MASTER MODEL RAILROADER #284

Larry Cannon had several readily observable features. Once you met him, you could never forget who he was or overlook him in a crowd. For most of his adult life, he grew a thick chin strap style beard. After his professional career ended, his everyday wardrobe was practical and simplistic. He always seemed to wear denim trousers and shirt, although he occasionally sported a plaid or checkered shirt. His footwear was moccasin style and he sometimes shuffled along as though he were wearing slippers on his feet. When he spoke, his strong eastern Massachusetts/Yankee accent caused his listeners to pay closer attention to his words for better comprehension.

Larry also had remarkable intrinsic qualities. Most significantly, he was very generous with his time, especially in helping fellow model railroad hobbyists as they worked on their models and layouts. Larry volunteered substantial time to group activities, too, including the Great Falls Model Railroad Club, the National Model Railroad Association (“NMRA”), the Seacoast Division NMRA, and the Northeastern Region NMRA (“NER”).

Larry’s much older brother Frank, “Bub,” recently divulged that when he finished high school and left his parents’ home, Larry took possession of his toy railroad pieces. For years thereafter, Larry would set the train up on his parents’ porch or in their home and amuse himself for hours at a time. Once Larry graduated from high school, though, he became more serious about the hobby.  Larry wrote in an article in NER Coupler #211 that he was a “new modeler in 1965.”

Larry was a founding member of the Great Falls Model Railroad Club in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, in 1987, serving as its president from 1994 to 1996 and again from 2007 to 2009. He helped the Club obtain Section 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service. He was a key player in developing a financial plan for the Club to afford the purchase of a building in 2009 and over the following years he was highly influential in the Club retiring the building’s mortgage liability years in advance. Upon acquisition of the building, he participated in planning and constructing the Club’s large (approximately 2,000 square feet), double-deck HO layout with three helices based on New England scenes and prototype railroads during the 1950s to the present. Larry applied his financial expertise and creativity to develop many of the Club’s fundraising activities. Over the last few years, he was heavily involved in the Club’s acquiring and selling used model railroad items to support the Club’s operations. Larry had a well-deserved reputation of making sure that the Club received full value from the items sold, sometimes declining lower offers for the sake of getting more for the Club. Lowering the sales price was not part of his DNA. Larry devoted 35 years to help make this club one of the best in New England.

Larry was a life member of the Seacoast Division NMRA and served as its president from 1998  to 2001. During his term as president, the Northeastern Region NMRA, which was made up of the Seacoast Division NMRA and several other divisions ranging from central New York to the Maritime Provinces voted to adopt the NMRA’s “single membership program” effective January 1, 1999. Thereafter, anyone who was an NMRA member automatically was a member of the division and the region in which they lived. This change resulted in Seacoast Division NMRA gaining many new members. He also served on the Division’s board of directors for 22 years (1997-2018). He chaired the Division’s hosting of the  NER’s convention in Portland in 2002 and served as inside activities chair for the Division’s hosting of the regional convention, Tracks to Lakeport, held in Laconia, NH, in 2013. He gave many clinic presentations to the Division members over the years and opened his layout to its members for touring and realistic train operations. He also was a regular contributor of articles for publication in the Division’s newsletter, The Switch Tower. Larry was enthusiastic about helping other modelers improve their modeling skills. He served as the Division’s Achievement Program Chair from 1998 until his passing. As part of this role, Larry was a judge/evaluator in almost every model contest in Maine and New Hampshire for at least 24 years. Larry’s style of model evaluation involved encouraging the modeler to improve skillsets rather than as a critical “judge.” To improve access to assistance for members of the division, he recruited fellow Division member Tom Oxnard, MMR, to become AP Co-Chair in 2014 with Tom focused on New Hampshire members and Larry focused on Maine members.

Larry became heavily involved in the governance of the NER starting in 1998 when he was chosen to serve as the Region’s secretary. He served as secretary for four years. Near the end of this period, officers discovered that the NER Treasurer had embezzled funds, leaving the region temporarily in precarious financial condition. Eventually, the embezzled funds were recovered. Thereafter, new NER President Ken May wanted to appoint a professional financial person to serve as NER Treasure and he asked Larry to become treasurer in 2002. With Larry’s financial coaching, the NER worked harder to build up its financial strength. It paid closer attention to generating convention surpluses, and it retained NMRA dues rebates for a number of years. When Larry stepped down as NER Treasurer on October 20, 2013 after 11 years of service, the NER’s operating account held over $8,000 (not including the convention operating account which was not the responsibility of the NER Treasurer at the time) and had an investment account of almost $46,000. Larry had advised the NER Board of Directors to adopt a policy of distributing funds annually to the active divisions in the region once it had reached a target threshold in its investment account. His recommendation was approved shortly after his term as NER Treasurer ended. Larry noted that his combined 15 years serving as an officer in the NER never resulted in his actually voting during the many NER Board meetings that he had attended. Later, he would get his chance to vote at NER board meetings. In 2018, five years after Larry stepped down as an NER officer, the NER changed its bylaws to increase the size of its board of directors. Larry put his hat in the ring to run for election as the “Northern Area Director” and won the election. He served three years, until 2021. Larry received his second NER President’s Award posthumously. NER President Ed O’Rourke, MMR, announced the award on September 17, 2022, during the closing banquet at the NER’s annual convention in Windsor, CT.

