I’m just curious if the Lionel Strang’s Allegheny & Lackawanna Southern has joined the list of “fallen flag” model railroads.
The Lone Geep
I just wanted to bump this post up just in case anyone knows.
The Lone Geep
I don’t know but I’ll give it another bump. Strang was prolific and seemingly omnipresent for a time and then … not a word that I can recall.
Dave Nelson
Since Lionel was a long time contributor to MRR, perhaps one of the staff that monitors the forums can give us an update. I always enjoyed his “Workin on the Railroad” column.
Yes, I am also curious. He was prolific. And then I believe that it was announced that he was going to be either a contributing editor or an associate editor (I get confused about the different “editor” types). And it was right after that he went poof. Maybe having to work to deadlines took all the fun out of writing?
Well, while I certainly can’t speak specifically for Lionel Strang, as someone who spent nearly a score of years writing for another large hobby publication, I will tell you that the novelty and recognition writers often gain from penning many articles in succession tends to grow stale with time in many instances. In the magazine world over any span of years one sees many “flash in the pan” writers who appear suddenly, produce prolifically for a few years and then fade away to obscurity. I don’t know how many I could mention that have been associated with MR, the number has certainly been considerable, but no more than is typical of any such publication.
Our hosts here may offer a more specific answer, but I personally wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear that Lionel has simply moved on to other hobby interests than authorship.
CNJ831
I can agree with CNJ831 re preparing articles for publication. It can become a “chore”, as it does take a fair amount of effort. First off, if you are preparing a construction article, you need to take photos during the actual modeling work. Not that this is hard work, but you need to take photos at critical steps so what you are going to describe is clear. Miss one step and it sure messes up things! The completion photos are the easiest, but again do take effort.
Preparing the written material can at times take as much time as it took to make the model. You need to keep track of all the supplies used, their brand names and part numbers, etc. The write the text in a readable, logical manner so hopefully others can follow what you did. My word processing program keeps track of the time spent on an open document such as a magazine article. I rarely check it out, but do recall seeing that my article had been open for around 10 hours. Of course I wasn’t writing all that time, but did have the article text on the screen while I figured out what was next.
I’ve done several articles on other modelers’ layouts, and they too take a fair amount of time. Taking the photos on site is usually the quickest part of the effort. Preparing a track plan from the owners’ sketches, and making sense out of the photos that were taken, writing captions, and doing the actual layout history and description from what the owner provided can and does take a fair amount of time.
There’s also the changing of one’s modeling interests. When I first got back into modeling about 30 years ago, I had an interest in making diesels and other models of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National. So I did quite a few of them, and this gave me material for magazine articles and photos to enter in contests. In the past several years my interests have changed to doing models in On30, funky and not necessa
I’m just more curious if the A&LS has been taken down ever since I haven’t seen anything of Lionel’s lately.
The Lone Geep
He apparently has a Facebook page, which says he lives in Barrie, Ontario. Same province as you? Maybe you can contact him through Facebook and see what he’s up to.