Model Railroader (1942-1999) (Magazine)

Model Railroader (1942-1999) I’ve been skimming through old MRR magazines in an effort to get rid of them. I clip and cut articles that may be of use, toss the mutilated mags, and put the unmutilated ones into boxes for the CRHA’s sale table at the March Train Show. A fellow called John Morgan is to come and pick them up. I hope he has a large trunk. So far, I have 7 boxes, and I haven’t yet gone through Trains or Railroad Model Craftsman. Yikes!
     Reading a lot of magazines in chronological order (more or less) gives one a strange experience. It’s not so much the content of the magazines as their tone. In the 40s and 50s, writers clearly spoke to fellow addicts, and gave them all sorts of tips on how to indulge their harmless vice.
    For example, the number of household items and discards pressed into service as modelling materials is astonishing. Many are periodically rediscovered: clothes-pins, for example, with their tips carved to suitable shapes, make excellent holding clamps. Before the availability of nicely detailed brake wheels, dress snaps stood in. Cardboard is scribed with a blunted awl or a carefully dressed screw-driver tip so that the grooving tool won’t tear at the edges of the scribe lines. Angles are bent from scribed card or heavy paper. Charts list the wire sizes suitable for different pipe sizes in the different scales. Rube Goldberg contraptions are devised to operate signals and crossing gates.
     Before the advent of transistors and logic chips, train detection or interlocking signalling systems offered challenges that only the strongest modellers could face. Layouts are given whimsical and punning names (which must have grated on the owner’s relatives of not the owner in short order.) Frank Ellison’s articles on prototypical operation are pioneering efforts that only slowly change the focus of the serious modeller, a creature that doesn’t begin to appear in great numbers until the 60s. “Operation” in fact usually means ”mechanical engineering.” Layouts designed for prototypical operation feature dozens of tracks curling under and beside and over each other in a three dimensional maze.
     By the 60s and 70s, the emphasis has shifted. There is more talk of designing a model railroad, to look like the real thing, and to be operated like the real thing. There are articles about how to give a free-lanced railroad the look and feel of the real thing. More and more writers describe ways of making the layout look and feel like a prototype. “Railroads You Can Model” becomes a regular feature. These are invariably short lines or branches. People try for a more realistic balance between scenery and track – a lot of track is hidden, and division points (a de rigeur feature of earlier layouts) almost disappear. Staging yards (fiddle yards to the English) take their place, and are used to provide the requisite number of trains. With increasing wealth, many more modellers build basement size layouts. John Allen’s Gorre and Daphetid inspires not only fantasies of Western railroading, but also proves that a large layout can be built and maintained by one person (with a little help from his friends) so long as the track plan is relatively simple. Allen also shows that a good model railroad consists of visually separated scenes, and that such a scheme enables interesting train operation. Spaghetti bowl track plans aren’t needed after all. McClelland’s Virginian and Ohio inspires not only prototype-based free lance layouts but layouts depicting actual prototypes.
     By the 1980s, technical reliability and close to perfect models are taken for granted. Now modellers concentrate on reproducing a vision of railroading as they remember or experience it. Model railroading shifts from craft to minor art. Layouts are visually and operationally integrated. Malcolm Furlow’s small project layouts show the way. Furlow designs self-consistent layouts which make no attempt at having everything. Trackplans are simple and fit well into the scenery (I think Furlow starts out with a scenic concept, since his articles always start with a mock history that emphasises locale.) But the trackage also permits train operation: a couple pleasant evening hours will be needed to run a complete day’s worth of trains. Furlow’s layouts are satisfying to build and fun to operate. Those who have more space simply build bigger versions of such railroads, whether based on a prototype or an imaginary place and time. Although layouts are bigger, trackplans are simpler in relation to their size.
     In the 1990s, trends of the past consolidate. Even better technical quality is expected, and a lot of product that sold well in earlier decades disappears. Manufacturers upgrade mechanisms and proto-typical details. Scratch building is replaced by kit bashing and kit conversion. Why build a diesel shell from brass if you can combine a couple of plastic shells by judicious cutting and fitting?. Wood kits are replaced by resin. And the complex trackplan returns in a new guise: multi-level layouts are not only designed but built, Each level is relatively simple, but the carpentry and scenic illusions at the transitions are not. These layouts are designed to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for prototype realism. 12 stations offer more operational fun than 6, so go to a 2nd or 3rd level to get the extra stations. DCC and computers enable more proto-typical train running, too – including a prototypical risk of collisions.
     In most ways, the hobby has matured. The magazines repeat old themes. Craft is still a major part of the hobby and always will be. But most of the discussion now centres around methods and concepts of operation, and of the “total layout design” needed to achieve the dream: running a model as much like a real train as possible. *** (2000)