Travelling (Lapham's 02-3, 2009)

 Lapham’s Quarterly 02-3: Travel. (Summer 2009) Migration is forced, travel is chosen. We

succeed at both because humans have survived by keeping on the move, whether within a territory suitable for hunting and gathering, or by removal into a new territory. We share wanderlust with other animals, which suggest that it’s a condition of species survival.
     This collection tells us what we already know: Travel confirms our conviction that there’s no place like home, and prompts wonder and even delight at the variety of human ways of living and making a living. Which effect predominates depends on the traveller. The evidence shows that the self-centred make poor travellers.
     Tourism is the invention of the leisure class, of people who did not depend on trading profit to finance the journey. But apart from that, there’s little difference between tourism trading, and exploration. Travel reveals as much about ourselves as about the places and people we meet. The modern variety of tourism developed from the Grand Tour, paid for by parents anxious that their offspring would acquire experience useful for a successful career in the higher branches of capitalism and government. The educational component still predominates: the tourist industry offers education as the reason and excuse for spending time being carried across water and land while being cosseted by “the staff”.
     Many of the pieces here are firsthand accounts, which satisfy the reader’s wanderlust without requiring the tiresome nuisances of actual travel. The fictions use the differences between the traveller and the strange lands as opportunities for allegory and satire, or demonstrations that growing up entails self-discovery. Hence the many plots strung out along the roads taken, or not taken, by the hero and their companions.
     I enjoyed the collection as much for its reminders of my own travels as for the experiences of the narrators. ****

Freedom: We don't agree (Lapham's Quarterly 25 01)

Lapham’s Quarterly 25-01 Freedom (Spring 2023). This collection shows that there has beenprecious little consensus on what  freedom means. Most of the pieces assume a political context. Some discuss the moral meanings, usually in contrast to licence. There’s a good deal of story-telling about the effects of oppression, of the struggles for political freedoms. There’s some discussion of self control versus external control. But most of the pieces explicitly or implicitly assume that freedom means the ability to do what one wants to do, with as few constraints, limits, or consequences as possible. Some think that freedom means no consequences whatsoever. But most writers recognise that, since we live with other people, our freedoms and theirs may conflict. Freedom has limits.

    None of the writers refer to the engineer’s concept, which (briefly) refers to how much the design parameters may vary. In practice, it means that the fixing of some variable limits the range and even the availability of some other variable(s) in the design problem. Decide X’s value, and Y’s value is limited, or fixed. Or Y may be impossible to include.  That’s an operational definition, one that I see applicable to politics, social relations, career decisions, and so on. For example, if you decide that a free market means minimal regulation by the government, then only customer demands or preferences will influence such things as a business’s labour or waste disposal practices, etc. In short, you can’t have it all. Exercising your freedom to choose X limits or prevents your freedom to choose Y.

     Many people believe that unpleasant consequences of some choice are limits on their freedom. That belief animated the protests to the covid-19 pandemic measures imposed by governments and businesses. Taken to its logical conclusion, that belief implies that the criminal is an oppressed victim of unjust law, a conclusion that the protesters would not, I think, accept. Thus, reasoning about freedom becomes a nice example of why reason isn’t always reasonable. That also explains why people have disagreed about the concept. Every definition of freedom implies unreasonable conclusions.

     A good collection, as always. ***

Religion (Lapham's Quarterly 03 01)

 Lapham’s Quarterly 03-1: Religion (2010) Excerpts from practitioners, theologians, sacred texts, anthropologists, philosophers, and critics of religion. My take-away: the testimony of religious adherents and the observations of the critics add up to several principles. 

     First, religion is species-specific behaviour. All known human societies have practiced some form of religion. Religion consists of customary rituals performed on certain occasions, some of which are tied to the annual seasonal cycles.

     Second, stories are told to explain the religious significance of the rituals. When writing was invented, these stories were written down, and some came to be seen as god-inspired or -dictated sacred texts. All societies claim that their religious stories are true, while those of rival religions are more or less superstitious or worse. This attitude I label religionism. My experience and the occasional survey data indicate it’s the most common form of religious expression.

