Phil said:I subscribed to MR from 1969-1977 and I never felt that John Allen was included disproportionately to any other modeler.
You’re about a decade to late…Time was the G&D was a monthly picture and John had several bylines in MR and RMC…The G&D was shown in several catalogs including PFM…
John was not the first to weather locomotives and cars but,was given the notoriety by Linn.The guy was a O Scale 2 railer…
I once discuss at length a grand idea of mine and as a teenager I was basically ignored I even penned a article and was told “Thank You” but,your idea seems impractacle and that was that.
Doesn’t matter…
Somebody else picked up on the idea 20 years after I did…
Unfortunately Kalmbach has no plans to re-issue the book. Here is the reply they sent back to me when I emailed them to inquire about that possibility. Maybe if we all got together to show that there is a big interest in “The Book” as it is referred to in most G&D circles as well as a book with all of JA’s articles, they will do it. Dear Jason Guess: Thank you for inquiry! Unfortunately, Model Railroading w/ John Allen is out of print and no longer available. We do not have plans to reprint this title. When we receive requests for an out of print book, we share the request with our Books Department; however, there are many reasons why a book may not be reprinted. Your e-mail will be shared with the Books Department as another request. If you wish to contact someone directly and find out further detail, please phone 262-796-8776 and ask for the Books Department. Listed below are different internet sources we are aware of that will search for out of print books, should you be interested in researching your request further: www.Amazon.comwww.bn.comwww.abebooks.comwww.harvestbooks.comwww.alibris.com If we may be of further assistance, email customerservice@kalmbach.com, phone 800-533-6644 or fax 262-796-1615. Customers outside the U.S. and Canada may contact us at 262-796-8776, ext. 661. Thank you. Sincerely, Jenny Customer Sales & Service Kalmbach Publishing Company - KPC 21027 Crossroads Circle PO Box 1612 Waukesha WI 53187-1612
Just as Brakie says, for a time John Allen’s work was evident quite disproportionally in the hobby press. And remember, Gordon Varney was using images of his products shot on the G&D almost monthly, appearing sometimes in both MR and RMC at one time.
I also agree that there were quite a number of other hobbyists doing as good, or even better work, than John back in the 50’s and early 60’s. The G&D had a decided fantasy, or caricature bend, to much of it which many at the time were not a thrilled over as many are today. By the mid 1950’s the trend was already decidedly toward realism and way from stretching reality.
There were also superior layout photographers to John in the 50’s. Several were working with pinhole lenses and producing amazing images that were sometimes difficult to tell from the prototype (Bill Clouser, for instance). This was rarely ever so with John’s work, which were always obviously scenes of models and often shot as more or less helicopter views - save for the trestle shots.
It is also worth pointing out that fame in a hobby is often based as much, or more, on exposure as opposed to outstanding talent. If a particular publication’s editor likes your style of writing, or photographs, you can be assured of going to the head of the line when submitting&n
I separate John Allen the modeler and innovator, from the G&D railroad. John Allen was very creative. But for my tastes G&D was not inspirational. Given the choice between an article on J. Harold Geisell’s small layout or the V&O or Findlay’s or the MP&N or pretty much anything by Odegard and pictorial on the G&D, I would not choose the G&D. Not that the G&D was bad. It just doesn’t appeal to me.
Wanting to fight over not liking the G&D is like wanting to fight me because I like scrambled eggs and you like them sunny side up. Pretty silly.
John Allen won a national award for his well-worn enginehouse in 1948. That is the model that Westcott cites as the first. Is there a documented earlier case? What was it?
Phil,We would need to dig deep into the O Scale annuals to find that man’s name…Even my Dad “weathered” his O scale locos untill he went into HO in 53 or 54.
My personal model railroading hero, Minton Cronkhite, was so far ahead of his time in the 30’s and 40’s, he was doing things with layout design that were seen as “new” when they were the subject of articles in the 80s! Same thing for his train control systems.
But because he didn’t write articles about his work, nor spend time photographing it, there are about three stories in the history of MR that covered his work. And his layout were massive, extremely prototypical affairs–so much so, that Santa Fe hired him to build exhibits for them to be shown at public events.
And he worked on into the 1960s, continually improving the realism of his modeling. His obit in MR was one paragraph, as i recall.
If he were more of a self-promoter, we might be arguing the merits of Cronkhite’s modeling style on this forum.
I suspect the prominence of John Allen articles in Model Railroader had a great deal to do with the fact that the man could put pen to paper, which already gave him a leg up on talented modelers who could not, or were afraid to, write for publication. And in an era when photo reproduction was not as sharp and clear as it came to be, John Allen started with superbly focused and artfully shot photos that tended to look better than many other people’s efforts. MR used to run some truly marginal photos in Trackside Photos back in those days, out of necessity,.
