at the 2011 Minnesota State Fair

Mark Lynn photo

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from John's daughter Lauren:

Yesterday afternoon I lost my father. For the past 373 days, I have woke up every morning with a pit in the depths of my
stomach dreading this moment. It was exactly that many days ago that I stood in front of a team of neurosurgeons at Stony Brook Hospital
as they diagnosed my 64 yr old Dad with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive terminal brain cancer. Today
I held his hand for the last time just hours after receiving the call that he had passed rather suddenly.

I could tell you how awful it all was, how exhausting, how difficult it was to hide the pain and to put a smile on my face everyday when all I wanted to do
was hide... but all of that is NOTHING compared to what I had watch him endure for this disease that there is no cure for.
I will focus on the wonderful memories and on the positive lessons I learned from him and from this experience because life makes us no promises.

My Dad, John Scala, was funny, adventurous, creative, and he gave the best advice. He was a man that was never afraid to cry and he gave me more hugs
in my 31 years than some people get in double that amount of time. He once said that the only reason he went through with treatment was because he
made a vow to be my father and he needed to be here for me and my brother. He will ALWAYS be my hero and words cannot describe just how much I am going to miss him.

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From Otto Vondrak

I was shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of John J. Scala, a.k.a "The Weekend Chief." The name of his company was taken from an old Long Island Rail Road parlor car train, with the whimsical "Dashing Dan" logo done up as an ersatz Indian brave, a tongue in cheek reference to the Santa Fe's premiere "Chief" trains. I was always amused how when we'd be joking around, sometimes John would refer to himself in the third-person as "The Chief."

John was a Long Island native, and a great historian of not only the Long Island Rall Road but also all passenger trains in general. I think I was first introduced to John while he was working on "Diesels to Park Avenue," a history of the EMD FL9 locomotive sometime in the late 1990s. We shared common interests (passenger trains, collecting timetables, and eating good food) and we hit it off. John had grown kids near my age, but I think it was safe to say that he did not always act his age...

John was a prolific publisher and author, having operated Weekend Chief from his house for many years as a one man operation. Probably most well known for "Diesels of the Sunrise Trail" (1984) and also his extensive research that resulted in "Howard Fogg and the Diesel Image" (1987). Several other books he brought to press covered topics from Hell Gate Bridge to EMD's diesel demonstrators. He was most recently known for his series of color railroad calendars.

Some things John didn't like to talk about (he was a Vietnam vet). He was also an EMT working in nearby Syosset for many years.

John taught me some good things about photography that I probably ignored or forgot. I got my fair share of "fatherly advice" on everything from girls to jobs to buying a home. His house was in Mineola, which was only a 45 minute drive over the Throgs Neck Bridge from my apartment in Westchester, though we only got together maybe once or twice a year. Going to his house was always an adventure, because there were always projects in progress and great slides to look at, or new books to pour over, or some old timetables to rifle through. For a few years, he even had a GMC "fishbowl" transit bus in his driveway (a smaller version used for school transport).

John was a frequent exhibitor at the major railroadiana shows in the East. No matter how busy he was, he always had thirty seconds to say hello and offer to store your bags and jackets behind his booth. He always had a story to tell about any one of the colorful characters in our hobby, always with a twinkle in his eye.

The day before I packed up my apartment to move upstate, I paid a visit to my friend John on Long Island. He was a little grayer, looked a little more tired than usual, but we fell right into the same old topics of trains, girls, and trains. That was a year ago.

I'm really going to miss my friend.

Otto Vondrak