Decades: A Look Back at MR in January 2015

Model Railroader
January 2015
104 pages
Editor: Neil Besougloff
Managing Editor: Hal Miller

Editor Neil Besougloff starts off with some inside information on how MR staff decide what to do for the annual project layout. He states that “the goal of Model Railroader’s project layouts has always been to inspire new and intermediate hobbyists to start or continue building a layout, and to show off new techniques and approaches.” Mr. Besougloff goes on to explain that they do not repurpose rolling stock or structures, the layout size is limited by the size of the doorway into the workshop, how they choose the theme, and the design has to be something that can accomplished within a certain timeframe.

Information Desk jumped to the front of the magazine as compared to 10 years prior whereby it was in the back. In this column, Jim Hediger takes a look at the second floor interior details in a mechanical interlocking tower. There’s some good information here if you need to detail the interior of your tower.

Jim Kelly provides a couple of ideas in his N Scale Insights column. The first is that he discovered that a sword shape drink stir stick makes a great N scale uncoupler. He then goes on to discuss how he provides stools for his operators to sit on while switching the layout. Everyone may not need a stool, but for those who do, they are a welcome relief.

Jim Hediger gives his suggestions for good layout lighting in the Workshop Tips column. This one, even though only 10 years old, did not age. A big portion of the article discusses incandescent and fluorescent lighting. The overall concepts of planning the lighting early and installing valences are relevant, but the lighting materials did not age well.

In the Step by Step column, Lou Sassi builds wood retaining walls. It is a basics type of article, but I will read almost anything that Mr. Sassi writes. If you need the ground goop recipe, it is re-published here. To make it even more convenient for you, the recipe is: 1 part Celluclay, 1 part Vermiculite, ¾ part brown paint (his choice is Pittsburgh Paints Tobacco Leaf Brown), 1 part Elmer’s white glue. And approximately 1 ½ ounces of concentrated Lysol.

The first layout feature article is the 12 x 24 On30 Fernwood Lumber Co. layout set in 1910 in Southern Mississippi. It’s a nice layout with a more unique era and locale. In the article, there are additional bump outs that describe how he models Southern yellow pines with Joe-Pye weed and how he makes cowpies with dried burnt sienna artist colors squeezed onto wax paper and peeled off. If you need smaller scale cowpies, I am assuming that a smaller dab will do ya.

Harold Russell provides text, photos, and plans for the W. Case Benham Elevator in Canandaigua, NY. This checks a lot of boxes for me. Structure. Check. Agricultural related. Check. Photos. Check. Drawings. Check. It would take some tweaking to give it a more midwestern look for me, but the basis is there. I also appreciate all that Harold Russell has published over the years.

Need to model a desert? Then Kim Nipkow’s article will be right up your alley. The author goes through step by step creating a 24” x 30” desert diorama with carved plaster rocks colored as Utah red sandstone. The track is weathered with an airbrushing of beige and a wash of leather brown and gray. Add the sand, dirt, and vegetation, and voila, a desert scene. The author doesn’t actually say voila, that was all me.

The 2015 project layout debuts this issue. It is an N scale layout built on a door and christened the Red Oak layout. It is a CB&Q layout set in Iowa in the early 1960s. It has a staging yard “hidden” behind a backdrop divider and has a rural agricultural feel. Some people are weary of project layouts, but I like to see what they come up with each year.

Paired with the interlocking details provided in the Information Desk column, this next article is how to build a working interlocking plant for your layout, complete with working levers for signals and turnouts. It’s not my cup of tea, but I’m sure there are some that will enjoy sipping on that one.

Moving on is a track plan for a mountain short line designed by John Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong had his first track plan published in 1952. He passed away in 2004. Fast forward to 2015 and he is still making the pages of MR. This article has a unique twist. In his career, Mr. Armstrong also offered track planning services commercially to model railroaders. In this case, a hobbyist who commissioned Mr. Armstrong to design an O scale layout set in the southern Rockies shared not only the track plan, but also the edited transcript of the recording Mr. Armstrong provided to him to verbally walk him through the paper plans. It’s a unique article that brings back a voice, and plan, from the past.