     Third, religion is usually transactional: Appease or please the god or gods of your religion, and you will have a good life.
     Fourth, the major religions all include the same range of religious expression, from literalist fundamentalist religionism to mysticism. Most adherents to any given religion are indifferent to mysticism, but become hostile when mystics tend to ecumenical acceptance of all expressions of faith.
     For me, the most important inference from these widely varying expressions and critiques of religion is that faith is primary, religion is secondary. Religion works best when its adherents know it’s a limited, incomplete, and at bottom incoherent attempt to express the faith that animates it, which is that the Universe makes some kind of sense, and that human life has some purpose.
     Recommended. ****
     Footnote: for more, see Karen Armstrong’s books about the development of religion.

Politics As Usual (Lapham's Quarterly 05-04)

 

 Lapham’s Quarterly 05-04: Politics (2012) As far back as we have written records, we have politics. Politics certainly predates writing, since it meets two human needs: The communal need for social regulation; and the individual need for social structure and  influence. That means politics is about power, which means it conflicts with the human needs for freedom and autonomy. There’s a tension between the need for amicable social relations with one’s neighbours and the need for non-interference by one’s neighbours. This tension creates all the problems that politics is intended to solve. Unintended side-effect: Politics affords the power-hungry the opportunity to satisfy their powerlust. As humans combine into ever larger groups, the result is ever more powerful government.

     In short, politics is a mess. Thoreau considered it a necessary evil. Others have proposed ideal states in which everyone is happy and free. These fantasies are derived by more or less rigorous logic from some set of premises that the proposer believes are self-evident. Circular logic and question-begging abound.

     An excellent collection, as usual. May still be available from LQ’s stash of back issues.

     Recommended. ****

Fear and its effects (Laphams's Quarterly 10-3)

 Lapham’s Quarterly 10-3: Fear (2017) Fear messes with one’s brain. Attempts at rational thought fail. Individually, we may panic, and fail to do what’s needed to avoid danger. Socially, we may turn on those we believe endanger us, and commit the most appalling cruelties. Politicians know this, and stoke fear in order to achieve power. Create an image of some danger, then present yourself as the only one that can and will defend against it, that’s a sure way to impose one’s will on others. This collection is heavy on the political, but includes phobias, superstitions, and fear as entertainment. The latter may help to inoculate against panic, but the data are ambiguous.
Another fine collection. ****

Two more Lapham collections: Epidemics and Comedy

 Lapham’s Quarterly XIII-3: Epidemic. (2020) The current issue, with timely reminders that all our current protective measures against covid-19 have been used as far back as we have records. The ancients didn’t know about viruses, but they did know that staying close to infected people somehow transmitted the contagion. Lock downs, quarantines, masking, miscellaneous nostrums, and reliance on the protection of the gods are as old as epidemics. So are the hostile reactions to these measures, including distrust of whatever authorities imposed or prescribed them.

     The collection also shows that the school histories that everybody knows ignore the impact of plagues. We hear a lot about the great squabblers and their bloody wars, of the merchants and their wide-ranging travels, and the inventors and their ingenious devices for improving both war and wandering. The story of the plagues visited by Yahweh on the Egyptians is one of very few instances that gives illness its proper historical weight. But in the school accounts of the 30- and 100-Year wars which marked the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe, the fact that plague killed somewhere between one-third and one-half the population is glossed over. Like many other crucial facts, I did not learn it until university.
    Another excellent collection. ****    

Lapham’s Quarterly VII-1: Comedy (2014) Enjoyable, as always. Someone has claimed that humans are the only animal that laughs, and the only animal that needs to. Recent careful observation of animals shows that some other animals display what looks very like the laughter of pleasure, the only kind exhibited by human babies, which suggests that all laughter expresses some kind of pleasure. The questions are what kinds, and why.
     In their answers, several of the writers quoted here distinguish between wit and humour, and several others claim that true humour transcends cultural specifics. I’d say that wit requires that the creator and audience share the same range of knowledge and insight, while humour relies on the most basic prompters to laughter, which are mostly the (usually less than lethal) mishaps of other people. Another constant is the sad and sometimes dangerous fact that authoritarians have no sense of humour whatsoever. Nor do the moralists who believe they have the duty to impose their moral purities on the rest of us. ****

