…that modelers like John Allen and others of his generation were able to build such magnificent layouts without the advantages we enjoy today. We have a wide range of excellent structure kits, preassembled buildings,modular building materials, RTR rolling stock, flex track, and a wide variety of turnouts, not to mention the technological advances that have been made. Back then modelers had a limited number of simple kits available. Most of the structures were scratch built. The rolling stock was primarily kits, many requiring skilled assembly and even some of the rolling stock was scratchbuilt. Track for the most part was handlaid including turnouts. The scenery techniques they developed are still being used by us today. Even with everything available to us today, I find progress on my layout to be painstakingly slow. I began my current layout almost 4 years ago. I thought by now it would be largely complete and scenicked and that I would be adding the fine details at this point. As it is, I have just recently completed my mainline, have yet to begin the long branch line I have planned, and have only completed about 20% of the scenery. I have dozens of structure kits I have not even begun to assemble. My hat’s off to the pioneers of this hobby who inspired so many of us to pursue it.
Visionaries exist at all times. Certainly Eric Brooman and Allan McClenehan are two today. Discernment in who is the visionary and what they are teaching us is required. When I see anything with Malcom Furball’s name on it I skip over it becasue I know he will have stolen it from someone else, claimed he invented it and will be trying to sell it later.
jecorbett,
I think it helped, to some extent, that what John Allen and others modeled was STILL around at that time. I would love to be able to see some of the structures, facilities, and locomotives of the 30’s & 40’s, in their “natural habitat”.
Old photographs are a God-send. And, I am VERY thankful to those who have blessed us with a plethora of archive photos to draw our information from. But to be there in persons would allow me to observe things in such detail that old photos are limited in capturing.
jecorbett, you are correct ot state that we are blessed in what we do enjoy in our hobby today. We have it pre-t-t-t-t-ty good…
Tom
On a similar vein, what amazes me is that the pioneers in wagons got from the East Coast to the West Coast throught forests so thick I can’t walk through them in the summer and mountains so high and steep that it was hard for me to find a foot path.
What John Allen did was cool. I’m a big Allen fan. I just think there were a few greater feats and they should be kept in perspective.
What is really amazing was the large layouts built when all track had to be hand laid.
With flex track, think how easy it is to lay, say 12 feet of track in a night - heck in an hour. Compare how long it would take to handlay that much track.
On the other hand, and speaking as someone who started going on layout tours back in the 1960s, I think a really nice finished layout with beautiful track, scenery, backdrops, and good operation was a very very rare thing back then. Maybe that is why it seemed the same layouts got so much attention from RMC and MR. If you look at Trackside Photos in MR from the 1950s and 60s, a lot of layouts that today seem very marginal were featured. Indeed back in those days the old timers, if they had layouts at all, mostly had green painted plywood with some sawdust for “texture,” very poor lighting, erratic operation, they’d use a Hudson to pull freight, cars had blobs of metal for “detail.” And those were the guys who had operating layouts which already set them a notch above the average!
It was very common even in the mid 1960s to go into a guy’s basement and see a fairly large layout, almost always an oval track plan of some kind, on sheet plywood held up by sawhorses, so the level was very low, lit by one or two 75 watt bulbs. And the buildings were just set down on the surface, so the gap showed. Because of the adhesives used back then, and because most guys used brushes not airbrushes, often the workmanship and finish left much to be desired.
What is amazing is not that the most talented guys did well back then, and built layouts we can still admire today. Talent is talent, and some of those guys were genius level talents.
What is amazing is how many really nice layouts there are these days by “ordinary” modelers. The capabilities of the “average” modeler have been helped considerably by the products available to day. And more modelers are concerned with good lighting and an attractive setting for the layout. The ac
I hear ya’. Chip, have you ever watched the Ken Burns series, Lewis & Clark? That ENTIRE trip was amazing! [:0] If you haven’t seen it yet, run down to your local library or video store’s documentary section and check it out. A DEFINITE must-see in my book!..[tup]
Tom
You might be surprised how many people are going back to the “old school” ways of building their layouts. Scratch building, hand laying your own track, etc is making a come back.
