<Absolutly! but the reality doesnt make the impression if you never see it in person, its the image that get printed that leaves the indelable mark on the psyche. Thats why some are often let down when they see how different a layout can look in person vs how it was published, not seeing the furnace or the piles of dirty laundry under the layout makes a huge difference >
Ah but it does make the person who built look human.
Sure the greats are still great but we all need to realize that ther are human beings like ourselves and while they obviously have great and better skills then most of us, we still share our humanity with them.
Irv
CNJ831 vsmith I think the one lingering thing that I learned by studying Allens earliest incarnation of the GD, was that a layout does not have to be big to be great. I also think one of the prime reasons we remember Allen today over many other contemporaries was his skills as a photographer, that his skills as a professional photographer helped raised the bar when it came to documenting model RRs in print. I would point out that being a consummate photographer, also results in one generally having the ability to preceive and compose scenes so as to maximize their appeal, impression of size, etc.. They can make the ordinary appear quite extraordinary very easily. Few here truly realize how often what they see in the magazines is a highly misleading impression of just how a layout appears in person. Even some of the hobby's most famous layouts of the past were arranged more like dingy rabbit warrens than anything like the great, spacious, railroad empires we saw in the pages of the magazines. Remember, with photography, what you see is not necessarily what you get. Did anyone else notice that the opening photo for the Beer Line article, on page 44-45 of the January MR, is not an actual scene to be found on the layout but results from a re-locating of several structures so as to create a more pleasing and attention-grabbing image? Such is a common practice when photographing layouts or dioramas and I would venture that the majority of shots one sees in MR, RMC, et al. have multiple elements that have been added at the last minute to further enhance the scene. CNJ831
vsmith I think the one lingering thing that I learned by studying Allens earliest incarnation of the GD, was that a layout does not have to be big to be great. I also think one of the prime reasons we remember Allen today over many other contemporaries was his skills as a photographer, that his skills as a professional photographer helped raised the bar when it came to documenting model RRs in print.
I think the one lingering thing that I learned by studying Allens earliest incarnation of the GD, was that a layout does not have to be big to be great.
I also think one of the prime reasons we remember Allen today over many other contemporaries was his skills as a photographer, that his skills as a professional photographer helped raised the bar when it came to documenting model RRs in print.
I would point out that being a consummate photographer, also results in one generally having the ability to preceive and compose scenes so as to maximize their appeal, impression of size, etc.. They can make the ordinary appear quite extraordinary very easily. Few here truly realize how often what they see in the magazines is a highly misleading impression of just how a layout appears in person. Even some of the hobby's most famous layouts of the past were arranged more like dingy rabbit warrens than anything like the great, spacious, railroad empires we saw in the pages of the magazines.
Remember, with photography, what you see is not necessarily what you get. Did anyone else notice that the opening photo for the Beer Line article, on page 44-45 of the January MR, is not an actual scene to be found on the layout but results from a re-locating of several structures so as to create a more pleasing and attention-grabbing image? Such is a common practice when photographing layouts or dioramas and I would venture that the majority of shots one sees in MR, RMC, et al. have multiple elements that have been added at the last minute to further enhance the scene.
CNJ831
Absolutly! but the reality doesnt make the impression if you never see it in person, its the image that get printed that leaves the indelable mark on the psyche. Thats why some are often let down when they see how different a layout can look in person vs how it was published, not seeing the furnace or the piles of dirty laundry under the layout makes a huge difference
Have fun with your trains
Was that the cover with the stereotype Mexican "bandito" figures in sombreros sitting on the loco?
Yep, and the poor doggy burning his feet sitting on top of the slide valve chest.
Great layout (to me) but boy! did the mud fly here!
I actually have that issue in my breifcase this week!
vsmith Untill 2003, when his under-construction layout made the cover of MR, unleashing such a storm of controversy here and elsewhere from all the negative nancy's who couldnt stand that someone was actually having fun with model trains that he likely said "-it, I dont need this " and went back into seclusion.
Untill 2003, when his under-construction layout made the cover of MR, unleashing such a storm of controversy here and elsewhere from all the negative nancy's who couldnt stand that someone was actually having fun with model trains that he likely said "-it, I dont need this " and went back into seclusion.
Midnight Railroader 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.
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.
Dont blame him either, I have no doubt if John Allen was alive and modeling today he would be every bit as controversial now as he was back in the day and that each new picture published would elicite an "Oh no not again" or "Oh thats not real model railroading" or "Oh its all just made up so it doesnt count" or other similar gripes that were hurled at Furlow back in '03 would also be being tossed at Allen today from the same group of dislikers amongst us today.
Stix,The good part is each of those mention modelers moved the hobby forward to what it is today.There are many such pioneers whose works goes unnoticed that deserves to be remembered..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
dehusman dknelsonI 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. 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.
dknelsonI 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.