Need to weather a freight car, or more specifically a 2-bay covered hopper? M.R. Snell shows you how to weather the car in 5 steps one layer at a time. What really intrigued me is that his base layer is black theatrical makeup. The following steps include using paintbrushes, a rattle can, an airbrush, decals, graffiti, and reflective strips. There’s only so many ways you can talk about weathering, but this one hits a new technique, at least for me, with the theatrical makeup. Like the old quote says: “Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good; And theatrical makeup will weather your trains.” I may or may not have added that last part.

In the DCC Corner column, Eric White covers installing a decoder in a PCC car. A friend of Mr. White wanted to control the car to simulate a stop complete with brake lights. Traction uses a couple of options that us diesel, coal, oil, or wood fueled modelers don’t need, such as wiring a decoder for both overhead wire and track current. The other trick is to illuminate the brake lights. It’s good to know for those who need it. Me? I have 4,300 horsepower of fire breathing locomotive dragons. I don’t need no stinking brake lights. All kidding aside, for this moment anyway, I never considered any of this and it is good to know in the event that I change my mind for the 732nd time and model some urban scenery with trolleys or PCCs slugging their way through the streets. Ok, back to kidding.

Tony Koester talks family in this edition of Trains of Thought. While none of Mr. Koester’s children were bitten by the model railroading bug, he does have a grandson that suffers from this modeling malady. He goes on to describe that his teenage grandson wanted to spend his Spring Break working on Grandpa Tony’s layout. Mr. Koester concludes that “we do know that the reports about youngsters no longer being interested in working with their hands beyond keying text messages is overly pessimistic. Maybe the key to it is to personally engaging them in what our hobby has to offer.” And, yes, engagement is the key. The hard part is that the key is no longer a key, it’s a fob. And because it is a fob, we old-timers think the hobby is dying because the kids don’t want our key. You know what? The hobby is fine. Just let the youngsters use the fob and keep the key for yourself. OK, that metaphor may have not been the greatest, but my moral of the story is for us to engage younger folk in the hobby, not dictate how the hobby has to be done. The hobby changes from generation to generation. I’m sure the manufactures of those early wooden kits heard from the hobbyists who cut down the trees in the woods with their axes and milled the lumber for the models themselves that the hobby was dying when precut wood kits hit the shelves. Change does not mean death. Change means that the hobby is in good hands as the young-un’s are making it their own. The upside is that we get to keep our hobby in our way of doing it while the newbys are blazing their own trail. As much as we want them to appreciate our hobby, we have to let them make their hobby their own. Both ways can peacefully co-exist side by side. Get them interested in the hobby and set them free. If they want help, they know where we are. We’re either in the basement or down at Hardee’s drinking coffee.

Finally, Andy Sperandeo wraps up the issue with his column, The Operators. As it is the January issue, he went back to the basics and produced a glossary of operating terms. It’s always good to see his name attached to a column or article. He is missed.

Jeff

3 Likes

A question for you Jeff.

Any significant changes in the appearance of the magazine in terms of page count, quality of paper, etc. to reflect new ownership?

Rich

Thanks for sharing Jeff! This had to be one of my first, if not THE first, MR I received. I remember wanting to build the Red Oak so badly, and while I never did, it still was a great inspiration, and I might still build it as a display layout someday (albeit with scenery tweaked to be more northeastern than midwestern), and I must say as an N scaler, that N scale insight column was very nice to read when starting out! What a fun recap on a blast from my own past (which was 10 YEARS AGO?!? HOW!!!)

@richhotrain That is a great question. Just from observation, the page count went through a bell curve whereby the top of the curve was the 1980’s and 1990’s. I would say the 20 year stretch from 1985 to 2005 was the prime era; but I will say a massive amount of pages were dedicated to advertisements. Catalogs and magazines were how you searched for product prior to the internet so it is no surprise at the former pages dedicated to product compared to now.

One of the bigger changes in content was the transition of telling the story or how-to through pictures rather than text. In older issues, you had alot of text telling you how to do something with fewer pictures. That transitioned to lots of pictures for each step with captions below the pictures. Some people like this while others learn by reading text so that is a more of a personal preference on how you learn.