John Allen accomplished quite a bit and I always enjoy looking through the book “Model railroading with John Allen”. Keep in mind though that he was a bachelor and basically retired for the last twenty years while he worked on the G&D. He had time that most of us don’t have. If you go back and look at MR issues from that time period you find that the featured layouts were much smaller than today. With today’s better products and RTR those of us with less time can still build a large layout. But I think John Allen will always remain an inspiration.
Enjoy
Paul
One must appreciate that, in many ways, John Allen’s situation was rather like that of today’s George Sellios. John worked for himself on a rather irregular schedule with lots of time off and so could accomplish far, far more on his layout than did the average modeler then, or even now. Of course, there is no question that John was a very talented individual with the distinct advantage of having the eye of the photographer.
I would suggest that with hobbyist numbers today easily double what they were in John Allen’s day and anticipating that the building of an impressive layout should be a task far, far easier than 40-50 years ago, one surprisingly doesn’t see any relative plethora of outstanding, state-of-the-art, layouts relative to the great advances that have been made in the hobby. How often do we see the same layouts appear multiple times in a given magazine or one month in MR and a few months later in RMC, RMJ, et al.? Does this not imply that the probable ratio of truly outstanding vs simply basic layouts (given today’s advanced state-of-the-art) probably remains just about the same as in John Allen’s day?.
CNJ831
Guys,
I think there are quite a large number of top flight layouts out there today. Look carefully at MR, RMC, the Gazette etc. I’m sure we could start a list of really good layouts and that, when all is said and done, it would be quite long. I would also say that in general since Allen’s time, standards have gone up. The leading edge of the hobby is more protoype oriented than ever before and kits and RTR products are at a higher degree of detail and performance as a reflection of those standards.
Allen was/is one of my big inspirations but he did spend a huge amount of time on his RR, as others have pointed out , that most of us will never have. Given all that extra time, even he was not able to finish his layout.
I think that a lot of things that take time are still not sold RTR: Scenery, wiring, benchwork etc…Even items that are RTR such as track, switches etc, still take time to install. Rolling stock has made huge leaps, but often you can be forced to spend time altering stuff if you want a specific prototype. Laser kits still take a lot of time to assemble…
I saw recently in an email that a modeler had categorized Model Railroaders into three categories: Builders, collectors and armchair modelers. I think that this has been the case since the beginning of the hobby and probably we have the fewest in the builder category.
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“State of the Art” is the reason.
It in no way detracts from john allens achievement to point out that the "state of the art back then was massively different from that of today. I’ve never seen one of his models in the flesh, I believe that most if not all were lost in a fire. The really scarey thing is that there were a tiny number of modellers back then who made models that still look good against today’s latest models.
Time, relationships, work, weather (also whether or not…), health, eyesight, the kids, the other half all play there parts…
BUT we are all chasing incredible advances in state of the art… you get the latest Kato or even Overland, sit back… and… someone comes out with sound… so it’s start again time.
For some reason, I think a lack of of all these modern convienences is what really brought these prodigies out. Their great skills shown, and it put their creative minds to work.
Maybe the number wasn’t that tiny. Perusing the pages of old MRs one sees that there were more than a few hobbyists in the 1940’s and 50’s whose scratchbuilt steam locomotives would still likely exceed the quality and level of detail of the best items offered today…especially in O gauge. I can even recall several fellas who actually had operating power-reverse mechanisms on their engines!
CNJ831
There are no shortages of creative minds today. Perhaps there are so many, that none shines. Everyone knows someone with that really cool alyout.
Likewise as it was pointed out, state of the art is a rapidly moving target. What is “state” today, is “legacy” tomorrow. (OR should I say “vintage.” How many people can finish a large layout while it is still state of the art.