By no means was John Allen the first guy to weather structures and models, although he was one of the best and most imaginative at it. The November 1940 MR has an article by F S Smith about his O scale Delaware & Western. It being a golden era steam pike the locos and passenger cars look, correctly, quite clean, but his engine house had broken windows and worn paint. I have no reason to think it was the first weathered structure, since in the letters section of that same issue, Jack W. De Camp wrote about “weathering buildings” showing that even the vocabulary existed by then.
See “Furlow, Malcolm,” who wrote lots of words and shot many photos for a sum total of about six years, made his huge splash, then disappeared from the hobby.
I wonder if a little of the controversy over the G&D doesn’t exist simply because it was such a great model railroad, that inspired a lot of imitation. It wrapped itself with its own genre of dramatic mountain-climbing model railroads and now it’s hard to see just how unusual and awesome it was.
I think my favorite G&D photo is the first one I saw. It was the Gorre enginehouse, framed by overhanging tree branches in the foreground. It was an early shot, and it still has an odd sense of reality about it.
I don’t think jealousy had anything to do with the like/dislike of the G&D…If anything it may have been the overkill of pictures of the G&D…Look at the flap about Malcolm just a few years ago…It was the same in John’s day except Linn never heard the “Enough already!”
Of course the same may be said about any of today’s layouts in 20-30 years…
My reference to Westcott’s book was in error. Westcott acknowledges that it was not the first weathered model, but John Allen’s enginehouse was the first weathered model to win an American model railroad contest. Westcott wrote, “It influenced many modelers, for they discovered that a weathered model appears more realistic and detailed than the same model would appear in immaculate condition.”
I didn’t mean it was jealousy; I meant that sometimes a thing can be so cool it spawns a trend, and then gets submerged in it.
If you want a more recent example, I think we might have approached that point with Appalachian coal railroads. I think they’re fascinating railroads, but I could see how somebody else could have looked and said, “Oh GAD, another frelling coal hauler. Why can’t someone model the SP&S?”
(But then you have perennial Colorado narrow gauge screwing up the whole analogy.)
I believe it was not because of writing talent (not saying that he wasn’t a talented writer), but because of his ability to photograph models effectively. He was a commercial photographer so could deliver the type of photos that other authors could only dream of. If he lacked the ability to photograph his layout and models, you probably would have never heard of it.
If one were to make a list of every aspect, talent, drive, vision, or purpose that goes into making a great modeler, model railroader or layout, the list would go way beyond the NMRA master modeler achievement list. Over many years I have read about and seen fabulous works and accomplishments in this field and I agree that on an individual or even a collective basis there were many great modelers and railroads that could be considered equal to or even selectively superior to that of John Allen’s. However, it is very hard to find any work that approaches the overall lifetime and landmark accomplishments of Allen when every and all aspects of the hobby are taken into consideration. Perhaps there are unreported or underreported works that are overall, far superior but it would seem that such works by definition would be hard to hide. Regardless of all that, for me and many others, John Allen has been a life long inspiration. At 75 years, I believe Model Railroader got it right. Peter Smith, Memphis
Actually I think was because he was capapble of writing coherently and interstingly and photogaphing what he wrote about that made it possible for model railroad magazines to publish so much about his layout. Those have got to be two points that any magazine editor would jump at because it takes two headaches out of the mix for them. Now they only have to deal with layout and photo placement. And add to that there is only a limited time between issues and lots to accomplish in that time span that you get to realize that the less that has to be done by the editorial staff, the more likely that an article that is both well written and nicely illustrated with great photos will make it into print.
Well it’s important to remember John Allen first came to prominence in the late 1940’s, when guys like you mention were still in school. Of course there were great model railroaders around during John’s time in the hobby (from the forties til he died in the early seventies) but by the end of his life many of the top modellers were guys who had been inspired by his work. It’s kinda like music…Elvis Presley wasn’t the first guy to record Rock and Roll, or the first guy to have a national top 10 hit with a Rock record (he wasn’t even the second or third) and his records weren’t as good as some other artists BUT he was the one who caught the imagination of the general public and put Rock on the map. You could make a good argument that his records were surpased later by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Springsteen etc. - but without Elvis, those later acts might never have happened.
I suspect a lot of the “overkill” of John in hobby magazines at the time came not from one editor or another pushing John’s work, but simply that John was able to deliver a “package” that made the editor’s job easy. Here you are trying to find articles to fill the next issue and in the mail you get an article from JA that is very well written, demonstrates excellent modelling techniques, and comes with professional quality photos. Well of course you’re going to put it in your magazine!!