 

Friends and foes (Lapham's Quarterly VIII-1 and XIV-2)

 

Lapham’s Quarterly VIII-1: Foreigners. (2015) Humans are possibly the most social animals in existence. We nurture each other from cradle to grave. Very few other animals behave similarly, chimpanzees and elephants being both the most well known and almost the only ones. We have strong instincts for bonding with each other. The complement is an equally strong instinct to distrust whoever is not of our group. Hence “foreigners”. Just as all human groups have customs and rules shaping behaviour towards fellow group members, all human groups have customs and rules about how to behave towards outsiders. The fact that these differ in detail doesn’t disguise the fact that the distinction between Us and Them is common to all social animals.
     Unlike other animals, we talk about what matters to us. Lapham and his team have assembled what looks like a representative collection of past and present writings and pictures about the Foreigner. One thing stands out to me: to enable any kind of non-violent interaction with foreigners, they are, at least temporarily, made members of the group. The distinction between Us and Them is not forgotten, but is firmly pushed into second place. A guest is one of us while they are with us. If a foreigner becomes a permanent guest, the some more or less formal ceremony acknowledges that they are now one of us.
     A tangential thought: we humans mark changes in social status. For example, a child becomes an adult. The initiation rites that mark this change are like the rites that mark the change from foreigner to insider.
     Personal note: I have felt like an outsider wherever I have lived.
     A good collection, as always. **** 

 

               
Lapham’s Quarterly XIV-2: Friendship. (2021) C. S. Lewis calls Friendship one of the Four Loves. He sees a common feature: Care and concern for some other person’s welfare. In Friendship, that begins with the awareness that the friend shares come source of joy or delight. The concern is then that the friend may enjoy that common delight as much as one does oneself. Hence a concern that they have the same resources, and hence a willingness to share. That willingness can widen to sharing anything and everything one has, which implies that Charity is next to Friendship. Lewis goes on to discuss Eros and Agape. His book is worth reading more than once.

    This collection doesn’t distinguish between friendship and charity, except perhaps in the sense that friendship may be charity focused on the few people we call our friends. Nevertheless, we read many testimonies to the power of friendship, and how for many people it was more important than family, or social or political alliance. We also read how, when mixed with social or political allowances, it can become corrupted, and an occasion for betrayal. The unkindness of a treacherous friend stings as sharp as the serpent’s tooth.

     Another good collection. ****

Lapham's Quarterly: States of Mind

 

 Lapham’s Quarterly XI-1: States of Mind Psychology. The most common idea is that the Mind is somehow non-physical, separate and different from the brain and body in which it resides. As in the doctrine of the soul, which is embedded in Christian and other theologies. I find that odd, since the Creeds affirmed by most Christians refer explicitly to the resurrection of the body, not the survival of the immortal soul.
     But to get back to the book: Assuming that Lapham and his staff have assembled a representative collection of snippets, Mind and Self are often conflated, as are Consciousness and Self. This too strikes me as odd. Define “mind” as the ability to reason, to solve problems, to formulate goals and methods of achieving them. Then creatures (and machines) with brains clearly have some kind of mind, but not necessarily a sense of self, and most of them apparently not even consciousness.
     What this collection shows us more completely than the textbooks is that the notions of mind, self, and consciousness are inextricably bound up with each other. More, whatever mechanisms account for one will in part account for the others. These three concepts depend on each other. It’s a simple (but I think fallacious) step to infer that the phenomena labelled by these words must also depend on each other. “Soul” is an attempt to account for their apparent mutual dependence.
     Anyhow, “consciousness” is the “hard problem”. How can one and a half pounds or so of living matter the consistency of Jello give rise to the certainly that “I” exist? I think the answer begins with the observation that brains make sense of the data acquired by the sense organs. All living things interact with their environment in order to harvest the energy that sustains them and the substances that enable them to reproduce.
     Brains enable organisms to do so more effectively by solving a wider range of problems, by overcoming a wider range of obstacles to continued existence and reproduction. Brains create something like an image or map of the environment. At some level of complexity, the brain creates an image of the organism itself. More complexity, and the brain creates an image of the organism within the environment. The next level of complexity creates an image of the organism creating that image. (This may be why we use the metaphor of a mirror when we “reflect upon our experience”.)
     Or something like that. When it comes to understanding our minds, our conscious selves, there’s much handwaving in the explanations. All of them offer some insight. All of them help the reader (me) extend and clarify their own notions and insights.
     One of the essays recounts how Jung arrived at the concept of “psychological types”, and its consequence that we are fundamentally unable to understand people who are not the same type as we ourselves. It’s the same reason that we can’t imagine what it’s like to be a bat. ****