I think the biggest change in content is in the arena of basic vs. intermediate vs. advanced. What struck me, especially as I re-read the young author’s contest articles, is that those mid-teen modelers were challenged to do some great modeling. I think in my recap, the 14 year old that kitbashed a locomotive has done something that, to this day, I’ve never attempted. I think this is where some philosophical discussion should occur. Sure, we can dedicate pages to some very basic things, but to me, it is selling young and new modelers short. It is saying that you are a beginner so we are going to write some content at a very base level because you we all knowing wise modelers know much much more than you so we are going to dumb it down to your level. Maybe that is too harsh of a way to describe it. My point is, and it is the way that I felt even when I was the mid-teen reading the articles, I was looking for three i’s: Information, Instruction, and Inspiration. I think that is the reason that the Beginner columns have come and gone over the years. Even as a mid-teen back in the 1980s, I could figure out on my own how to build a small wooden retaining wall. What I wanted was to build one like the real railroads used which meant photos, drawings, information on when, how, why, etc… Back then I even read the articles on how to build a brass locomotive from scratch. I did not have the tools or talent at that time to do it. Why did I read it? I wanted to get better. I wanted to learn. I was a sponge trying to absorb all of this as I wanted to make my layout look like those in the magazine. I think that the content needs to find that sweet spot to challenge new modelers but not scare them off. Plus a higher level of content keeps the intermediate and advanced modelers reading, too. I just think that sometimes we are selling modelers short because we think we know better. Like I said: Information, Instruction, and Inspiration.

In reviewing these issues, I also found that I truly miss the things like A Railroad You Can Model whereby a layout design is based on a prototype from somewhere. Where this hits is that it shows the modeler how to translate prototype scenes, track arrangements, industries, etc… into a workable layout design. It is very impractical to model foot by foot, although some modelers are going with the one-town approach. These articles showed how to compress the prototypes into a manageable layout that would still hold operational interest. Plus, the bonus for me, is I got to learn about another railroad in another town in another part of the country. For me, I’ve never just read the articles that dealt specifically with what I wanted to model. I miss things like Paint Shop. Most of the models were not ones I was interested in, but they always had prototype info mixed in and instruction on painting, weathering, detailing, decaling, etc… which isn’t road or model specific.

Another big change, and this is probably why magazines have struggled with their content, and that is the availability of detailed products today. There are lot of articles on kitbashing and detailing locomotives and rolling stock as that was the only way to get specific models back in the day. Today I still get amazed at the products that come to market and also the frequency of releases. Now, this amazement comes with a dark side of cost and availability, but that it a discussion of another sort.

So I think my common theme is that my impression is that the prototype content is being routed through Trains and Classic Trains and the modeling content is in MR. In older issues of MR, it seems like we had more prototype content to pair with the modeling articles.

I think some of the stronger content produced these days gets pulled into special issues, like GMR and MRP. Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, love GMR and MRP, but I think to some extent it is cannibalizing the mothership of MR. I think the original intent was to extend MR (and make money, of course), but over the last 5 to 10 years, I think they have been pulling from MR rather than extending it.

Paper weight has changed. Some have expressed that this is a non-issue. For me it is. It goes to my perception of quality. If you are one to read the magazine and recycle it a few months later, then I agree that paper weight is a non-starter. For me, I have every back issue to January 1940. I also read the archives online. I prefer paper as I just like the feel of holding and reading a paper magazine. A tablet cannot replace this for me. If I really want to unwind from work, during non-winter months, my favorite place to be is on my covered patio, with a cold ice tea, with the radio on, reading a paper model railroading magazine while thinking about getting the ol’ charcoal Weber fired up for some delicious eats. No phones, No computers. No tablets. So to me and my paper based ways, the feel of the paper is important and denotes quality. Thin paper denotes cheap and disposable to me. On the other end, I absolutely do not want thick archival paper. My alumni magazine is that way and I hate it. My preferred paper weight for comparison purposes is what RMC is using.

Those are my immediate thoughts. I’m sure I will have others as soon as I hit “post”.

Jeff

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Jeff, these magazine summaries are excellent.

Rich

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@richhotrain Thanks! I appreciate that. It’s going to be tough to keep up but I do enjoy doing them. Sometimes work gets in the way. Sometimes it’s life, whether it be good or bad. I got back from a two week vacation, made it through my two busiest weeks of my work month, got one of the bugs floating around (thankfully not the flu) and then had to finish off the newsletter for the Gateway Division NMRA of which I am the editor. Now I’m going to start working on the February Decades, but I also need to build in time to catch up on current issues while also building in some modeling time which has suffered. All in all though I do enjoy doing the MR Decades. It’s just that I fall behind now and again. I’m glad you enjoy them.

Jeff

Not at all surprised to see that you are an editor as well. Your writing skills support that occupation quite well, Jeff.

Rich