John Allen and the Gorre & Daphetid
John Allen took up model railroading in 1944 and pioneered many aspects of
the hobby. He built floor to ceiling scenery, used carefully hidden mirrors to
expand vistas, and smaller-than-scale items to force perspective thereby
making objects look distant. He used ultraviolet light and fluorescent
painted signs and windows to create night scenes, designed and weathered
his models to make them look old and more realistic, and created scale
people out of wire and beeswax to populate humorous vignettes on life. He
even built super-detailed structures so that he could destroy them with fire
to create realistic tragedies. Taking up the hobby when few supplies or kits
were available he pioneered and always preferred to scratch build rolling
stock, structures and scenery.
Over the years John Allen build
three layouts all known as the
Gorre & Daphetid (pronounced
Gory & Defeated). Unique to
the third layout, started in
1954, was the fact that it
incorporated not only previously
constructed structures and
rolling stock, but the entire first
layout almost unaltered (Right:
Plan for first layout).
John Allen’s interested extended beyond the artistic. His layouts were
designed for realistic operation. The third Gorre & Daphetid filled a good
portion of his basement in Monterey California and required a crew of 8 to
fully operate. John Allen used a "tab-on-car" system to achieve a realistic
ebb and flow of rolling stock and "smiles" (scale miles) to facilitated
operating trains according to schedules.
A professional photographer by
trade, John Allen enjoyed
meticulously arranging rolling
stock, models and people to
creating amusing, entertaining,
even hilarious, scenes. (Has the
policeman really arrested the
model T driver for speeding? Is
the man wearing the sombrero,
sitting on the rail and leaning on
his shovel showing his laziness? Is the tram conductor arguing with the
construction foreman because he wont let the tram pass?).
John Allen suffered a fatal heart attack in 1973 and the Gorre & Daphetid
was destroyed by fire 10 days later. Nevertheless, the memory of the Gorre
& Daphetid lives on. The few surviving photographs reveal his skill and
talent as an artist and his love and dedication to the hobby. To many, the
Gorre & Daphetid is a three-dimensional sculpture symbolizing the
impressive and spectacular degree to which model railroading can become
an art form.
