Frank Ellison. Frank Ellison on Model Railroads (1954)

     Frank Ellison. Frank Ellison on Model Railroads (1954) This is the first model railway book I ever bought. It cost me 35 cents, or about 1½ hours babysitting money. I read it to pieces, and sometime in the 1970s rebound the book with cardboard covers and vinyl tape. The vinyl tape cracked when I opened the book a couple weeks ago, so I took the covers off, and decided to reread it before repairing the book.

     Frank Ellison emphasised operation “in a railroad like manner” when most people were still content to build models and run them round an oval a few times. Back then, building a layout, the locomotives, and the cars took so much time and effort that there wasn’t much energy left for actually operating the pike. Ellison set out to change that. His series of articles in Model Railroader, suitably edited, make up this book. About half the book deals with operation: the peddler freight, the through freight, passenger trains, engine changes, and so on. He reminds the reader that even a small layout with a few spurs can host a peddler freight and provide hours of entertainment.
     He believes scenery is essential as a backdrop or stage setting for the actors in the drama of railroading (he was a scene designer, builder, and setter by trade).  Thus, scenery, and how to design it to fool the viewer into believing the train is passing through miles of country, occupies most of the second half of the book. He spends less time on building models and adapting locomotives. With his theatrical background, he thinks of rolling stock as merely actors; it’s the roles they play that matter, and a good actor can play any role. Prototype fidelity matters less to him than the overall impression and reliable functioning.
     Ellison’s style is direct and clear. He is chatting with the reader, not pontificating. His casual assumption that model railroading is a man’s game jars nowadays, especially since so many women have declared themselves to be part of the hobby. He also assumes he’s talking to people who can afford to spend a fair bit of cash on their pastimes, which means he also assumes at least a high school education.  His materials and processes are dated, in fact many are impossible these days, since they have been replaced with plastics and electronics. But other than that, his points are as valid today as they were back then. He’s one of the pioneers of the hobby, one of the people who recognised early on that there was more to it than the craft of making miniatures. His influence is still with us. *** (2007)