Copyright 2000 by T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
A humorous poem about a true episode
Running Trains with Fat Ralph
Oh, we're going to Fat Ralph's tonight
We're going to have some fun
To run HO on a two-track pike
Now that the scenery's done
**
Fat Ralph says his layout's fine
From wiring to lineside shacks
He says it's the best darn HO pike
That ever had double tracks
**
Well, Fat Ralph has a GG1
A Pennsy fan is he
That's okay, but it'll outdone
By an EL F3 AB
**
Boogana's coming with his CNJ's
I'm packing my Lackawannas, too
Crazy Joe has the B&O
And Ralph has B.O., too!
**
Fat Ralph said his layout was fine
We took him at his word
But when we see what a job he's done
It looks outright absurd
**
The track swerves left and the track swerves right
It goes all over the board
Grading is awful, and the switches are a fright
It's a layout to be abhorred.
**
Fat Ralph wants to show off his GG1
And his brand new smoothside car
He sets it on the track, and it goes "clack clack"
But it doesn't go too far.
**
The GG1 falls down on its side,
The smoothside soon does follow
Careening into a lineside shack
Ralph's glad those shacks are hollow
**
Ralph tried to make it run again
To prove he's a scale man
He turns the throttle and off it goes
Derailing once again.
**
Boogana steps in with an F3A
In Jersey Central Blue
But the curves are tight, a flex track fright
And off the rails it flew.
**
Now comes Joe with an 0-6-0
It can take a twelve-inch curve
But Fat Ralph's track is a bumpy road
And off the track it swerved
**
Mallet Mike came to save the day
His four-wheel Porter to go
It jumped the track at the second curve
That wasn't much of a show.
**
We can't run trains at Fat Ralph's tonight
`cause the track is curved too tight
Flex track's too much for Ralph to use
But sectional should be right.
**
We can't run trains at Fat Ralph's at all
His pike is no delight
We'll have to wait til he buys snap track
And gets those darn curves right!
We were all about 15 or 16 years old at the time. We were so angry at Ralph that we made up this song:
(To the tune of "For he's a jolly good fellow!")
Fat Ralph rolled over the Roundhouse
Fat Ralph rolled over the Roundhouse
Fat Ralph rolled over the Roundhouse
Until he crushed it flat
Because he is so fat,
He crushed the roundhouse flat,
so....
Fat Ralph rolled over the Roundhouse....
Ralph managed to irk several of us back in the early 70s, to such a degree that 27 years later it is still fun to make light of his foibles. Last time I saw him was a chance meeting at a gas station while passing through Jersey City in 1984. Fat Ralph wasn't fat any more! But he was still Ralph. And Ralph, wherever you are, fat or not - you earned it, brother!
Fat Ralph's not fat any more....at least insofar as the last Ralph sighting in 1984.......but somehow the interceding years saw the rest of us increase in girth. You have to love the irony!