No. 141: Greg Martin

Last week I received the sad news that our friend and modeler Greg Martin passed away due to a short illness. Apparently his passing was Covid-19 related.

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Greg was a giant in the prototype modeling field, and pioneered new standards in freight car modeling. His articles in Mainline Modeler in the 1970s were epic.

Here is one of my snaps of Greg, above, photographing models at the 2009 Cocoa Beach RPM event. Here’s another from that series, below. TGreg, as I called him–a reference to his e-mail–is taking photos at my model display.

Greg and I met at one of the Naperville RPM meets in the 1990s. At that time Greg was one of the principals at the Cocoa Beach RPM, and over time we communicated frequently on the subject of growing our individual events. Greg and I shared a lot of ideas about RPM events. He was always willing to lend a positive word and sound modeling advice.

Greg’s claim-to-fame in the last decade or two was running the Shake-n-Take program at Cocoa Beach. “SNT” as he called it was designed to provide an inexpensive model kit with additional detail parts and decals to create a new, interesting model. Greg like to say “SNT puts the modeler back into modeling.” It sure did, and I was fortunate to participate in three SNT programs in 2000s.

Below. There’s Greg, at center in the black shirt standing in front of the screen, leading the SNT clinic at the 2007 Cocoa Beach RPM.

Around 2008 or so, Greg and I got into a bitter argument over offering an SNT event at St. Louis RPM. I’m happy to report that we got past it and didn’t let that business disagreement ruin our friendship.

Here’s my favorite snap of Greg, this one again at the 2009 Cocoa Beach RPM. That’s Greg at right and Chris “Ziggy” Zygmunt at left.

Below. Here is one of the Shake-n-Take kits from 2006. The car core of my model was a Branchline 40-foot box car. SNT provided the decals, lower side sills, and underframe parts–free of charge of course. I put a whole lot of Tichy rivets on that car, which at that time wasn’t something most guys were doing. Since then I’ve replaced the trucks with Tahoe 40-ton trucks and installed Hi Tech air hoses, but the model essentially remains the same as when built in 2006.

The result of Greg’s hard work and putting the modeler back in modeling is shown below. This washed-out photo is from the 2007 Cocoa Beach event, where modelers brought back their finished models from the previous year. Here are nine of the 30 or 40 or so models distributed to attendees in 2006.