Larry was constantly thinking of ways the organizations that he supported could improve services to members, market their programs, and gain financial strength. A good example of Larry’s applying marketing skills to help model railroad associations improve their visibility in the public domain was his recommendation to the Great Falls Model Railroad Club in 2000 to donate funds to the NER to be used to recognize annually someone in the Region who “best exemplifies the promotion of the hobby of model railroading.” At Larry’s urging, the Club donated $1,000 to the NER to fund the “Robert W. Spate Public Service Award.” The funds were to be invested by the NER and the income used to afford a plaque to be presented by the NER to each annual recipient. Since inception of the fund, Larry actively monitored the NER’s performance in solicitation of nominations for the award, selecting the recipient and in some cases, he participated in the presentation of the award. The most recent report from the NER shows that this fund now has a balance of almost $1,500 and the most recent recipient of the Spate Award was Ken May, the NER President who appointed Larry to be NER Treasurer.

Larry’s membership in the NMRA was not continuous. He first joined the NMRA in February, 1973, when he was living in Richmond, VT, working as a bank examiner. He entered models in NMRA contests and was generally successful. Unfortunately, though, during some of these model contests he received some criticisms of his models from “old hats” which he felt were unfairly and unkindly delivered. This soured him on the NMRA, plus he was angered by its decision to build a headquarters building in Chattanooga in the early 1980s. He did not want part of his dues going into a building. He decided to drop out of the NMRA. Much later, after moving to Maine to serve as a financial officer for Bates College, he chose to attend an NER convention in Rockland, ME, in November, 1994. He took two of his scratch-built steam locomotives to enter in the model contest. His entries were the best and second best in the Craftsman Class. Before he could receive any awards, though, he was told he would have to become a member. Larry had to join the NMRA a second time to receive the recognition that he desired. According to Terry King, Larry paused a moment before choosing to pay the membership fee. This was about the same time that the Seacoast Division NMRA was being reactivated in the NER. Larry became a member of the Division, too, and later paid for life membership in it. Larry could not say how many years he was an NMRA member but his second period of membership lasted 28 years and his first membership period probably lasted nine years for a total of 37 years.

Once he returned formally to the NMRA, Larry participated in the Achievement Program, earning the required seven certificates to become a Master Model Railroader #284 in 1999 after a two-year effort. He did not stop, though, and continued to earn the remaining four certificates, joining only a handful of NMRA members at the time to have earned all eleven certificates, plus the Golden Spike Award, the introductory certificate of the Achievement Program. He was understandably quite proud of this feat. He also became a highly visible volunteer at the national level. He authored many articles that appeared over the decades in the NMRA’s publications, the NMRA Bulletin, Scale Rails, and the NMRA Magazine. His most noteworthy contribution to the publications was printed in the January 2008 issue of Scale Rails. During the “Year of the MMR,” Larry and good friend Paul Allard, MMR, authored the first  article in the series, this one entitled “Motive Power Certificate.” Those who have earned certificates in the Achievement Program recognize that the Motive Power Certificate is probably the most challenging of the 11 certificates to earn.

Larry also was Assistant Contest Chair at NMRA National Conventions, working with Bob Hamm, Bill Brown and others on the national contest staff for several years at national conventions, devoting many hours each year to help staff the “Celebration of Models, Photos, and Crafts” room. The crew also was the core of the evaluation teams that scored the contest models on each Wednesday of the convention. While Larry received a subsidy from the NMRA for travel and lodging for his valuable services at the conventions, he sacrificed much of his time that he otherwise could have spent attending clinics, touring layouts and participating in realistic train operations on layouts.

NMRA CONVENTIONS LARRY WAS KNOWN TO HAVE ATTENDED

Larry was a fountain of information about the “real world.” He knew a great deal about plants, animals, natural habitats, industrial settings, agriculture, maritime activities, construction, and especially about prototype railroad practices and equipment. He never stopped railfanning to learn more about railroad operations, especially railroads that operated in Vermont upon which much of his model railroad was based. Besides using this knowledge for his personal layout, he applied it to help guide other modelers in designing, building and populating their layouts with appropriate structures, backdrops, non-rail vehicles and equipment, and scenery.