Lapham's Quartely XIII-3: Scandal

Lapham’s Quarterly XIII/3 Scandal (2020) Another collection of (mostly) unconsidered trifles adding up to a considerable anatomy of scandal. Scandal violates convention, not morality. Immorality is ignored or condoned to the extent that conventional manners ignore or condone it. But violate a convention, and the whole of society will gasp in horror, clutch their pearls, and avidly gossip about the fall of the great man or woman who stubbed their toe on a pebble of convention.
     True, immorality now and then violates conventional mores also, but since mores change almost as quickly as fashion, what was once enough to cast you out of polite society a few years later may well raise you to the pinnacle of current approbation. And if you flout convention with style and wit, the fashionable people will envy your ability to get away with the most heinous crime.
     The stories told here, most of them in contemporary texts, range from what we would consider minor transgressions of etiquette to major violations of morality and law. The range of present-day judgements on the sins of the past should warn us against facile assumptions of our own moral superiority. Moral behaviour for the most part is mere conformity to the prejudices of the time.
     Another excellent collection. Recommended. Subscriptions and back issues available online. ****

Photos that Tell a Story: The Picture Post Album

      Robert Kee. The Picture Post Album (1989) Kee’s history of the magazine, Britain’s version of LIFE, which preceded it, but learned from it. Picture Post’s founding owner (Hulton) and editors (Lorant and Hopkinson) wanted to use photography as the medium for telling stories, not as a mere adjunct to text. They succeeded brilliantly, in large part because Hulton was a social reformer, and expected the future to be one of progress in equality and social justice.

        The Second World War began when the Post was barely eleven months old, and it became a major factor in maintaining British morale. It published pictures of all social strata at work and play, of soldiers' and civilians' experience of the war, mixed with a bit of discreet cheesecake and sentiment, and in every issue dealt with some more serious topic such as the future of health care, or the conduct of the war. The photographs were brilliant, and their layout and captions told the story. The amount of text apparently varied, but the Post published articles and short fiction too, as well as leaders (editorials). The magazine could be sharply satirical, as when it published black rectangles instead of the pictures about the home front that the editors wished to print but which the censors forbade.
     But the focus was the pictures, and this book shows us the range of subject matter and style. Many of its images have become the ones that we think of when celebrities and artists of the mid-twentieth century are named.
     The photographers were among those who shifted photography away from vaguely conceived imitation of fine art in other media into its own realm. We now take it for granted that photography can be anything the photographer wants it to be, but that it works best as the record of a moment whose significance isn’t understood until it’s captured in a photo, and that photography can distill meaning as well as any painting, precisely because it fixes what would otherwise be a distorted memory of a glimpse.
     The magazine morphed into the owner’s mouth-piece when Hulton disagreed with the post-war politics of Labour. He also pioneered the advertorial, a dubious honour. That wasn’t what the readers wanted, and TV with its illusion of immediacy cut into the visual reporting of illustrated news magazine. It died in 1957, a parody of itself.
     Hopkinson’s Foreword ends with a hopeful claim that a magazine of high-quality photo-reportage and writing could be viable. He had no inkling of what digital photography and the Web would do to news media.
     A nostalgia trip for anyone who knew the magazine or the times in which it thrived, and a necessary record for those who did not. A search for Picture Post Magazine will produce many of the covers. ***

