The thoughtful comments from Dave and Galen on my last post raised valid and interesting points that deserve an equally thoughtful reply.

I wasn’t making a manifesto with that post. I simply wanted to express an idea that I feel strongly about and give an example of it in action via the photo and captions. I’m always surprised by the intense reaction, both positive and negative, to such ideas.

In many ways model railroading in this country is little more than a giant echo chamber where the same ideas and concepts get bounced around endlessly. It doesn’t matter if it’s online or off; change the color, paste a new name on it, whatever, it’s still the same thing as before. New ideas are welcomed if, they give people more of what they want or already have:

Amazing two-level design. You can now have twice the layout in the same space.

However, ideas that challenge our comfort level or fundamental concepts of what the craft can be have a tougher road to travel.

Dave mentioned John Allen’s work and the subsequent influence it had. More than a half-century removed now it’s hard to understand the state of the hobby that made his work so extraordinary in its day.

The basic weathering we take for granted was unknown fifty years ago. Layouts were little more than circles of track on bare plywood. Maybe the track was ballasted and maybe the builder put basic scenery in place. Operations? How many laps do you want to watch the train make? For the majority a model railroad was nothing but a big trainset.

So imagine, as Dave suggested, here comes this guy who makes stuff look old, dirty and beat up. He built scenery all the way to the floor that you could walk through! He used mirrors to visually extend space and people never realized they were looking at a reflection. He employed forced perspective and on and on.

In hindsight, we say he broke the mold and changed the concept of what the hobby could become. Well, yes, but that’s our present day assessment of his work. In truth, he was simply following a personal vision for modeling he had developed. John brought his skills and training as a photographer and applied them to model making and, likely, didn’t give the combination of the two a second thought. He was just doing what interested him. His much-lauded impact evolved over a very long time, as the result of other modelers who found inspiration in his examples. Today, we can’t imagine modeling without the so-called pioneering concepts that John used.

John Allen simply brought well-known techniques from one context and used them in a different one. That is the fundamental essence of creativity and Galen makes the important point that ideas aren’t adopted by the majority right away. New ideas follow a well-documented path from the early adopters who are always looking for the next thing, to the ubiquitous middle, where the idea becomes mainstream then finally, to late adopters who are dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era.

Because any practice tends to stagnate over time, one has to look outside for new inspiration. I’ve been doing this for several years now. For example, I got the idea of modulating the color and tones on my warehouse from Michael Rinaldi, a military modeler who uses the technique on tanks to move a viewers’ eye around the model. Using color and contrast is also part of my training as an artist and bringing these skills to modeling is a no brainer to me. Why wouldn’t I use them?

It’s true that people aren’t aware of these skills. School art programs have been decimated and their value poorly communicated. Speaking from first hand experience, artists are their own worst enemy in many ways. We get so caught up in our own world that we leave little room for others to join us. We’re poor communicators when it comes to helping others understand our work, because we often don’t understand it ourselves. The parallels to model railroading and public’s perception of it are striking to me.

However, it isn’t just the public. Model railroading is broken up into so many silos and narrow special interests that there is little cross knowledge anymore. I gave a talk recently to a group of modelers. Mostly working in HO, they had little to no knowledge of P48 or quarter-inch scale in general. Though it wasn’t part of my talk, I spent time explaining why O scale is the way it is and why P48 is different.

If a large portion of the modeling community doesn’t understand the fundamentals of a different scale, why should we expect the general public to understand anything about what we do?

Galen and Dave both make the point that the Internet allows us to learn about ideas we wouldn’t know of otherwise. While that’s very true, most modelers have no clue of the power these digital tools place at their fingertips. Like the general interest magazines most blogs and forums imitate each other’s content.

We could do so much more, but most won’t bother. It’s too much work. I’m not a writer. I’d rather spend my time at the workbench than the computer. These are all choices people are free to make and I’m not going to suggest otherwise. I choose to put in the time with this blog even though the content is largely ignored. My writing benefits from the process, whether others do or not.