Larry was also famous for his frugal approach to building his model railroad. He was constantly looking for low-cost used models which he could upgrade to put onto his layout. He attended many model train shows in northern New England for that purpose. His other means of finding useful materials for his layout was going to local yard sales. Oftentimes each summer he would send numerous emails to close model railroad buddies proudly listing some “prizes” he had recently acquired at rock bottom prices at yard sales that he could incorporate onto his layout. Rarely did he ever discard any materials that he no longer needed, either. Unneeded materials would be put up for sale so he could reinvest their sales proceeds into needed materials. In fact, Larry sometimes had to buy more than he wanted in order to get something special that he needed that was within a batch of goods up for sale. Afterwards, he would then put up the unwanted materials for sale, often at a higher price than he had just paid for the entire batch. In effect, he had a negative cost for the items he acquired and retained. Another way he minimized his total investment in his rolling stock was to set a ceiling of how many pieces of rolling stock he would have on his layout. If he felt an urge to acquire other pieces of rolling stock to put on his layout, he would identify an equal number of rolling stock that he already owned and put them up for sale. In hindsight, Larry’s experience with minimizing the cost of being a model railroader would have made invaluable content for a clinic presentation or even a book. Larry understood perfectly that many would-be model railroaders simply did not have the financial means to fully participate in the hobby and they needed ideas on how to minimize their cash outlays. Larry had a solution for their situation.His talent for building highly realistic model structures and scenes, however, will be what most of his model railroad acquaintances will remember him for. As many serious modelers do, Larry classified his modeling projects into multiple levels of effort. If a model were going to be placed in the rear of a scene on his layout, he gave it less attention than if it were going to be placed in a more prominent position. If he planned to put the model into a contest, then he gave it maximum effort. Those models would have the finest and most numerous of details on them and be painted and “weathered” so carefully that a photo of them would look like an actual structure or scene. Larry’s contest models won many contests at regional, national, and international conventions.

While Larry tended to have a serious demeanor when talking about model railroading, he also exhibited some humor, especially in building fantasy rail cars. He built so-called “thumbs” models and entered them in contests. His beer can tank car won first place at the 2014 NMRA Convention in Cleveland in the Thumbs category and his bathtub gondola won second place at the 2015 NMRA Convention in Portland, OR. The local favorite, though, was his “Mosquito Dispersal Unit,” a fantasy machine mounted by the Maine Department of Tourism” on a flat car to redistribute mosquitoes to uninhabited areas of the state. Larry enjoyed seeing the faces of guests and convention-goers as they viewed his innovative cars. 

Larry modeled in multiple scales, and he had a garden railway at his home but his greatest monument to the model railroad hobby was his HO scale Otter Valley Railroad, a blend of freelance and prototypical modeling. He started building the railroad when he and his family lived in northern Vermont. He brought most of its elements to Maine when he moved to Auburn in 1983. He installed the layout in a barn. Later, he moved his family to Lewiston and installed the layout in the basement of this home. The double deck layout had a helix and covered over 500 square feet of his basement with over 250 feet of mainline track (1,200 feet of track altogether) and about 200 turnouts. The layout was based on northern Vermont railroading scenes, plus Rouses Point in northeastern New York State and only Whitehill, NH, on the far eastern end of the layout. Four prototypical railroads joined the OVR on the layout, the Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, Delaware and Hudson, and the Maine Central railroads in his chosen modeling era, 1980-1990. Larry heavily populated the layout with scratch built or heavily kit bashed structures and there were plenty of non-rail vehicles and some human figurines. He covered the backdrops cleverly with appropriate photo images of vegetation and agricultural and industrial scenes.

Larry did not host many operating sessions on the Otter Valley Railroad until good friend Tom Jones moved his great operating layout from Brunswick, ME, to Grand Junction, CO, in 2012. That left about 20 of us who loved to operate regularly on Tom’s layout without a comparable alternative. Larry quickly decided that he would do what he had to do to make his layout ready for comparable realistic operations. With help from Chip Faulter, Larry started inviting us regularly to operate on the Otter Valley Railroad.  Larry’s train operations scheme was simple. He refused to have individual car cards or waybills to guide operators in running their trains. Instead, he gave them a list of places to visit. Once there, they were to pick up and drop off “like-kind” cars. If the operator found a tank car sitting on a spot he was to visit, and if he had another tank car in his train, he pulled the tank car from its spot, added it to his train, and replaced it with the tank car he brought with his train. No one voiced a complaint over the simple scheme. We were just so happy to be operating regularly again.

