Frank Cararas Ellison (March 14, 1887 – September 30, 1964) was an American model railroader who created the famous O scale Delta Lines model railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana and authored numerous articles from the 1930s to the 1950s. Mr. Ellison died after a brief illness, at midnight, at Our Lady of The Lake hospital in Baton Rouge. Born in New Orleans, Ellison lived in that city for most of his life until his final years when he lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a son. A biographical sketch in the July 1976 edition of Model Railroader magazine states: Frank C. Ellison was over the years, a railroad telegrapher, vaudeville marimbaist, stage designer, storyteller, model railroader, model railroad author, and above all, a gentleman. As "The Three Ellisons", Mr. Ellison, his late wife and his brother had a leading billing on the Orpheum circuit around the country for many years. The team was billed with such acts as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and participated, by her invitation, Sarah Bernhart's program in her final appearance. Their classical music act was played on xylophone, built by Ellison and his father. Between 1934 and 1956 Ellison became the face of model railroading in the United States when he wrote hundreds of articles on all aspects of the hobby, many involving his O scale layout that he built at his large house in the Lakeview district of New Orleans that he named the Delta Lines. Although most of his writing was for hobby magazines, Ellison had also written articles for The Times-Picayune newspaper and its afternoon counterpart the States-Item. From the late 1940s to the early 1950s Ellison wrote a series of articles for Model Railroader magazine entitled "The Art of Model Railroading." These missives were later collected into a book entitled Frank Ellison on Model Railroading (Fawcett Books, Greenwich CT, 1954). Ellison had worked for many years in theatre and this experience influenced his ideas about model railroad design in which he claimed that the layout was a stage on which the trains were the actors. The work of transporting people and hauling freight was the drama that the model railroader reenacted whenever he ran his trains. Buildings, bridges, roads, hills and rivers, townscapes and factories were for him no more than a stage set for the trains, which he generally modelled to a much higher standard than these ancillary items. Frank