I have several years worth of Model Builder and Model Railroader magazines from the 30's and 40's. You may be surprised to know that I find that some of the work back then can rival even the best stuff today and in many ways I think we've lost many things. Materials used were different but there was alot of creativity and hard work. Very few of the layouts actually used store bought track as it just wasn't realistic enough. One picture has a caption that states that all of the hills and raised portions of that particular layout were built with asbestos!!! Don't try that!
Every issue had a scratch build how to article or 2 in it and they ranged from track work, to buildings, to machining your own model steam engine from scratch! A current magazine could very easily run an article series titled "The Lost Art" and revive many of these old topics and I guarantee many people would find them interesting and give it a go again.
Many buildings were done out of cardstock but were painted and weathered. Other things were just drawn on representations of windows and doors. Some though were very realistic scratch built and even the drawn pieces looked like the work of artists. Check out ebay for old issues of Model Builder Magazine. Look specifically pre-1950.
OK Here is the Scenario; A while ago I picked up a 1960’s era battery Marx litho train set, while I don’t have any real issue with the plastic battery engine I decided to go all mechanical and all metal in my future collecting, which now includes a pre-war Marx M-10000 Mechanical to go with a Mechanical Commie Vanderbilt set and a Mechanical Lionel Rail Zeppelin.
I am currently building a small two level O-27 track layout and I want to get really OLD school on it, IOWs NO modern roll scenery, NO hideous Lionel Fastrack, NO plasticville buildings etc, but my question is this:
Are there any good sources (books? online? photos?) on just how model RR layouts were built and sceniced back around WW2???
My frame of reference for experience only begins in the early to mid 70’s, but going back to the 40’s or before that gets really hard to find any reference materials on what was used and how those pioneers actually added scenery to their layouts.
So I’m asking here, anybody got any ideas or advice?
Have fun with your trains
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