Gorre & Daphetid
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The Gorre & Daphetid model railroad was a legendary HO scale layout built by John Whitby Allen in Monterey, California. (The name is pronounced "gory & defeated".)
Allen often commented later in his career that he regretted the whimsical name.
The Gorre & Daphetid, also known as "The Gorre" or just "The G&D," was actually three successive model railroads. The first two versions were built at Allen's home at 140 Irving Street in Monterey. The last and greatest version of the G&D, which incorporated the earliest version, was built over a period of 20 years at his new home at 9 Cielo Vista Terrace in Monterey, where he excavated part of the basement to build the railroad. Pictures and stories of all three layouts are available at the Gorre and Daphetid Reminiscence Project site listed below.
The basement of the house on 9 Cielo Vista Terrace was destroyed by fire just 10 days after John Allen's death in January 1973. (He was 59 and suffered a fatal heart attack.) Most of the layout and Allen's railroad equipment were lost in the fire. However, one of the locomotives, No. 34, a 4-10-0 that John kitbashed from parts, resides in the office of Model Railroader magazine executive editor Andy Sperandeo. While serving in the U.S. Army in California, Sperandeo was a frequent operator on the G&D.
Kalmbach Publishing Co. published an excellent memorial book called Model Railroading with John Allen written by Allen's longtime friend, Linn Westcott. The book is out of print and used copies fetch a premium price at booksellers and online auction sites.
Allen was a professional photographer by trade, and an excellent one at that. Numerous boxes of his slides and prints are in storage at Kalmbach Publishing's corporate building in Waukesha, Wis. Some of the boxes were singed by the flames of the fire that destroyed the G&D, and the smell of smoke from the blaze still lingers when one opens a box for a look at unpublished photos of one of the world's greatest model railroads.