Larry’s general frugal nature influenced the evolution of this fantastic layout. He was slow to convert his DC power system to DCC. Only when one of his Vermont friends made a gift to him of used, non-sound decoders did he convert to DCC, choosing to power it with an NEC system. He boasted that he still had some ancient HO scale track on the layout with paper ties. These vulnerable track sections were in sidings, and he did not see a need to replace those sections with better-built, contemporary flex track. He also was slow to replace power-routing turnouts with DCC friendly turnouts, causing newbies to his layout to wonder why their train had suddenly stopped when entering effected track. Most amazing, though, was his refusal to glue down the track ballast which he had acquired for free by scooping up fine gravel from a beach on a waterway in northwestern  Vermont. His rationale was that he might have to relocate his layout once again and it would be a major effort to remove the ballast to salvage track, turnouts and ballast. The downside to this policy was that he could not use a vacuum cleaner anywhere near the track to remove dust lest he also remove the ballast. And dust was a major issue in his basement. He had a wood stove in the basement to augment his furnace in heating his home during the winter, plus the family’s cats were allowed to wander through the layout area, shedding their fur.

Larry had a good and supportive family life, too. Most importantly, his wife Ruth was a perfect “enabler” for Larry. He was not the only one in the family who liked to go to NMRA National Conventions and see other parts of the country. Ruth loved going to conventions, too, and she met many other spouses of model railroaders. Ruth made good impressions on NMRA staff, too. Recently, Jenny Hendricks, long-time chief administrative officer in the NMRA headquarters spoke fondly of Ruth, having met her years ago. Ruth often accompanied Larry on layout tours, too. She fondly remembers attending the 1997 NMRA National Convention in Madison, WI, with him. At the awards ceremony at the end of the convention, she remembers Larry being called multiple times to accept another award. Although Larry filed most of the awards certificate that he received in a binder, keeping them out of sight, his layout walls are witness to Ruth’s story about the Madison convention. On his wall are 1997 plaques for Bachman Industries’ Innovations Award, Best in Show Large Scale Model, and Testors Locomotive Finish Award. NMRA records reflect that he also earned in Madison second place in diesels, third place in steam locomotives, and in passenger cars he earned third place and honorable mention.   While Larry tried to interest his two sons and his daughter in the model railroad hobby, he was not as successful as he would have liked.  Besides model railroading, Larry liked to garden and hunt. He enjoyed doing projects around the house and even spoke positively about the many hours he spent splitting and stacking firewood every year.

I joined the NMRA in March 1998 so that I could register for the NMRA’s national convention which was held that year in Kansas City. At the time, I was not aware of the existence of either the Seacoast Division NMRA or the Northeastern Region of the NMRA and therefore did not come in contact with Larry or others in the local and regional circles of modelers for about six years. I was mostly a “lone wolf” in that era as I was still preoccupied in a demanding professional career that left me little time for model railroading.

Eventually, I attended my first Seacoast Division NMRA “Event” at the Portland Transportation Center in January 2004. Larry was one of the directors and I was impressed with his influence on the direction of the business deliberations of the directors. Although he and I did not speak with each other at the time, I recognized that Larry would be a great resource for me once I had more time to devote to my personal model railroad development. I attended very few local events for the next few years, but I continued to attend national conventions. Eventually, I encountered Larry once again at one of these national conventions and introduced myself to him. By then, I was primed with questions about modeling, especially about the Achievement Program which Larry served as division chair. About 2010, I started to get to know Larry much better. I attended division events much more regularly, often carpooling with him and others. We also started to attend operating sessions together and travelled a few times together to regional conventions. During these times together, Larry could not be more informative and helpful. When I became Division president in 2013, I relied on Larry heavily for his wisdom and judgment. He constantly was thinking about ways to improve the Division’s performance and value to its members and his ideas often were acted upon.  Larry was supportive and answered questions that I posed to him from time to time. He gave me a vision of a pathway to acquire more model railroading skills. When I seemed stalled in my layout building efforts, Larry would contact me and propose a date for him to visit my home and give me a boost. One product of this was a ten-track staging yard built on two 8-foot modules which I still have.

Larry Cannon in life stood out in his appearance, dress, accent, helpfulness, knowledge, craftsmanship, modeling achievements, frugality and persistence in furthering the model railroad hobby everywhere he travelled. Reflecting upon Larry’s history of impacting the model railroad hobby in northern New England and on me personally, I cannot think of anyone during my quarter century in the hobby who has had a greater influence in Maine. I feel blessed to have known Larry Cannon for as long as I did, and I miss him dearly, every day.

Peter McKenney
September 26,  2022