Death is Now My Neighbour (1997) TV episode

      Death is Now My Neighbour (1997, a Morse Special) A young woman is shot through a drawn blind, the murderer aiming at her silhouette. The only clue is a silly greeting card from a lover. The next morning, her neighbour, a journalist, is shot to death. Morse is in top form, and Lewis supplies the missing link when he realises that a pair of initials written down by the second victim indirectly point to the murderer. The motive for the killings derives from academic ambition: a new Master of Lonsdale College is about to be elected.
     A satisfying mix of blackmail, secrets, sex, abuse of power, and assorted minor sleaze. But if one hasn’t ever seen a Morse, one will be hard put to follow the allusive and elliptical style of narrative, which depends on the viewer’s familiarity with Oxford, Morse, Lewis and academia. The solution is plausible, and fairly solved. The acting hints at enough back story that we engage with each character, even the maid who brings the breakfast to the hotel guests. As usual, Dexter has an uncredited part, this time he says a Latin grace. A couple of bonbons: we discover Morse’s given name, and he meets a woman that’s his intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional equal. Fade-out on their arm-in-arm entry into a posh hotel.
     The episode feels like a series-ender, but there will be two more, and Lewis will apply the lessons learnt from Morse in his own career as Inspector. The series succeeds because of the consistency its fictional world, and because it pays attention to the effects of evil. We also like Morse, despite his flaws. Or because of them. Take your pick. This is the third of fourth time we’ve watched this episode. It wears very well. ***

W. A. D. Strickland. Chronicles of a Garden Railway (1968)

     W. A. D. Strickland. Chronicles of a Garden Railway (1968) Strickland is an engineer, and it show. He doesn’t tell us enough about some things, and too much about others. The organisation of the book is somewhat haphazard, too. However, the personal tone, the odd flashes of family history, and so on, make up for these formal faults, and the result is a charming chronicle, just as the title promises. As with many English books, the illustrations are either badly or not at all keyed to the text,  it’s as if the person responsible for the pictures hadn’t read the book. The technology of garden railways has much improved since Strickland built his 4mm scale, 16.5mm gauge layout, but I doubt that anyone today has had any more fun building and operating a garden railway. It’s quite clear that it was a family hobby. It helped that Strickland, like his wife, was an avid gardener. The information about suitable plants is worth the price of the book (15/- or 75p in 1971). ** (2005)

D. A. Boreham. Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling 2nd rev. ed. (1978)

     D. A. Boreham. Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling 2nd rev. ed. (1978) Donald Boreham represents the old school of railway modellers rather than model railroaders, though he does admit to a liking for prototypical operation. His book is short on technical details (especially drawings; the descriptions are sometimes less than clear), and long on anecdote and personal observations, all which makes for a charming and randomly useful book. As is so often the case, the photos have little or no relation to the text. The drawings of miscellaneous Welsh and other prototypes at the back however are worth the price of the book. ** (2005)

John Betjeman. Ghastly Good Taste 2nd ed. (1971)

     John Betjeman. Ghastly Good Taste 2nd ed. (1971) Betjeman wrote the first edition when he was very young, and had decided opinions based on little knowledge. It shows. While the book is an entertaining read, as a history of architecture (which it purports to be) it lacks the factual grounding that even tendentious polemic (which this is) needs in order to convince. His few annotations indicate that he did change his mind or taste as the years went by. Its thesis, that architecture languishes because of a general lack of understanding and taste among its consumers, is as valid now as it was when he wrote this rant. Worth reading, and in some schools of architecture good, and perhaps necessary,  for a class discussion, but otherwise already dated and quaint. Not worth keeping, though. * (2004)

O. S. Nock.S World Atlas of Railways (1978)

     O. S. Nock.S World Atlas of Railways (1978) Nock has an undeserved reputation as an expert. His work is riddled with errors, some of them so obvious they indicate careless proofreading, others the kind that are easily checked. The worst are the ones that imply wrong conclusions, chief among these the errors of omission, and his bias towards the UK. A Janes World Railways this isn’t. This big book has its uses, though, especially since it gives a snapshot of the state of rail in the 1970s, over thirty years ago now, and the expectations of the time which haven’t been fulfilled. There is for example no real understanding of the intermodal revolution, despite the fact that by 1978 about one third of all traffic in North America was of this type. It’s a “popular” work, ie, it caters to the expectations and prejudices of the nonspecialist. A very mixed bag of useful and useless information. Some good pictures here and there. Varies: * to ** (2004)

(Kalmbach Books) Popular Model Railroads You Can Build (1977)

     (Kalmbach Books) Popular Model Railroads You Can Build (1977) Reprints with revisions of four project railroad series. There are only two clues to the age of these articles: one, the repeated use of “man” for “person”; and two, the old scenery building technology of wadded newspapers and hard shell. Apart from that, the layouts are quite modern, with staging tracks and an emphasis on operation. **½ (2004)
     This is the last of the book review from 2004.

