Full Observation

Full Observation: The art of using one's camera, senses, thoughts, and time to understand a place.

Usage: I brought my lunch as well as my camera to the yard's visitor parking as I intended to fully observe some switching operations.

Source: The idea was presented in the Observations column of the June 1985 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman by C. J. Riley in an essay called Observations about observations. Mr. Riley notes that if you are out taking photographs to record a prototype or place you plan to model you should remember that A camera is good for a permanent record of the facts, but a camera lens can limit one's viewpoint and interfere with the information flow to the brain, and that one should Lay the camera aside now and then and just look, listen, smell, think and absorb what is around you.

Full Observation is not a new concept, but was touched on in the Prototype Junket entry that appeared in the dictionary's 1st edition. Prototype Junket was coined by George Allen in the 8th instalment of his Tuxedo Junction series that appeared in the May 1953 issue of Model Railroader. Mr. Allen notes that one of the key features of a Prototype Junket is to develop your understanding of what it is to railroad: to live railroading you gotta get out into the yards, breathe deeply of the bituminous smoke (or fumes, if you're in dieselized territory), tread the cinders, admire four-wheeled hacks, and watch the grand panorama of a busy switching yard. 

John Olson also hints at full observation in his Researching the rails that appeared in the May 1982 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman: My interest centers mostly on the character of an area, the general layout of rails and typical photos of structures and rolling stock, as opposed to the fellow who wants exact dimensions for historical data or accurate scale drawings.

Diligent application of full observation might help alleviate visual purposelessness and assist a model railroad in saying something. Conrad J. Obregon notes in his essay, Toward a model railroading aesthetic, that appeared in the December 1981 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman that model railroading is an art form, and it is purposeful. It is in this adherence to purpose that model railroaders fail and goes on to say that the majority of the hundreds of model railroads that I have seen, there is little sense of a vision on the part of the builder. Full observation is about developing deeper vision.

Susan Sontag states in her 1964 essay, Against Interpretation, that What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more, and she goes on to note that Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. In our context of model railroading as an art and medium, too much content - in that context - is manifested as a possible overload in the replication of the camera's permanent record in the models or layout.

Full observation shouldn't be confused with either the concepts of railfanning or observability in physics and computer science.

from The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms, 2nd ed., 1999.