also, after Bachmann¥s stunning success in On30" the flow of new products is so much better in On30", so I decided to go back and make a fresh start.

For a lot more about the Elg family, go to my Elg family history website..

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