Category Archives: Opinions

Historical Parallels

240 years or so ago, a group of people who were largely the descendants of English colonisers, but who felt increasingly estranged from their ancestral home, decided that taxation without representation was a drag, and decided to take actions to ensure their independence.

Last week, the descendants of those who stayed at home decided that taxation with representation was a drag, and elected to initiate a process leading to independence based on promises of “immigration controls” and reduced taxation, whilst maintaining a desire to remain part of a “single market”. The leaders of this movement, despite knowing full well that access to that market would have to be paid for and might well require free movement of workers, nevertheless played to the lowest common denominator of base ignorance. (If they didn’t know, one questions their intellectual capacity, rather than their disingenuousness.)

Effectively, one of the pioneering countries of liberal free market economics, and possibly the freest market on the planet, has voted for taxation without representation.

I wish I could proffer an explanation, but then again, I am certain some of the descendants of those colonisers might also struggle to “explain” Donald Trump.

We live in a mad world. Hobbies can provide a sanctuary from this.

Compulsive, not impulsive, communicators

In a recent email to a friend, I wondered why some people were so rude and uncivil on electronic media, and opined that hobbies are supposed to be an escape. He returned a simple question, which is worth repeating:
They are, but with a 24/7 society, and the demands of a modern lifestyle, is it possible to step back, really relax, and enjoy some quality me time?
My answer was yes, but it does take a lot of discipline. One way of dealing with it is not to use forums whilst at work. In fact, I generally avoid them whilst wearing my work clothes. The stresses of work are therefore carried over a lot less than they otherwise might be. The main problem seems, to me at least, to be the impulse to say something – anything – no matter how vapid, just to be seen to be there.
But let’s be clear about this. Human beings are social animals: as David Attenborough said, “the compulsive communicators”. We love to chat, gossip, catch up on events, share in the joys and console during the woes of other people. Electronic media have created a genuine world village. This is not a bad thing in itself, and no one is forced to join in the global conversation to any great depth if they do not wish to, but we are – as a species – still working out the rules for all this, and how it works. There is bound to be disruption: look at what happened when Wycliffe tried to introduce an English language Bible, even though very few people could actually read it. The idea that reading, writing and arithmetic should be available to everyone would be anathema to nearly all societies as recent as 400 years ago, yet it is only 400 years since Shakespeare died. We have at least moved to the point where universal education is a key aim of the United Nations, and a core marker of a would-be civilised society. (Which is why literacy and numeracy rates are so important, and why good grammar – the bedrock of clear communication – so vital.)
This is massive change, but one which will be easier for us to deal with than was mechanisation, as forums, email, tweets, messaging, etc, can be used for communication by anyone with access to the electronic world, whereas a spinning Jenny had but a single use, and a single purpose which was to make things more efficiently, and reduce the drudgery of working life. The Swiss, although they rejected a formal notion about a minimum income for all adult Swiss citizens 2:1, are having the right conversation about the minimum standard of living that should apply in a civilised society – there was no upper limit, and once the politics of “inverse envy” (i.e. “Why should they get a share of my excess wealth, when they haven’t done anything?”) are negotiated, this can become a reality. Give everyone a good, basic, standard of living; eliminate poverty and ill-health. And then allow people to learn to be better in and of themselves, to be valued for what they are, not what they have earned. Create time for hobbies, but value the intrinsic gifts of work – and if there are no intrinsic gifts, try to replace the work with machines. And then hobbies can become a key part of defining ourselves, and being better at being ourselves.
I can’t think of a hobby which has so many opportunities to offer as model railways. I could list the skills I have acquired, the different crafts and trades I have worked at, and the many academic disciplines I have come to appreciate in support of my personal hobby path, but actually there is no point: life is not long enough.

Fear of change?

Chris Mears has made an interesting post – not that he does any other sort – picking up on discussions about what it would take for P87 to become established in North America.

My understanding is that “code 64” wheels and P87 wheel and track components are available for freight and passenger cars and diesel engines, but steam is a different matter. Also, it isn’t just about the wheels and the track: with scale wheels, the truck frames can – and arguably should – be brought slightly closer together. In a reply to Chris’s post, I touched on the fact that what it needs is for someone to actually get on and do it. The biggest obstacle seems to be fear of becoming a “lone wolf”, unable to run stock on friends’ layouts and vice versa. That is a poor excuse, as most of us have more equipment than we need, so why not have a few extra items to the other standard? This enables the P87 modeller to run finely detailed engines elsewhere, and encourages the H0 modeller to have a go at P87. For passenger and freight cars, it may be as simple as having a few spare trucks and swapping them over now and then.