Great Model Railroads 2016

     Kalmbach Publishing Co. Great Model Railroads 2016 It’s time to review another of these special annual Model Railroader issues. Model Railroader is a strong proponent of operations: the owners of all the layouts featured here either designed them for operation, or added operations after exposure to the entertainment value of the railroad game. They also want a stage for the trains, the actors in the drama, as Frank Ellison described it in his articles about the Delta Lines, a showcase for railroad-like operations in the 1940s and 50s. So the layouts look good, interpreting or echoing some prototype and set in a recognisable time.
     The articles generally follow the “How I Built My Railroad” format, which will be helpful to the novice. Since the magazine is intended as inspiration and showcase, this makes sense. However, I sometimes wonder whether page after page of basement- or garage-sized layouts might not overwhelm the new modeller, who more likely has a small bedroom or a corner of a family room available. The layouts here range in size from 299 to 1800 square feet. Most are in the 400 square foot range.
     That being said, the photography is excellent, the concepts are interesting, and every builder has solved some common problem in an unusual way. The most successful layouts, to my eyes, are those that use a minimalist approach. That is, design a track plan based on the prototype, which disliked spending unnecessary money, and so tended to build just enough track to get the job done. Use enough scenery to give the trains a setting. Avoid cluttery detail, but set up scenes that tell a story. Use colour and lighting to create the ambience desired, which is of course the illusion that we are looking at a miniature universe. Give the operators what they want while giving the mildly interested hangers-on something to look at and enjoy.
     While these layouts are large, they not complex. They all provide a full evening’s operation, some with a half dozen, other with a dozen or more players. The make playing at railroading easy enough to avoid frustration, and complicated enough to hold interest.
     A few faves:
    The Shasta Route (HO, Southern Pacific), a well thought out train-watchers layout with grand vistas and some switching to keep the puzzle-solvers busy. There’s enough staging to allow for a satisfyingly busy day down by the tracks.
     The Appalachian Route (On30, fictitious), which creates a nice early 20th century ambience for the nostalgia buff who likes to see small trains in large landscapes, and lots of laid back switching in towns and villages hosting small and medium-sized businesses.
     River City (HO, Minneapolis & St Louis), which recreates a few miles of small town railroading, with enough operation to keep a half dozen or so people busy for relaxing evening. The builder kept close to prototype track arrangements, but fudged a bit by including some defunct businesses to increase work for the peddler trains.
     This issue is no longer in print, but back issues are available from Kalmbach, and many hobby shops will still have a few copies on their racks. ***

Euromodel Rail Review, Nos 1-25 (1983-87)

     Euromodel Rail Review, Nos 1-25 (1983-87) This was a short-lived and erratically published magazine that couldn’t find its niche, and in particular couldn’t compete against Peco’s Continental Modeller, and presumably the European magazines such as Eisenbahn.
I found a copy of it, then bought back issues and subscribed. Rereading it reveals clues to its demise. The layout sketches (one can’t call them plans) are heavy-handed, with hard to read lettering, possibly blown up from smaller originals to fill space. The photo reproductions range from fairly good to execrable, especially the model shots. A lot of the editorial content is thinly veiled advertising. Too many of the photographs are mere variations on the same subject. And the ads constitute 20% of the page count or less, always a bad sign. The layouts featured in the early issues are generally of a mediocre standard, with too much of the European penchant for spaghetti bowl track plans, and so-so scenery at best, with toy-like trees, and buildings apparently chosen for their cuteness rather than their contribution to a believable illusion. It’s no wonder that a reader survey revealed a desire for more prototype information.
     And it’s because of the prototype information that the magazine does have value. There is a great deal about particular lines and branches, the colour photos are very well done, and if you want to work a layout prototypically, there is more than enough information about timetables and train makeup. A special issue about the centenary of the Arlbergbahn has a long essay, with goodly number of pictures (even if their subjects are somewhat repetitive). The occasional studies of locomotive classes are also well done, for example the ÖBB’s 1020 (DB E194) class. But the large scope of the magazine means that the information one wants is scattered; most of the magazine deals with railways one doesn’t care about.
     As I write this, I’m considering whether to clip the magazines for the stuff I want to keep, or whether to keep them intact. * to **** (2003)