Penelope Lively. Next to Nature, Art (1982)

     Penelope Lively. Next to Nature, Art (1982) A group of “ordinary people” book an art-week at Framleigh Place, a decaying country house in Warwickshire. Its owner, an example of the decaying gentry, and his so-called staff are a bunch of self-centred twits, whom the ordinary twits at first regard with the awe due self-professed artists. A number of more or less strange things happen, and each of the ordinary folk achieves a kind of epiphany, while the artists remain stuck in their unskilled ruts (and rutting), with the exception of Bob the potter, an excellent craftsman and the only one with a real sense of what making things entails. A pleasant enough romp, with some mild but accurate satire of the silly sixties’ trust in doing your own thing, this book is worth reading – once. ** (2004)

Lawrence M. Krauss A Universe from Nothing (2013)

     Lawrence M. Krauss A Universe from Nothing (2013) Krauss shows how the universe as we know it came to be. He reviews not merely what we now know (or may hypothesise), he gives us the history of the investigation. He does this by showing that the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” can be rephrased as “How did something arise from nothing?”, which makes it answerable. The alternative phrasing, “What purpose does the universe fulfill?” is unanswerable. It’s also pointless to try to answer it, for if there is no evidence of purpose, any answer is mere speculation, driven perhaps more by wish-fulfilment than an real desire to know the answer. Science deals only with answerable questions, which means the “unanswerable” puzzles of late night, beer-soaked sophomore restructured in operational terms. “Operational” here means “answerable by some objective method”. If you can’t re-phrase the question so that it points to some method or evidence that might answer it, then it’s a non-question.
     In short, by dealing with the epistemology of the question, Krauss clears the ground for an answer. The answer is, as Sir Arthur Eddington and others have repeatedly reminded us, “stranger than we can imagine”. Or as Krauss himself puts it, “The universe is cleverer than we are”.
     And what’s the answer? That “nothing” is unstable. It cannot persist. It must, sooner or later, produce something. That something may wink in and out of existence in a very short time, or because of some random imbalance in its constituents inflate into a universe such as the one we inhabit.
     Krauss is careful to limit his claims. Based on what we know, mostly evidence garnered from predictions derived from quantum theory, the Universe is 13.72 billion years old. That’s four significant figures, ie, +/-  10 million years (which is roughly the amount of time there have been hominids on Earth). But there are still unanswered questions. One of the implications of "something from nothing" is the multiverse, a possibly infinite collection of universes, most of which would not operate on the laws of physics that give rise to matter, and hence to stars and galaxies, and hence to life, and hence to us. There is at present no way to test this hypothesis, and it looks like there may never be one.
     Does Krauss make convincing case? Yes. He deals briefly with Creationist objections to evolution and cosmology. I like his “If you have no problems with an uncreated God, why do you have problems with an uncreated universe?” He does admit that he has no proof of the non-existence of some kind of god, but he declares that he doesn’t want to live in a universe created by a god of arbitrary whims and laws. He much prefers the amazing universe that physicists and cosmologists have revealed. It has one curious feature: because it is expanding, it will eventually reach a state where any future cosmologists will be able to know only their own galaxy. We live in a time that we are able to see evidence of the origins and history of the universe, and can extrapolate to a time when most of that knowledge will be practically impossible to discover. Why? Because it depends on observable evidence. Once those observations aren’t possible, neither are the testable hypotheses that we have been able to make.
     A sobering thought. It should, I think focus our attention on the more important big question: What kind of meaningful life can we live in a universe without apparent purpose? The answer is of course, a life that has meaning in human terms. If we begin \the construction of an answer with the observation that some of the things we do tend to damage or extinguish us individually and as a species, and that other things that we do tend to enhance our lives individually and as a species, then we won’t go far wrong in choosing rules of life that give us meaning and purpose.
     The book is longer than it needs to be. But it’s still worth reading. ***

Niall MacKay. Over the Hills to Georgian Bay (1981)

     Niall MacKay. Over the Hills to Georgian Bay (1981) Niall MacKay provides a summary history of the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, which connected the namesake towns (a rarity in railway naming), and provided J R Booth, its promoter and owner, with a means of bringing his lumber to market. If the Cashman Creek bridge, whose foundation had been undermined by a flash flood, had been replaced, the railway would probably still exist, as it was the shortest route by far between the Upper Great Lakes (and hence the Midwest) and New England (and hence European markets for lumber and other natural resources), and might now be one of the main west-east routes in North America. At its peak, it was running trains an average of twenty minutes apart.
     It was amalgamated with the Canada Atlantic Railway, which was the largest privately owned railway at the time. It ran through sparsely settled country, and after sale to the Grand Trunk, and later incorporation into Canadian National Railways, it was one of three routes across central Canada, a fact that assisted the decision to in effect abandon it, especially since the other two routes served more densely settled regions. It crossed Algonquin National Park, which meant a fair amount of tourist traffic before roads (built as Depression make-work projects) opened up the park to cars and busses.
     MacKay has mined the photographic sources, and these supply a good deal of the interest of this book; one wishes the pictures were larger and more clearly reproduced, but 23 years ago the printers were still limited to half-tone and letterpress. The profile and line map are well done, the general location map less so, since the latter doesn’t show enough of the surrounding settlements, roads etc. Nevertheless, the book gives one an excellent picture of the railway and the country it ran through. **½ (2004)

