Memoirs of a Former Model Railroader: Why Bill Schopp left the hobby.

Bill Schopp’s four part Memoirs of a Former Model Railroader series is a detailed and fascinating look at what HO model railroading was like from the mid 1930s to mid 1940s for Schopp and his generation. He goes into great detail about how he built several layouts and their associated equipment. By today’s standards there was not a lot that was commercially available or ready-to-run so construction of just about everything was required. I haven’t gone into that story very much here, but I would highly recommend it to those interested in the roots of the hobby. In these posts I’m focusing on what we might today call the ‘human interest’ side of Mr. Schopp’s story.

Bill Schopp went to college and trained as a teacher. Very early on in the memoir, the fourth paragraph of Part I to be specific, he hints at the issues he eventually had with teaching:

“While attending college I would dream away many an unhappy hour in History of Education class drawing model railroad layouts, while my notebook edge doodles in other classes consisted of switches, crossovers, crossings, slipswitches, scissors, ladders, and other fascinating variations of trackage. For that matter my doodles even now are similar, except that they usually are a variation of the trolley Grand Union theme with extra intersecting tracks thrown in to make it tough. Wonder what a psychologist would make of some of them if he didn’t know I was off my trolley over trolleys? “The diverging lines indicate a split personality, while the complexity of the diverging, merging, and intersecting lines indicate a tremendous inner conflict.””

But, boredom aside, he stuck with college and did graduate. Schopp doesn’t mention when he graduated, but reading between the lines a bit I speculate it was in June of 1936. He notes he was unemployed for a year after graduation - it was the middle of The Great Depression - and only held the occasional substitute teacher job during that period. He used his time to build the Moonlight & Violins layout and finished it in early 1937.

It’s not until we’re into Part III of the memoir that Schopp mentions all was not well with being a school teacher. However, he notes model railroading was keeping him sane, much in the way it provided some diversion in college:

“Of course you need a hobby as absorbing as model railroading after a tough six hour day of being a policeman, educator and parent all in one, caught between the desires and needs of a bunch of stupid kids and the proddings of a stupid supervisor whose main job is to avoid trouble so he can be advanced to a higher job.”

Bill Schopp wasn’t the only person in that period to note that having an absorbing hobby was crucial to staving off the corrosive effects of a day job. Our old friend H. S. Coleman in his 1952 book Teach Yourself Modelcraft notes:

“Everyone is familar [sic] in these days with the value of an absolutely different interest from that of the workaday routine, not to mention the fascination arising out of an entirely fresh circle of friends and associates. There is hardly a profession or calling which does not leave its impression upon those who follow it - an impression which frequently is definitely not advantageous. Thousands of people are unconsciously suffering from the effects of their vocation. The parson grows parsonic, and thereby rebuffs without knowing it the similarly acquired sophistication of the tradesman. The “country man” may unwittingly grow snobbish through want of more intimate relationship with the rank and file. The sergeant can tend to become a cynic or a bully unless he mixes in his off-duty hours with people who redeem him to the realm of humanity. There is, within the mixed fraternity of model-workers, a common interest which, bringing all manner of people together, does for them a great and significant work. Modelcraft makes for humanitarianism. 

I wish that last sentence were true.

Anyway, getting back to our story. 

The bulk of Part III recounts layout building activities beginning soon after he was married. This phase of Schopp’s model railroading career saw the creation of his Rancocas Valley layout. His model railroading was continuing to get more sophisticated, but the impact of his teaching job was taking its toll on his mental health as he rather casually notes deep in some technically oriented text:

“I had plenty of time to work on this line during a six month layoff from nervous exhaustion.”

By the time we get to Part IV his Rancocas Valley Route Interurban layout is more-or-less finished, and so is his teaching career.

