In venkman71’s proton pack plans, he mentions that a bit of Ghostbusters urban legend claims the crank generator was a control box from a model railroad. Maybe this has already been discussed at one time or another, but I bet that’s the truth.
A while back I was visiting a hobby shop and noticed the control box on their demo model railroad looked very familiar. It was a rectangle-shaped box that was a little longer than the crank generator and topped by two crank knobs that were identical to those used on the packs. The box didn’t have the fins on it like the pack’s box does. It didn’t occur to me to note the maker of the controller or even look too closely at it, but it was very similar to what the crank generator was made from. Since it only has one knob, the controller used to make the crank generator must’ve come from a smaller railroad set.
Surely someone could turn up a catalog with a picture or batch of old controllers that would fit the part, just to prove that it’s a found part if nothing else. Has anyone ever researched this a little further?
I worked at a hobby shop a year or two back and got my knob from that exact same co. They do sell just the knobs but you have to call the 800 number that comes with the papers in the box.
I think you guys might’ve misunderstood what I was asking…I knew it was the same crank knob as used on the packs, but what about a railroad controller being used as the entire crank generator? I’m saying, has anyone found a controller that looks 100% identical to the box seen on the pack? Although it’s not hard to build, it would be cool to find a controller that looked accurate enough to be used as-is on the pack.
I thought the entire crank genetator box was scratch built.
In a few proton pack pictures I’ve seen, the trim/detail pieces along the top appeared to be crooked, something that wouldn’t be so on a retail product.
Unless…the control box never had detail on that side and the prop guys added it.