Model Railroad Planning 2001

     Model Railroad Planning 2001. MRR Annual. This year, Koester has chosen articles with two main themes: changing modelling goals, and smaller layouts. There are still a couple of large layouts featured, and the overall modelling philosophy is still prototype-based, but strict prototype modelling has lost its premier place. In fact, the end-piece describes Jeff Wilson’s tearing down his strictly prototype layout and replacing it with a "prototype themes" freelance plan. Iain Rice designs a couple of granger-style roads (10'x15', HO & N), Robert Nicholson designs a "based-on" fictitious Georgian branchline (15'x22, S or On2.5), and Eric Hausmann designs a 12'x12' plan based on West Virginia’s glass industry. All three use prototypes for inspiration and guidance, but each adapts and modifies the prototype to suit his space and tastes. Most importantly, each thinks in terms of the space available, and the total impression possible within that space.
     The April MRR happens to include a very small layout - 8'x8'. So perhaps the prototype fanatics are losing their predominance in the hobby. Good thing, too. A letter in MRRP 2001 laments the split in model railroading in the UK - on the one side the strictly prototype nutters, who can’t even agree on standards among themselves; and on the other the ordinary modellers, who are faced with a horrible mix of largely incompatible proprietary standards, and insufficient help from the "true" modellers. (However, Hornby and Bachmann seem to be moving towards track/wheel dimensions compatible with NEM and NMRA - about time.,)
     An intriguing engineering concept, a track elevator, extends the design possibilities. The author has built two, and his experience validates the concept. It’s billed as the helix killer - but IMO the helix is an under-valued and under-utilised scenic element, and I intend to sketch an LDA that lets the helix come into its own. *** (2001)
     Update 2013: MRP 2013 includes an example of one turn of a helix "brought forward" into the open. The builder says that now operators know where their train is, and also (bonus) it adds both a scenic element and another operating point (passing siding with team track).
     Update 2020: Even a multi-level helix can feature scenic element. The trick is to bring one or more of the levels out of the stack into the open. There, they can feature a cliff-side bench, or a curved trestle over a steep transverse gorge, or a remote and lonely station, prehaps with a water tank.

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine July/August 1997

      Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/August 1997. Borrowed from WCESS. Demonstrates that the short story is the mystery genre’s best format: just long enough to create barely believable characters and a plausible plot, but compressed enough for an easily visible shape of the story. Most of the stories are sentimental, a few have the Hitchcockian twist of the crook inadvertently double-crossing himself (or herself) through excessive ingenuity, and a couple work on every level.
     Memories (Wanda Jones) plays a nice variation on Southern Gothic: a plain girl’s nasty older brother gets his just deserts in a psychologically satisfying way. Stop, Thief! (Dan Sontup) works the double-cross motif expertly: honest citizen wants to use petty crook in an insurance scam and set him up as the fall guy, but makes the common error of thinking crooks are dumber than honest citizens. Streetwise (J. A Paul) believably mixes a smart kid, school bullies, an observant cop, and a martial arts coach into a well-paced yarn. Most of the stories are competently written (or edited). A few are a bit precious in style or concept, but I guess the magazine has to cater to a wide range of tastes. ** to *** (2001)

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)