I can think of several possible subjects which be ideal candidates for a reasonable P87 layout that would not be too demanding, yet interesting enough once built to enjoy operating them. Some are real, some are models, and some are inspired by the approach taken to modelling a real location. All bar one have relatively few turnouts and require little in the way of equipment: if modelled in the diesel era (which might be stretching things a little for a couple of the suggestions) then re-wheeling would be neither expensive nor time-consuming.

The obvious candidate would be Port Rowan, or Port Dover: already done in S as we know, but in the same space a model of Port Rowan station could be modelled more or less to scale length, with a longer tail track than Trevor Marshall could accommodate.
Another prototype-based model line which lends itself to adaptation for a P87 first layout – not least because it can be built in a modular fashion of discrete scenes, as confidence builds up, is James McNab‘s Grimes Line. (Yes, two links: one for the blog, the other for the site)

A couple of Eastern Seaboard prototypes come to mind, partly because I have already mentioned them on my own blog, are the North Stratford RR and the Edgemoor and Manetta.

For a trio of Proto-freelance layout ideas, two small and one moderate – and the small layouts could be connected to the moderate – then I think there is serious potential in some (or all, if you are brave enough!) of Mike Confalone’s Allagash Railroad. The rickety track and backwoods nature of what is now the Andover branch is a great starting point (the video demonstrates the rapid starts and stops of an Alco RS3, together with DCC sound). The original “Woodsville Terminal” layout, being a long, thin shelf, is relatively straightforward to fit into a house, or as a portable layout built in sections: UK practice would fit this onto four sections 48″ long, pair for storage face-to-face. The Regis Paper mill at New Portland is anther candidate for a small but satisfying start in a limited space. But New Sharon Junction, with the branch and the yard, wold make a great centre-piece for a moderate layout in P87, especially if there were a few yards of carefully crafted scenic running either side of the main station, and if there is room for the branches for pulp wood (off the “Atlantic” branch on the plan) and the paper mill (as is, coming off Carrabassett Junction) – indeed, one could supply the other. Staging at each end for a small number of trains would provide for a very satisfying scheme, capable of leisurely solo-operating (one train at a time) or a handful of friends coming round for a full-session with trains on the main, the branches, and a switch job in the yard. He has published some e-books, available from the MRH site, which I can thoroughly recommend (usual disclaimer).

Finally, what about Ryan Mendells’ Algonquin Railway? A perfect example of a layout design which could be used for a P87 layout.

The only thing a P87 requires more of than a “standard” H0 layout is time: a few hours extra to build the turnouts and plain track (if ready to lay flexi is not acceptable – it can always be replaced, piecemeal, at a later date) and a bit more time putting in new wheelsets. But even the latter is good practice, standardising on a single tyre profile is the first step to better running and using P87 sorts that out – otherwise, it is better to standardise on a single manufacturer and make sure the track matches it (so doing it properly probably requires hand-built – or at least hand-tuned – turnouts anyway). All the extra detailing is likely to be of interest to anyone prepared to consider P87 in the first place.

The rewards are immense: a railway that looks and runs like a real one.

So, what is really holding back P87? I suggest inertia, not of the physical kind, but of the psychological variety.

It’s a kind of magic

It’s early morning, circa 6:30, on what promises to be a beautiful summer’s day. I am walking down the hill to the local newsagent’s, to collect the newspapers I will be delivering today: not something I usually do, but a friend is away on holiday for a fortnight, and I am providing cover for him. It is just about the beginning of the last week of August*, and the air is clear.

From a couple of miles away comes the distinctive sound of a Sulzer 6LDA28B engine (if you are North American, think of an Alco engine), a burbling, rasping and guttural noise. Somewhere in the local goods yard (when we still had one) a class 25 is getting ready to move, but the acoustics of the area and the clear weather mean it could be just the other side of the fence – or even more miles away. It isn’t doing anything yet – no sound of wheels on rail joints or of buffers clashing. It just is.

That is the deep, emotional, memory that links me to railways. There is nothing visual, nothing tactile. The only other senses involved in my memories of that era of railways (early teens) is of warmth and the smell of diesel exhaust when standing close to an engine: if I stand too near to certain buses, I get a whiff of nostalgia for that period in my life.

That was the magic. And the memory has been brought to the forefront of my mind by an interesting and vital question posed by Mike Cougill: What happened to the magic?

