Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Omnivagant funny papers

John told me that the March 2013 of Model Railroader magazine was pretty good, so I picked one up last weekend. He was right. There are several interesting articles on town building, and how to enhance buildings to form a town. The focus appears to be on small mid 20th century towns in the US Midwest, but the information could be applied to many small towns in both the US and Canada for eras well behind and ahead of that specific time period. The issue also has a sub-theme of giving an appreciative nod to the works of some of Model Railroader’s most influential figures from the past, Linn Westcott being one. Since I’ve been following the idea of ‘omnivagant’ layout design that was coined by Mr. Westcott in the May 1940 issue, I thought it was interesting that the cartoon by Joe Seidita that appears on page 105 of the current issue is very omnivagant, and appears in an issue that casts a spotlight on Mr. Westcott. With a little cleaning up here and there, and some addition of places to go and people to see, either of those cartoon track plans could form the basis of possible omnivagant, streetcar oriented layouts :-)

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