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.
Dave,Indeed John was also a top notch photographer.However,the only one I fully believe would equal John would be Paul Jansen.
BTW..John was a busy man.
Take a look see.You may understand that age old cry of "Enough!".
http://witt-family.com/gorre-and-daphetid/G&D_Files.htm
Looking at some of those pictures brings back a flood of memories...
BRAKIE Chip,Does these names ring a bell? Allen McClelland,Tony Koester,Doug Smith(the father of carcards/waybills)..How about Paul Jansen? There are many. There was a lot of "super" modelers in that day that was real hobby shakers and movers the problem is they never got their far share of publicity as up and comers like John did...That's the sad part.
Chip,Does these names ring a bell? Allen McClelland,Tony Koester,Doug Smith(the father of carcards/waybills)..How about Paul Jansen? There are many.
There was a lot of "super" modelers in that day that was real hobby shakers and movers the problem is they never got their far share of publicity as up and comers like John did...That's the sad part.
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!!
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.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
BRAKIE 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..
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..
B:
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.)
BRAKIE shayfan84325 BRAKIEJohn was not the first to weather locomotives and cars but,was given the notoriety by Linn.The guy was a O Scale 2 railer... 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.
shayfan84325 BRAKIEJohn was not the first to weather locomotives and cars but,was given the notoriety by Linn.The guy was a O Scale 2 railer... 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?
BRAKIEJohn was not the first to weather locomotives and cars but,was given the notoriety by Linn.The guy was a O Scale 2 railer...
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 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."
Sorry about any feathers I ruffled.
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
B&Mbarn Well said. We should appreciate John Allen for what he did and when he did it.
Well said. We should appreciate John Allen for what he did and when he did it.
True but,he was not the only great modeler of that era.He was the only well publish modeler of that era...
Everywhere you look was pictures of the G&D in magazines and catalogs complete overkill..
Folks:
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.
CNJ831 It is also worth pointing out that fame in a hobby is often based as much, or more, than on exposure as opposed to outstanding talent. If a particular publication editor likes your style of writing, or photographs, you can be assured of going to the head of the line when submitting material. Writers who require little or no copy editing quickly become favorites of an editor and by repeated exposure, can become very well known to readers. If their work, what ever the subject, is at least moderately good, the less accomplished will quickly come to place the individual on a pedestal. Far too often you need not be the best in a particular field to be famous, only widely known
It is also worth pointing out that fame in a hobby is often based as much, or more, than on exposure as opposed to outstanding talent. If a particular publication editor likes your style of writing, or photographs, you can be assured of going to the head of the line when submitting material. Writers who require little or no copy editing quickly become favorites of an editor and by repeated exposure, can become very well known to readers. If their work, what ever the subject, is at least moderately good, the less accomplished will quickly come to place the individual on a pedestal. Far too often you need not be the best in a particular field to be famous, only widely known
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.
Dave Nelson
BRAKIEJohn Allen was good at what he did but,there were those that was just as good or better* in John's day but,never had the publicity like John got from friend Linn Westcott in the pages of MR..
Always a factor.
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 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.
BRAKIE 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...
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...
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 material. Writers who require little or no copy editing quickly become favorites of an editor and by repeated exposure, can become very well known to readers. If their work, what ever the subject, is at least moderately good, the less accomplished will quickly come to place the individual on a pedestal. Far too often you need not be the best in a particular field to be famous, only widely known.
I'm not saying this to critcize John or his works, only that this is the real way fame often comes. John was an excellent modeler in my book but only one of many talented hobbyists at the time, most of whom never got the page space they deserved.
Jason
Modeling the Fort Worth & Denver of the early 1970's in N scale
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..
So goes life.
Brakie,
Yes I read (or read about) all those modelers. But I read about them long after I started my first layout. By then I had my vision of big scenery firmly planted in my brain. Now the one you did not mention, Armstrong, I read in between reading Westcott's book and building my first layout. But Anderson gave me the how, Allen gave me the inspiration.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Most modelers never heard of Paul Jansen but,his modeling and photography was advance for that era.
Allen and Tony would wait till the 70s before they raise to fame even tho' Allen had several photos in Trackside Photos that showed modeling well ahead of its time.
Doug Smith was as the father of car card/waybill operation.A novel idea that was thought to be quite useless..After all who wants to flip through way bills and car cards when they are running their trains and why did MR waste the space on such a useless subject?
John has a part in the history of the hobby has what could be done beyond the simple track filled 5x9 "ping pong" layouts of those times..
I dunno the hobby was advancing on all sides for the better and yet John and his G&D still held top billing in MR till the bubble burst in or around the mid 60s then John kinda slipped into the shadows as more "advanced" modeling came on the scene and "fantasy" modeling was frown upon..Even the old wooden car kits was scorn by the majority as being to cruel looking and outdated.