Lawrence Block. Burglars Can’t be Choosers (1977)

     Lawrence Block. Burglars Can’t be Choosers (1977) Written in what in the 70s passed for a “funny and feisty” style, this is almost unreadable, I gave up after about 30 pages. The narrator-hero is too cute for words. Apparently, he will find a corpse in his latest B & E target, but Block is so busy with his wink-wink nudge-nudge jokes that I lost interest, and didn’t get that far. (2004)

Dorothy Woodworth. Death of a Winter Shaker (1997)

     Dorothy Woodworth. Death of a Winter Shaker (1997) A “winter Shaker” is a homeless person that the Shakers take in for the winter. Occasionally one of them takes the vows and joins the community, but usually they move on when warmer weather comes. One of them has been murdered. Sister Rose, Trustee of New Homage, solves the puzzle of whodunit, but not before another death, the revelation of some shameful secrets, and a riot that could have resulted in worse than a few bloodied heads. Woodworth has done her research, but her portrait of this Shaker community has something Hollywood or TV about it: she hasn’t fully imagined the effects of being brought up in such a strict yet gentle sect. The story moves well enough. A number of subplots seem intended to add depth to the characters, but none, not even Rose and Gennie, become fully realised people about whom we care. ** (2004)

Hayden. Bob, ed. Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader (1981)

     Hayden. Bob, ed. Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader (1981) Although this book is now 23 years old, and many of the articles reprinted in it date from the 50s and 60s, the layout designs in it are still worth study. They range in seize from 4x8 or thereabouts to 20x20.
     Many of the most successful plans fit into a spare room or half a garage. All assume that the layout will be operated, and where space permits, continuous run cutoffs allow guests and perhaps the owner too to indulge in mere train watching. The urge to cram in as much track as possible affects the earlier designs, most of which could do with judicious pruning, but use of viewblocks (as advocated by John Armstrong) disguises the bowl-of-spaghetti track arrangements. The later plans have sparser track, and tend towards point-to-point concepts. Staging appears in most plans, but the concept wasn’t well-enough established to have its own terminology: instead we see “layover” or “holding” tracks.
     The language almost always assumes that the builders will be men; a few of the later articles don’t show this bias. The majority of plans derive from actual prototypes, at least in spirit; but several include hints on how to adapt the design to prototypes in other parts of the continent. Several are suitable for adaptation to my 13x13 space, and will be studied further. ** to **** (2004)

John Armstrong. Creative Layout Design (1978)

     John Armstrong. Creative Layout Design (1978) Still one of the best introductions to layout design, as opposed to track planning. Armstrong’s book consists of expanded versions of articles he wrote for Model Railroader. He expands on the backstory, the design criteria such as historical era, layout purpose, and so on, that are less obvious yet turn out to govern the design even more than the available space, finances, and time constraints. Beginning with just such constraints (space or location, scale and gauge, etc), Armstrong shows how some one aspect of the design task governs all others. Recently, there have been a spate of books about design in general, and each agrees with Armstrong: that all design is a compromise of competing interests, desires, and constraints.

     Throughout, Armstrong relates his designs to specific prototypes, which guides not only the schematics of the track plan but also the scenic treatment and the inevitable tradeoffs. It also allows him to offer designs for all types of model railroaders, from the train watcher to the operation nut.
     Armstrong attempts to get the most operational track into the available space. At first glance, his plans look very much like the spaghetti-bowl style he reacted against. But closer examination shows that his careful placement of viewblocks and backdrops, his use of multiple levels, staging yards, and aisles, all work to control what the operator sees, and so create the desired illusion of one railroad alone, at work in land- or cityscape. The majority of his plans are buildable by a solo modeller, but most would benefit from the help of a circle of friends, both in building and for operation.
     Armstrong pioneered and established what many now consider standard practices: viewblocks, staging yards, multiple levels, reference to actual railroads, and so on. He built on Frank Ellison’s concept of the layout as a stage. Iain Rice has taken both these pioneers’ work a step further: he starts with a theme, and works backwards to the track plan, which sometimes seems to be mere afterthought, until you realise how cunningly it’s been integrated in the total design. ***½ (2004)