And that is, frankly, the problem.

Digital sound may come close – and I don’t have a need to get a bass response that shakes me – but the odour and warmth are beyond our reach, or would be suicidal. None of this can be caught by building a 3-dimensional model. Many modellers try to recapture the sight and sound of the railway scene, but the sight is not what inspires me, or more accurately, the sound and smell cannot be captured in the same way as can be the sights.

For 37 and a half years I have been trying to capture something which cannot be captured. If I want to re-visit this experience, there are plenty of preserved railways with the appropriate diesel classes to enable me to do this, and I don’t even need to ride a train, just stand next to the engine at the station. I have been trying to capture the ephemeral, to model sound and smell via sight. I cannot do this. It is pointless to try. It all sounds rather depressing, doesn’t it?

But, this is not all bad news. The realisation of this means that I am free to divorce what I cannot replicate from my attempts to build a model railway. Although I am keen to make my models as accurate as I can, and for operations to be as authentic as possible, I am not, after so many years of going down the road, trying to build a model of a railway. I am, after all, trying to build a model railway.

This is enormously liberating. I am free of that constraint, free of its shackles: to quote Trevor Marshall, I have broken Marley’s chains!

Simon
* I can be this precise as my visual memory is of seeing the cover of the September 1978 Railway Modeller (a rather nice EM model of North Leith on the North British Railway, a layout which i did not appreciate at the time) on top of someone else’s delivery round, and it typically came out at about the 24th of the preceding month.

Time and Decisions

Well, the issue of being honest about one’s choices – neatly summed up by Paul (Bawdsey) as consciously saying “I won’t” rather than assuming “I can’t” – has developed into a great discussion: I just wish these issues were more widely discussed!

But Trevor, that thoughtful Canadian whose blog is as good an example of blogging as you can find on the net, has stimulated another post, this time about how one chooses to spend one’s hobby time: what some might call the “psychic cost” (nothing to do with mind-readers and other charlatans) of a pastime. As he says, if one chooses to handlay track, then the extra time involved may lead to a decision to have less of it to lay. I would add to that: if one has a desire to fill a large room with an operationally intensive layout with less focus on fine detail, then the time is better spent on making a decent job of laying high quality flex track, with possibly some hand laid turnouts here and there to get around the restrictions of ready to lay turnouts.

But what struck me was the whole issue of “payback” from spending time. 200 hours spent laying track can be just as enjoyable as playing with the end result, whether that time is spent carefully attending to the “top and line” of laying flex track or inserting 4 individual spikes per tie. In fact, the amount of handlaid track which can be built during 200 hours is considerably less than the amount of flex track which can be laid in that time. So, if the “cost per yard” is pretty much the same, and the enjoyment per hour is pretty much the same, the enjoyment per dollar is much higher for the handlaid layout. (Or put another way, the hobby becomes cheaper!) Chances are, the hand layer of track will also “need” less equipment, so can afford to buy higher quality items and enjoy the better performance that comes from being able to afford precision engineered gearboxes, etc.

Here’s another example. Many years ago, a member of my then local club who was proficient at turning out engines from cast white metal (woods metal) kits, decided to have a go at an etched engine kit, as he had been told that they were “better”. Whilst it is true that they were possessed of finer details, there were more details, and some of the components required forming. He gave up on the experience, as it was going to take him ten times longer to build something which cost twice as much. His enjoyed building engines, sure, but his aim was to build up a large stud. As such, the psychic cost of the better product was too great – indeed, there was nothing “better” about the etched kit as far as he was concerned. I sympathised with his position, but I also put it to him that the etched kit had been designed to take longer, and if he viewed it in terms of hours enjoyed per pound spent, then the etched kit delivered five times the value. Well, he wasn’t known for being tolerant of opinions different to his own, and his answer was unrepeatable (but funny) but he sort of got the point: his problem was that he couldn’t get a cast kit for that particular class, and neither was it available ready to run. He simply was not prepared to pay the psychic cost to get what he wanted, and was disinterested in the payback via enjoyment that others might experience, as that wasn’t what he was looking for. I thought that was a shame, but then again, my outlook is different: I can only run one train at once, and whilst it is nice to be able to run something different, I have no interest in a large stud. It doesn’t matter if the journey takes longer, as the journey itself is enjoyable.

In fact, it matters if the journey doesn’t take longer!

Decide wisely, before you spend your hobby time, on how you wish to spend it. It may inform your subsequent decisions in ways you may not yet have considered.