Brick Price's Modeling Narrow-Gauge Railroads

MN-GR from 1984 | How to go T&TWM from 1982

A major difficulty in modeling realistic structures from kits is to produce an original design. Most of the dozens of building kits on the market have already appeared in hundreds of photographs in one book or another. It makes no difference how these buildings are placed on a layout or what colors that are painted. If the buildings are from the same kit, they will always look alike unless they are heavily modified. This problem is unique to structures. You expect to see thousands of almost-identical boxcars, but you don't expect to see more than one of Dale's Dingies. Ironically, most model railroaders tend to purchase as many different freight cars as possible, yet they buy the same structures that appear on other model railroads and build them just the way they come out of the box.

Brick Price on Structure Conversions; Modeling Narrow-Gauge  Railroads, 1984.

Being curious about the work of Brick Price recently prompted me to buy a copy of his 1984 book on narrow gauge model railroading. It strikes me as something of an odd book, and it leaves me wondering if it was given a rigorous editing prior to publication. It seems like a book for someone who has a bit of familiarity with model railroading and still has large gaps in their general modelling and model railroading knowledge, but might be interested in taking up narrow gauge model railroading. So, there is a lot of general modeling and model railroading material, which at times leaves me thinking the narrow gauge material is a bit thin.

Although, I particularly liked the somewhat misnamed Cross-Kitting chapter. It's not a chapter on the general techniques of kitbashing, or cross-kitting to use the author's term, but an excellent summary on how to kitbash HO scale narrow gauge rolling stock and locos circa the late '70s and early '80s. Lots of interesting examples are shown, and I think the information is still quite applicable today. I found the Scratchbuilding chapter the oddest as it concentrates on providing very general overviews of woodcarving, making rubber molds, lost wax casting, resin casting, metal die-casting, and vacuum forming plastic, which are all rather advanced, professional level scratchbuilding techniques. There isn't anything in the chapter about traditional hobbyist oriented scratchbuilding methods like building from styrene stock or cardboard. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised as Mr. Price was a professional modeller. 

A modified Revell Engine House; Compare to Jack O'Vall's

Maybe you're wondering, how does David Voice fit into this? Both books are from the same era - Price's was published in 1984 and Voice's in 1982 - and deal with specialist subjects, but Mr. Voice's doesn't drift much beyond his topic and into general model railway subjects, even though some knowledge of them is useful for building a successful tramway layout. The most striking difference is Mr. Price doesn't show example layouts or trackplans, even of his own layout. Narrow gauge layouts, like tramway layouts, are quite different from conventional model railroads, so examples are worthwhile. Mr. Voice has plenty of examples to ground his discussion. 

Yes, I know, my review is around 40 years too late :-) So, what's the big deal? None actually. With these old books I don't look at them as they were intended when they were published. I wouldn't use Modeling Narrow-Gauge Railroads as a guide to building a serious narrow gauge layout today, but look at it as a compendium and record of some of Brick Price's work and thoughts in the area, which are excellent and inspiring, although it would have been nice if the book had some pictures of his layout.