British Model Railway magazines

Miscellaneous British model railway magazines (1970s to present) I’ve been clipping and tossing these. In decided to keep Model Railways and Model Railway Journal, but all the others will be gone.
     There are some common features: an irritating absence of detail drawings and methods in construction articles. More recently, step by step photos and instructions are showing up, and are very well done. Most magazines feature very good outline drawings of locomotives, rolling stock, and structures, along with excellent photographs and thorough historical and technical data. The product  reviews are generally OK. A couple of magazines regularly give necessary wheel dimensions and/or comparisons with prototype measurements. They tend to be more laudatory and “grateful to the trade” than US reviews; some read more like press releases than reviews.
     Layout photos are generally superb and very inspirational, showing a very high quality of modelling. I am especially impressed with the modelling of landscape and structures. In townscape modelling, North American modellers are far behind British ones. The texts on the other hand are pretty much the same format: a brief history of the prototype (imaginary or real), vague narratives of construction, and stock lists. The layouts themselves tend to be much of a muchness, with the same visual themes regardless of  prototype. One observes a trend towards more accurate prototype modelling, a trend repeated in North America some 10 years later. This trend does not improve the variety, however. It seems to me that the days of free-lance modelling will return. Some of the most interesting layouts ever have been pure fantasy (Allen’s Gorre and Daphetid) or prototype inspired (McClelland’s V & O or Koester’s Midland Road.) Frank Ellison’s observation that model railroading is like playwriting and production still holds. In other words, model railroading is both a narrative and a visual art. As with drama, interpretation of reality and pure invention work better than exact imitation of nature.
     The useful British habit of using fiddle yards (termed storage sidings in earlier times) has been taken up here, with a change in terminology: we call them staging yards or staging for short. Some modellers (e.g. Dave Barrow) have argued that staging should be out in the open, and scenicked. Barrow claims the advantages of avoiding the problems of any hidden trackage (i.e., what’s not a problem in the open becomes one on hidden track), and easier visualisation of the operating scheme. If his p.o.v. catches on, we will have come full circle to the early days of layout planning: division point plus a stretch of mainline and/or branch. Plus ça change!
All in all, I spent a pleasant if somewhat exhausting time reviewing these old magazines. They varied in quality from acceptable to excellent. (2000)

Great Model Railroads 2000 (Magazine)

Great Model Railroads 2000 (1999) Kalmbach’s annual compendium of layout visits. Heavy on pictures, light on text. A few sidebars on technique (eg, tree making.)  Brief bios of builders. As usual, the photos are spectacular, the trackplans contain errors, and the text is too skimpy. Layout comments:
     Leigh Creek Lumber Co. Geoff Nott. HO, 27x37. Many alternate routes and branches.  Spectacular in the John Allen tradition, romantic and wild scenery. Focused on NW US logging. Geoff Nott has an eye for the overall scene. He builds to photograph, but the trackplan permits intensive operation. Light on actual lumbering (which has rarely been modelled convincingly by anyone), heavy on scenery and structures. ****
     The Great Northwest Railroad. Bob Roach. O, 39x25. (22x16 in HO). Folded loop with terminal. A train-watcher’s layout. Long runs, wide curves. The builder likes pristine models, and doesn’t care about prototypical time frame, etc, so the layout does not look realistic, but does have a unified style. It has well-done scenery of the Frank Ellison stage-set type, is nicely finished, and looks good. Also, the rail is code 100, a great plus for O scale.***
     B&O and WM. Bob Bales. HO, 25x44. Hidden-loop to loop, short branch. Good balance between operation and train-watching. One half of the layout is huge yards (plus staging), the other half good-looking mountainous scenery. Double track main with passing tracks. Scenes based on prototype, but not exact reproductions. Some good examples of crowded track/structures/scenery. ***
     NYO&W’s Kingston Branch. Mike Bourke. N, 3.5x5 portable. (6.5x9 in HO) Oval with terminal. A little bit of everything: a town, a yard, a tunnel, etc. Streetcar is operable by viewers. The whole thing very much a display layout, with lots of detail, and fudging of prototype for sake of interest, but fun. ***
     Winged Foot & Western. Charles Patti. On3, 10x2. (5.5x15.5 in HO) Point to loop with continuous run cutoff. Old-time logging. Train-watching plus some operation. Lots of scratchbuilt structures and well done scenery. Good balance of RR and scene, enhanced by use of structures to separate lines. ***
     Clark Fork. John Flann. HO 13x15 shelf layout. Point to point switching with staging. Flann describes a neat way to use playing cards to determine consists and switching schedule. Good balance of scenery and track. Good use of structures to justify trackage. Neat and somewhat too clean, but unified appearance. ***
     White River & Northern. David K. Smith. N 7x10 (13x19 in HO.) Oval with staging and branch to reverse loop. Urban, Conrail era. Good individual scenes, good use of structures and urban landscape to justify dense trackage. Operation friendly but also good for train watching. **1/2
     Spiral Hill Railroad. Frank Titman. S 19x20. (14x15 in HO). Oval with branches, one of which climbs up and over on a spiral (helix.) Crowded, with good individual scenes, but unrealistic if more than one scene within view, and some unrealistic patches; I’d have used fewer structures in several places. The main yard crosses the room on a diagonal - good idea. Operation friendly, but good for train-watching, too. No staging, although there is room for it under upper terminal. Good concept for small space, even better for slightly larger space. Min R is 30" (=22" in HO.). **1/2.
     New Haven Shore Line. Bill Aldrich. HO 21x28. Double track oval with large yard set diagonally inside oval. A train-watcher’s layout, historically accurate (summer 1948.)  Aldrich scratchbuilt most of the locomotives and over half the rolling stock. *** (2000)