In the end, that’s the real lesson to understand. It isn’t the impact a modeling approach has on others, it’s what impact does it have on the modeler? What value am I getting from it? What value does your approach to the craft provide for you? That’s the real heart of a discussion we’re not having in my view.

My 13th and North E cameo won’t garner any interest from the timetable and train order crowd. And, it’s decidedly old news to UK and European readers who’ve been building them for decades. What it does do is allow me to explore ideas that I find compelling. It combines several of my interests into a form that’s personally satisfying and I’m happy to share what I’m learning with others. That’s all this blog is about really.

Your mileage will certainly vary and thank you to Dave and Galen along with the many others over the years for taking the time to offer such thoughtful comments. I appreciate it.

Mike

6 Comments

  1. Simon

    Speaking as someone in the U.K., I am not sure that your 13th and North E cameo is old news. One aspect that strikes me – and again, it boils down to poor art education at school making me unaware of it – is your use of colour to provide the contrast between the warehouse doors and the brick. Maybe some of us do this by accident, but the conscious effort is not something I have seen mentioned before.

    Humans are compulsive communicators, but also social animals and therefore gossip is an obvious consequence: in many ways the interconnectedness of the net has simply spread this further. But as with any large collection of people, there will also be individuals who wish to get away from the noise, to think, and to seek out other thinkers and swap ideas with them. Your blog is an example of this. That fact that the vast majority are immersed in the noise is just their normal behaviour.

  2. mike

    Hi Simon,

    I was speaking in terms of the format itself. You folks have developed single scene and /or cameo designs into an art form that is far more common over there than it is here. Using color in unique ways and other techniques is the result of looking outside the model train canon for ideas and inspiration.

    Mike

  3. Simon Dunkley

    I think you are being too modest about what you are doing, but will leave it at that.

    Simon

  4. Galen Gallimore

    Mike,

    Firstly, thanks for writing such a lengthy reply to the comments. I appreciate your thoughtfulness alongside your modeling. I’m trying to spend more time sharing modeling than sharing comments, though for me a few modelers online are my “local community”, so I feel it is more than justified to share ideas in print as well as images of the work I’ve created.

    As for looking to military or other modelers, one I admire is PLASMO (David Damek) whose videos I regularly watch on YouTube. Specifically I’ve been looking at his treatment of texture, if that’s the right term. That is, how surfaces are shiny or matte. His technique involves several layers of weathering, naturally, but his choice of fixatives between the base color and subsequent colors is important. Especially on an automobile, he will build up layers of gloss coat and polish them to a shine like a mirrored surface.

    Right now I’m working on a 2-6-0 in HO scale. Recently Big Jim productions posted a video of the Everett Railroad’s #11, a 2-6-0 similar to what I’m going for with my own model. Yes, it is a tourist line, but the point is the same – the boiler jacket is shiny, while the smokebox is matte. How can I replicate that shine? I haven’t reached the painting phase of my project, but before I get there I’ll be trying some of PLASMO’s techniques to get that glossy, reflective shine.

    Anyway, thanks again for your thought-provoking blog and inspirational modeling, as well as putting up with the occasional verbose comment. And yes, Simon, I am seeking the signal in the midst of the noise; an apt analogy. I also agree that Mike is being too modest.

    Galen

  5. Jonathan Jones

    This is a wonderful blog and a great post. I agree with most of the observations and strive to look outside of the model railroading box as much as possible in my own work. As a former HO-scaler turned N-scaler, I have been exploring many of the ideas you have discussed, albeit in the different scale. The blog and the work are great. Please keep it up.

    Thank you,
    Jonathan Jones

  6. mike

    Thanks for the kind words Jonathan. I’m gratified to know the blog is helpful. What kind of work are you doing in N scale?

    Regards,
    Mike