“It took several years [JDL: to build the Rancocas Valley layout], but meanwhile my health was getting worse and worse and, with the help of a psychiatrist, I discovered that perhaps some of the nervous trouble was caused by the occupation of school teaching. (I claim to be the only model railroad enthusiast who admits he has been to a psychiatrist!) So I took a Vocational Guidance test series which showed that I was hot stuff at writing and at manipulating small things, whereas I was not so hot at the traits involved with school teaching. Now I wonder where I picked up the ability to manipulate small things? HO gauge railroading perhaps! Among the suggested occupations were train repairing, locksmithing, printing, typewriter repairing or watch repairing.

Of these I leaned toward watch repairing and was going to take it up in night school and in the summer. Instead, however, I soon took it up full time, going to Horological school for over a year.”

At this point Schopp took to tearing down his Rancocas Valley layout to make room for a home watch repair bench. He wasn’t giving up on model railroading just yet as he had a plan to build a new, smaller Rancocas Valley along side his new watch repair facility.

So, life goes on and Schopp becomes a watch repairer. In his spare time construction on the new Rancocas Valley layout is moving right along. When the layout is fairly well developed he realizes that some parts are proving quite troublesome. He then decides to pull up “all the track, wire, buildings and everything” and then makes a “new platform of slightly different shape and put down all of the roadbed-board except the highest part.”

It’s at this point the crucial decision is made to give up the hobby, at least for awhile:

“At that stage proceedings stuck for about a month. I could not get up ambition to go to work on the layout until one Sunday I decided that this was the time. I started to lay track at the site of some heavy special work but could not seem to get interested in it. After about an hour, I suddenly thought, “the devil with it,” and started to make up my mind to give up model railroading for the time being.

In time, almost everything was sold off except a bunch of relays, which nobody seemed to want.”

He then speculates on his reasons for quitting the hobby that provided solace when he was a teacher, but frustration when he was a watch repairer:

“I think the real reason for laying aside the model railroad hobby was psychological. While I was teaching school and before, I had plenty of spare time and also the construction and operation of models was a change from the work I was doing. In one sense, it was an escape from the unpleasantness of teaching. But watch repairing is very much the same as model railroading in that there is much work with small parts, and besides, I like it! So the modeling was no more escape, it was just more of the same thing, on a grosser scale, and so lost its savor. My guess is that there is no watchmaker in the country who builds models as a hobby unless it be live steam.”

Later he seems to confirm my speculation that he was model railroading’s amateur scientist:

“I think that another reason why I finally quit model railroading was the lack of new worlds to conquer in HO gauge. I had three-rail, two-rail, trolley and narrow-gauge operation. I never had pantagraph [sic] or live steam but they didn’t appeal to me. I thought one time of trying two-wire operation as in Havana and Tokyo (and Ann Arbor, Mich), and another time I thought of a very small gauge, maybe the size of present TT gauge, but with trolley operation.”

He didn’t leave the pages of The Model Craftsman, but noted that the magazine had a backlog of his articles that would be published, and that he’d be around to answer questions in print wherever he could.

We know Bill Schopp did return. The 1950s and 1960s were a time of great creativity for him in the pages of Railroad Model Craftsman - including some collaboration with E. L. Moore ! - so he clearly came to terms with his day job / hobby conflict. I speculate becoming a staffer at RMC and running his own model railroad related business helped resolve things. 

Decades later, after a prolific model railroading career, in a letter to the editor in the May ’73 issue RMC, he had this to say about his retirement:

“I continue to get mail inquiring about my health and whether or not I’m still in the model railroad business. I am not in business any more, and no longer advertise (almost all stock was sold to another dealer in one transaction). I have no desire to return to business in any way, including layout design.

All things considered, I’m doing fine and am getting a lot of reading done these days (especially domestic and foreign model railroading magazines). Which reminds me: anyone have a copy of The Fleet That Had to Die?”

RMC reported in its June ’74 issue that Bill Schopp had died, and in their Jan ’75 issue reported that a recent reader survey showed he was their 4th most popular author, one position ahead of E. L. Moore.