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| Aerial view of John Olson's HOn3 Cielo Lumber Co. | Source: Railroad Modeler, Jan '74 |
This essay rambles a bit, but it does eventually get to the point. If you’re ok with that, let’s get on with it.
A week or so ago I was informed of the passing of model railroading legend John Olson. I wrote a little about his work while I was deep into building the Mount Lowe layout. Although I didn’t personally know Mr. Olson, the report of his death struck a chord with me. It was the passing of a significant figure in my early model railroading education. I read a lot of old model railroading magazines and books, so I think a part of my mind unconsciously believes the modellers whose projects are showcased in those publications are still out there in their prime doing fantastic work so that sheltered part of my mind sometimes gets hit hard when faced with reality.
Olson’s HOn3 Cielo Lumber Co. layout that was featured in the January 1974 issue of Railroad Modeler was the first layout I ever obsessed over. I thought everything about it was great: the photos, the little model buildings, the rolling stock, the scenes, and the text. I read the article many times and studied the photos obsessively. Even today I like to go back to that article now and then. I still get a hit of pleasure from it. Of course Mr. Olson went on to do bigger and better things, but the Cielo Lumber Co. has a lasting charm, and wouldn’t be out-of-place in today’s world of model railways
When events like John Olson’s passing happen it tends put other things I’m thinking about at the time in a different light. Take the Cielo Lumber Co. layout, it’s a little layout, not a micro, but little, especially for the time when a little beginner’s layout was generally considered something that filled a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood or a ping-pong table. In those days little layouts like Cielo weren’t unheard of, but weren’t where the mainstream action was. Cielo also reminds me that when I was deep into E. L. Moore research in the old magazines I’d often stumble across articles and photos of perfectly decent little layouts.
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Track plan of John Olson's Cielo Lumber Co. | Source: Railroad Modeler, Jan '74*
At first glance it looks like it has 3 wyes, but there's only 1. |
E. L. Moore himself even built one - a 30 inch x 30 inch one called the Enskale Hoentee - as a project layout for Railroad Model Craftsman in 1968. In that post-WWII era many model railroaders also struggled, as many do today, with their desire to have a layout. Back then many didn’t have much room for one because they were living in apartments, small houses, or trailers, or they didn’t have the cash for a basement-filler. E. L. Moore was in that category. He lived in a small apartment and had quite a modest income. His famous Elizabeth Valley RR was only 4 ft x 6 ft. That’s still rather large by today’s standards of what a small layout often is, but it fit in his apartment and generated so much interest from readers that he had postcards printed up with the EVRR track plan on them to respond to inquires about the pike.
But, as I mentioned, Mr. Moore wasn’t the only model railroader doing small layouts in that era. I’ve mentioned a few here, but I should write more about the others I’ve seen, and follow up on a few leads that I’ve set aside “for another time”. While it’s true that large layouts dominated, little ones had a presence, and lots of creative thought went into them.
I sometimes encounter YouTube videos where the hosts will list not having room for a layout as one perceived reason the hobby doesn’t have much of an uptake with younger modellers. The argument seems to be implicitly based on the assumption that the large layout is the thing being desired. To me this demonstrates a lack of knowledge regarding the fantastic array of smaller model railways that are being built today, and the long history of little layouts. I’m not going to try and educate people on the state of small layouts in today’s scene. Just go to YouTube, The Micro Model Railway Dispatch, or Voie Libre, and you’ll be well on your way to educating yourself about projects in this fascinating field.
Here, I’d rather talk about many of the older little layouts from say 1945 to around 1980 that were covered in magazines, but aren’t all that well known, or known at all. Many of those are even more viable today because we have much improved technology right across the board to implement and riff on them than they did back then. Frankly, the more ideas one is exposed to, the more depth you have to work with when designing your own layout. I’d bet AI doesn’t know about any of those classic little layouts, so it’s up to us humans to step up to the task of bringing them to light. Hopefully AI will one day incorporate that knowledge into its databases to share with others - well, I can hope :-)
What do I consider little? I don’t have hard and fast dimensions for you other than the layout should be considerably smaller than a standard 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood. Micro-layouts are the smallest in the category, with the largest being around 4 sq. ft. in area. I should note I’m not talking about modular layouts, but self-contained, stand-alone little worlds. Over the years I’ve taken a stab at defining some different classes of little layouts, usually with tongue firmly in cheek, such as MCM-7 and the Anti-Layout. The only definitive thing I can say is "I know one when I see one" :-)
One other thing I like about little layouts is they open the door to pleasant activities and learning that is distinctly human and, so far, inaccessible, and maybe incomprehensible, to AI. And before we get too far into this, I’m not saying they are a gateway activity to STEM or STEAM. I don’t have something so instrumental in mind. Someone of course might attribute model railwaying as their introduction to a professional career, and that’s all well and good, but boosting career prospects is not the point I'm trying to make. It’s the idea that mind, body, and soul all come together to make these little layouts that aids being a human being. This happens with large layouts too, but the advantage of little ones is that they’re lower cost, easier to complete, and you can build several different ones to a high degree of completion in the time it would take to build a moderately detailed, moderately sized big layout. ‘Moderately sized big layout’, sheesh, there’s another thing I’m going to have to define, but for now I’ll assume you know what I mean. This all helps to speed learning so you can develop deeper, more sophisticated layouts relatively faster. And you don’t have to trash your finished layout to make way for a new one, which always seemed like a colossal waste to me.
Ok, I've rambled long enough. It's been a long way of saying that I'm thinking about writing on little layouts I stumble across from the pre-micro-layout era, and maybe throw in some posts about things I find in Railroad Modeler too as I think it's an under appreciated magazine from the past. There're are also a few topics about the intersection of AI, model making, reading, and writing I'd like to dive into, so stay tuned, and thanks for hanging around until the end!
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Digressions
* In the article Mr. Olson states he derived the track plan from "an old issue of MR". He doesn't specify which old issue.
I thought, ok this seems like a problem in topology. Maybe if I give Gemini the track plan it can try and pattern-match its lines to other track plans it has access to. The track plan's lines may need to be stretched, strunk, or bent, but that's topology for you and that laborious work should be something AI can do far better than me.
Gemini gave very authoritative sounding replies to my question, but in the end what it told me it had made up, which I discovered after checking the sources it recommended.
It recommended an article called A Wye for Small Spaces by Linn Westcott in the Nov '57 issue, and A Wye for Small Spaces (yes, the same title as Westcott's article!) by Gordon Odegard in the Nov '64 issue. Neither issue had any articles by either of them that even came close. Gemini also said they could be found in the classic book 101 Track Plans for Model Railroads and that too proved false.
While I'll need to do some good old fashioned research to find the source, I didn't mind the wild goose chase. I found some interesting articles in both those issues I'm going to write about here. So, even though I don't care for the blatant making things up stuff that AI does, I often find in its randomness some interesting paths to follow.
**I got into model railways via slot cars. I've recounted the story many times, but I'll simply summarize it by saying: 1/32 Scalextric & Eldon slot cars -> E. L. Moore -> model railroading.
I got to wondering if I could design a slotcar track for 1/32 scale cars and Scalextric track with a footprint no bigger than 2m x 1m, which would fit in the back of my SUV with the backseats turned down. I came close.
I used the app Railmodeller Express to design what I call the Paperclip-7 layout, named as such because it looks like a paperclip and the scenery will be reminiscent of a wild stretch of Ontario's King's Highway 7. Whether or not this layout will work is up for debate.
If I ever build this thing, you'll be the first to know :-)