Book Review: Black Cat, January 1904

Black Cat, January 1904
42pp text + 24pp advertising.

I could find no information about The Shortstory Publishing Company of Boston, Massachusetts. This issue of Black Cat is Vol. IX, No. 4, Whole No., 100, so it was around for some time. Searching on the magazine's name yielded more; it was begun in 1895, and lasted well into the 1920s. This copy cost 5 cents. By 1919, when Henry Miller wrote for it, it cost 15 cents.
The stories are typical high end pulp fiction: the style is quite "literary", a word I put in quotes because the writers use what they and their readers presumably think is good writing. The stories all have twists, a couple are shaggy dog stories. As entertainment, they are pleasant and innocuous enough. As evidence of the intended audience the stories are wonderful, and the ads provide an even better insight. The demographic appears to be middle class, people who want to better their position, by taking correspondence courses for example. Several ads offer instruction leading to a career as an advertising writer or manager, others offer editing and revision services to would-be authors, and of course there's the usual quota of nostrums and health foods.
Several ads offer sets of leather-bound volumes at half price, the ostensible reason being a "binding error", or "scuff marks." All these offers originate at the same address, but have different names attached. "Only 30 sets" are on hand, apparently. These ads appeal to the same attitudes that show up in ads of the 1950s-80s for whiskey or recorded music showing a well dressed man or couple in a book-lined room. Several ads are for railroads, which implies better than average income: travel was expensive around 1900. A fascinating magazine.

Contents:
My Oriental Visitor (Harry Stilwell Edwards) A visitor to the narrator (how he gets into the study isn't clear) tells a fantastic story about the provenance of a small ivory carving of a cat. Turns out he is the narrator's son Style is high flown "oriental". **
The Death Pearl (Frank Lillie Pollock) Two friends fish for pearls, one find a gorgeous pink one. His older friend tries to steal it, which causes a rift. Some time later both attend a reception at which the hostess wears the pearl. The older friend grabs and tosses it, it explodes: it was part of a nefarious plot to kill the man's enemy, containing a mysterious explosive that would blow up only after a period of gentle heat (provided by the hostess's deep decolletage.) An over-plotted tale, as this summary shows. *
With McGann in the Equation (Richard Barker Shelton) A thief arrives at a sleepy town in the swamps, and tells the denizens that he's a detective waiting for a thief, and deputises a bunch of them. When the real detective (McGann) shows up, he is of course detained, and the thief escapes. *-½
The Passing of the Gooba (Mrs. Willis Lord Moore) A satirical account of how a con man sets up a major scam, using "eastern philosophy", etc. The satire attacks not only the gullibility of "practical men", but also social climbing, and materialistic greed. The writing isn't as sharp or subtle as in Stephen Leacock's version of the same plot, but it hits its target. **-½
A Pair of Paper Aunts (F. Wendt) An 18 year old girl must return to America without her aunt. The lack of a chaperon disturbs her, so she invents all sorts of reasons why the aunt, whose name still appears on the passenger list, cannot leave the cabin. A young man makes her acquaintance, and eventually gives her a letter from his aunt to hers. The girl of course reads the letter, which changes her attitude to the young man, but when they each reveal their trickery, they part on bad terms. Only a mixup in their trunk keys, luckily discovered in the customs hall, saves their relationship. A nicely done little love story. **-½