Welcome to the March 16 version of the Model Railroader book club, where each week I select an old issue of the magazine, and those who have the All Access Pass to the digital archive, or have the DVD of prior issues, or have the issue in hard copy, are invited to read the issue and then discuss anything and everything about it that you find interesting, just as we would in a book club.
I chose March 1944 for a very particular reason -- it was the first installment of Frank Ellison's groundbreaking series of essays, The Art of Model Railroading. MR reprinted the series in 1964-65, and then reprinted a condensed version years after that. It remains an influential and thought provoking series of articles because it really gets down into first principles of the hobby -- why are we doing all of this? To engineer a model layout that "works?" To build accurate models that really run? Ellison says no - the reason is to create a working model of a railroad transportation system with all that that implies and entails. And that in turn can influence what kind of layout we build and what kind of equipment we run on it. Although only part 1 is in the March '44 issue, I suggest reading the entire series -- it will all be fair game for this week's book club.
One article that should be of continuing value and interest is the one by "Boomer Pete" about bridge engineering, with useful and instructive drawings of key parts of a girder bridge. A nice drawing of a D&RG 4-4-0 of the 1880s is marred by a botched scan of the magazine -- the drawing is repeated twice and is partly cut off both in drawing and text both times. I lack the original issue so I cannot say what is missing, but if Kalmbach is so inclined I would urge them to redo this particular set of pages.
The war hangs heavy over the issue - and perhaps the war was the perfect time for a "thought piece" such as Ellison's series, because many readers of MR were in service and unable to do much modeling, and those not in service had access to fewer and fewer materials and models to acquire (the Along the Division column notes that half the members of the Evanston Model Railroad Club were in service). A letter to the editor discusses the possible change for HO from 6 volts to 12 and says that if the change is to occur, do it before the war is over because so many guys will be starting over anyway. That in fact is pretty much what did happen.
You'll notice that the ads for Mantua, Scale-Craft, Pittman, and Walthers are placed just to support the magazine and promise to provide models again in peacetime. A new type of "Howell Track" (as in Howell Day) is advertised by The Model Railroad Shop -- but won't be available until peacetime. The ads for Athearn and Red Ball basically beg readers not to order anything! And McLaren Products advertises that the War Production Board has allowed them to sell small motors.
Other evidence of the war: the cover photo and article featuring "Sgt." R.H. Wagner; a Kink submitted by Sgt. Harold Sloat, Kalmbach boasts of its reduced use of paper, and an ad with a United States War message has the famous poem: Use it Up, Wear it Out. Make it Do, or Do Without."
Alan Armitage, who was to write the pioneering article introducing styrene as a modeling material to MR note quite two decades later, submits a letter to the editor arguing for track and wheels of scale size. A brief announcement says that the British Model Railroad Association has asked to become a part of the NMRA, and the NMRA was thinking about it -- in a sense the origin of the British Region.
And from a purely personal perspective, note the ad from Picard Novelty Company for wood bodied house car kits in O, OO, and HO. I have some in O and HO, still in kit form and held together with tape (actually the tape long since disintegrated) - basically separate ends and sides of nicely scribed wood, cleverly fitting together with floor, roof and simple center sill. It would be a snap to build these. All wood, so not a restricted material during the war. I have never known whether to build them up or keep them as collector's items.
Enjoy the March 1944 issue but again, I do urge you to read the entire Art of Model Railroading series - it has a lot of food for thought, even today.
Dave Nelson
I have the whole year 1944 in print, that one I haven't gotten rid of despite having the DVD and now the archive option. First time through the whole year it was interesting to get the state of the world and the war from a model railroad perspective. Interesting place to look is January 1942 - you can get a sense of when they put the issue to bed based on some comments you find about the "war with Japan" - no mention of Germany.
Once I paged through March 1944 I remembered it - especially the one pager on digging out a trench in your partially dug basement to make more room for a layout! I once rented a house like that, although the fully dug cement portion was the majority, and the dirt portion had way too much of a vertical difference to consider running a trench into it like that.
The ads, of course, all the big manufacturers converted over to making war materiel. Who knew - fine machining needed for model trains is the same sort of fine machining needed for precision parts for military applications. The Red Ball ad - I think that was actually literal - somehwere around that time his factory burned down.
Make do was certainly the byword of the day - look at Wagner's article - the couplings he uses are pieces of wire insulation!
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The war related messages are pretty sobering. Times were tough!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
I always thought Q gauge wass O scale with proper track gauge. Standard O scale track gauge works out to be more like 5', not 4' 8 1/2". Old issues of model magazines talk about it that way, but then I've also seen it the other way, making the models bigger (1:45) to fit the width of O scale track.
I think the problem is part comes from the early days of using 'scale' and 'gauge' as interchangeable terms - they are most definitely not. If today you say you are building an HO gauge layout, are you building standard gauge HO scale, or O scale 2 1/2' narrow gauge? Or some other combination, whatever HO gauge track works out to be in larger scales. Or a super-broad gauge N scale layout.
The June 1966 issue of MR has an article on Minton Cronkhite, and says that the Q gauge he used was a corrected gauge for 1:48 O scale models. That is not the same as the 17/64" scale that was the corrected scale for O gauge track. That was popular at one time particularly for trolley models, perhaps because the wider gauge of O gauge was more difficult to accomodate with the smaller size of trolleys. I have some recollection that the beatiful freight car trucks by Carl Auel from the 1930s were 17/64 scale - they are really impressive models for their time and even today.
Since then an even more precise corrected gauge for 1:48 has gained popularity and I do not believe it is called Q.
Cronkhite by the way designed and built the O scale layout that was at Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry for years - the one I saw during my school trip to Chicago in the early 1960s. It was impressive and the Santa Fe had paid for some upgrades in equipment over the years so we saw blue and yellow diesels.
I enjoyed reading the Art of Model Railroading. Very forward in its thinking for the time. I have to wonder though, that I am not that kind of model railroader. Operation leaves me high and dry. I am a model builder and models of trains are my prefered outlet. I rather glazed over as Mr. Ellison described the operational manouvers on the layout. I similarly do when magazines print this kind of article today. But that is the joy of model railroading, there is a place for us all!
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Greg WilliamsCanterbury, NBCanadahttps://www.gregstrainyard.com/
Well Greg I know you are not the only person who feels that way about operating and operating sessions, and I know I feel a certain dread when you find you have to sit through an hour lecture in order to start an operating session on some layouts. But there is alot of genuine fun to be had on a layout that runs well and has an operating system that can be readily grasped. And I am glad you gave Ellison a fair read.