From “At the Throttle,” June 1968
“Any thinking man will soon pall at merely watching trains. The novelty ceases to be novel. Only when the man begins to put some of himself into the planning, construction or operation of the model railroad system in a creative way can it reward him with lasting interest.”
A few years earlier, the MR editor (Paul Larson, I think) came to the conclusion that there were three kinds of model railroaders:
Apparently Linn Westcott forgot, or wasn’t aware of, the third group. Go to the thread on Thinking before designing a railroad for operation, and you’ll see that quite a few of them stood up to be counted.
I’ll admit that I’m a 2, and that I know several 1s. The fact remains that the only person who can decide what makes any specific model railroader happy is the person wearing his shoes. Any generalization about the subject, no matter how well respected the person making it, can only reflect the opinion of the speaker/writer.
It’s kind of like the old statistician’s joke. If you have one foot in a bucket of ice and the other one in 75 degree Celsius water, you should be comfortable with the blood temperature average.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Chuck and Spacemouse,
Good discussion. Chuck, I think that is a great way to divide people, but like anything, I think it is fluid… reminds me of Myers-Briggs… I think I spend most of my time in 1, but I often wander to 3 and occasionally to 2… just my 2 cents!
Brian
There is another type of model railroader, who gets his enjoyment in making fine scale models of railroad equipment and structures. And taking photos of same. There are a lot of us out there!
I personally do not have the space nor the desire to have an operating model railroad. If I had one it would mostly serve as a backdrop for displaying my models and taking photos of them. I do have two pairs of modules, and operate them with our club occasionally, and I participate in operating sessions at friends’ layouts. I go mostly to socialze with my model railroad friends and can’t get too interested in shuffling around cars like others do.
You, Paul, somebody, left out #4.
The CEO.
He’s a combination of the other three, but likes to test his limits.
Can tens of thousands of shaft horsepower be controlled by puny man, or is thundering momentum always on a collision course with the flaming disaster and gouting arteries of thousands of tons of hurtling steel, freight, and flesh meeting in less than acceptible or recommended ways?
It takes a steady eye and cool hand on the throttle and dispatch mike key to ward off the unthinkable and keep the fleet on schedule, or to look the CFO straight in the eye and demand maintenence
Look at the words in pink. I’m not sure he left anyone out, except the the photographer. But I do think that he included the modeler. In the song I wrote, I broke it down into the operator, the scenery man and detail man.
When I’m Playing with My Trains
I think Westcott was referring to the guy with the 4 x 8 Plywood Central as the thinking man who would get bored.
You have to remember the context of when he wrote that. 18" curves were considered huge. nearly everything was a kit or scratchbuilt. A really big railroad was 5’ x 10’ and got major article coverage. Brass track and fiber ties were the norm. No matter what prtotype your source was as a manufacturer it got all the major roads printed on it in one form or another to increase sales. MR was black and white with no color whatsoever including the cover. Most railroads were just a small circle of track.
I think the hobby was a little more mature than that. In looking through the seven MR’s I have from then, I found only 1 N-scale 4 x 8 layout and the rest were more basement sized.
Edit: I just found a 5 x 12 HO layout.
There is another “hazard” to Model Railroading, actually I can think of several, but two that immediately come to mind are :
Money…as with any hobby, be it Photography, Fishing, Golfing, or MRR, it takes MONEY, and we soon find ourselves drooling over something new ( or even used and old ). We can spend lots of $$ every time we get a new catalog, or go to out favorite HS.
For us married guys, the infamous "Honey Do " jar. For those who don’t know what this is, it is a list of odd jobs that our wives author daily ( sometimes hourly ) and stick into a jar for us to do when we have idle time ( LOL ). The Honey DO list can suffer greatly when we are heavily engaged in MRR…lets see, clean the garage, take out the trash, paint the shed…OR GO WORK ON THE LAYOUT …YESSSS…See who wins ?? And that can get us in trouble. Of course if you are unmarried, then it is your house or apartment and others tasks that suffer sometimes.
Number 5 - God. I enjoy making the world the trains run through.
Yeah, there are only 10 kinds of people - those that understand binary arithmetic, and those that don’t.
Like Art and Bob, I feel compelled to add the modeller to the list. The original three were all running trains, in one way or another. I spent most of my MR time yesterday with Dul-Coat, weathering powder, paint, balsa, glue, styrene and Campbell shingles. And yeah, I put a few shots up on Weekend Photo Fun.
Dick,
with your #1 I disagree. I have for railroading less money other people spend for smoking!
with your #2 HONEY DO… I full agree. I’m very familiar with it. [:)]
Wolfgang
Instead of geting bogged down in the details, I think the real point from Linn Westcott’s long ago editorial is this: “The Greatest Hazard of Model Railroading is Boredom”.
It doesn’t matter what what piques your interest in Model Railroading, the important thing is not to get bored. And that’s true of any hobby. Get bored racing R/C cars and you’ll soon find another hobby. Get bored collecting baseball cards, and you’ll soon find another hobby. So if you get bored with Model Railroading, you’ll soon find another hobby.
The real trick is stave off the boredom. So whatever it is that piques your interest in model railroading, do it. If you find yourself bored, try doing something else in the hobby besides what you’ve already done. Tired of just buying trains? Build a layout. Tired of just running trains in a loop? Try operations. Tired of operations? Try building models from scratch. And so on.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
Several good points being made by others here. I think one thing that can help avoid the dreaded BOREDOM in MRR’ing, is the enormous variety of things you can do within it, namely:
and that’s just beginning to scratch the surface. I haven’t mentioned the whole lure of learning the history of railroads, why and how certain kinds of cars were developed, sound, DCC, wirin
O my goodness !! LOL!!
I am much more of a number three, a train watcher, but I occasionally gravitate to some operation. I am definitely a number four in that I like to build super detailed models of trains, structures, trackwork, and scenes with one caveat. ALL of the rolling stock and locos must run flawlessly - even if it means compromising or omitting certain details.
Without actually having thought of this, I guess that is really the reason I DO like model railroading so much. Not only can I make the world I want but I can make everything inside that world do what I want (within the limits of money and physics, of course [:)]). I enjoy building the scenery and buildings almost as much as I do the the trains. Yep, I like that God idea!
I’ve always been a #2 guy. The 1’s and the 3’s like one thing, trains running. And being a #2, I’d make (or try to[:O][;)]) that happen. Yardmasters should be in with #2’s, also.
NO! NOT true!! 18" curves has never been been a acceptable size curve…Even back then we had full length passenger cars and long wheel base engines such as 2-8-8-2,2-10-4s,4-6-6-4,4-8-8-4s etc.Large radius curves and super size layouts isn’t new to the hobby no more then one locomotive fits all.There was tons of Structure kits.You had brass locomotives for every major railroad from AT&SF to WP and brass WAS affordable to the majority of the modelers just like today’s high price locomotives.
All to sadly there has been to much garbage and half truths about the hobby in the 50/60s time frame…It was a golden era of modeling.
WOLFGANG: yes, you are correct, I too know many smokers, or at least “did”, 7 of the 10 are all dead of lung cancer, and they sure spent more money than I do on MRR, especially those that did 3 packs a day at those prices.