A Christmas Kitbash*

Frank Madwood’s my name, and model making for a living’s my game. Or at least it was.

Christmas Eve

I rolled my chair away from my workbench and scooted over to the window. I parallel parked, pulled up the blinds, and watched the Christmas lights come on up and down the street from my fourth storey perch. The calendar said Christmas Eve, but it felt like any other winter day in the late afternoon: bleak and depressing. I had a number of end of the month commissions on the go that needed to be finished by the end of the month. And there were bills to be paid. And customers to be placated. And creditors to be cajoled. And so on and so on. Hopefully I’ll get out of here before midnight. 

The deli was to close early today so I thought I’d better go down and get a sandwich. Problem was I was tired, and did’t feel like getting my butt in gear for even that simple task. I rolled back over to the bench. Maybe if I just put my head down for a minute and rest my eyes. 

Rest my eyes turned out to be a euphemism for falling fast asleep.

Al

Groaning and rattling woke me with a start. And for once the groaning and rattling wasn’t coming from me. I looked up. Standing at attention on the other side of the bench was a grey and dishevelled man in a worn hoodie and faded jeans. It was my old model making buddy Al Sim. The problem was Al was dead. I shook myself to see if the hallucination would pass. It didn’t. Instead, it spoke.

“I’ve come to talk to you Frank.”

I decided to try confrontation. “You’re not Al, Al. You’re just me hallucinating. You’re just some glue vapours I’ve inhaled.”

An unholy wailing issued forth from Al’s side of the bench that blew me and my chair up against the window. Al thew his head back and waved his arms around with wild abandon. To his wrists were shackled large, lumpy sacks that pummelled his head. 

The wailing and pummelling froze my insides. 

But, thankfully it ended before I reached absolute zero.

I felt like jumping out the window, but I was frozen in place. I couldn’t think what to do, so I stalled and asked for clarification, “What the hell are those sacks?”

“They are a lifetime of unfinished kits that I am doomed to drag through eternity,” was his dejected reply.

I looked at the wall behind Al. Ok, well, more precisely, I could see through Al to the far wall. It was lined floor to ceiling with unopened kits waiting for that someday, someday when I’d build them.

I tried the innocent angle. “They say you can’t take them with you Al.” 

Al threw his head back, and it looked like the hounds of hell were to howl again.

“Ok, ok, I’m listening.”

Al lowered his head, looked me in the eyes, and pointed a painty figure at me. “You will be visited tonight by three spirits. Pay heed to save your soul.” 

And with that, he vanished. 

I was shaking like a leaf and still frosty inside. 

I carefully eased myself from the chair and headed for the coffee machine in the outer office. The coffee was never that good, but the glue vapours in here were doing a number on my head. 

Little did I know there was far worse than bitter coffee on the other side of the outer office door.

Brian

The outer office sure didn’t look like the outer office I knew. This one was clean, with unstained furniture and new paint on the walls. The coffee machine didn’t look like mine either. It was bright and sparkling and the aroma coming from it smelled quite pleasant. And to top it off there was a jovial looking fellow standing beside it handing me a cup of the lovely brew. 

“Here, you need it.”

“Thanks. I don’t think we’ve met? What’s your name?”

“My job title is The Ghost of Christmas Past, but everyone calls me Brian.”

I drank a little from the cup. “Ah, that’s lovely stuff.” I studied the cup and its contents, then commented, “This didn’t come from my coffee machine.”

“It did when you first moved in here.”

Come to think of it, it did. Lack of regular cleaning probably had something to do with its current wretchedness. 

Oh hell, it was clear the glue fumes were locked in my head, so I decided to take another sip and go with it, “What brings you here Brian?”

“You do my friend. Why don’t you take another sip?”

Brian motioned that I drink up.

I did with great pleasure, but the taste came with a wallop. Peering over the cup I could see a person who looked like a child version of me playing with the train set I got for Christmas when I was eight. I had a lot of fun with that old thing.

Brian looked me in the eye and gently asked, “See anything you recognize?”

I wasn’t going to be flip with a glue vapours retort this time. Once with the wailing was enough for me. I gave up a hesitant, “Yes.”

“Take another drink. A good long one this time.”

So I did. And I saw a whirl of many hours building kits, painting, running trains, slopping plaster around, cutting up things to make new things, balsa bashing, and all-round general happy model hacking as a youngster.

I wanted to ask Brian if the coffee was laced with LSD, but like Al, he might not have a sense of humour. 

“Does anything come to mind? Maybe you need another cup?”

“No, no, the one is fine. Thanks for reminding me about those happy times, but I shouldn’t linger there. There’s work to do.”

“Yes, there is always work to do,” said Brain in a reflective tone.

I handed Brain the cup. “It was good meeting you Brian. Thanks for the coffee and memories, but I’ve got to get back to it if I want to get home by a reasonable time.”

I started to walk back to the door to the workshop and my bench. 

“Not so fast,” called Brian.

When I reached the door it wouldn’t open. I twisted and pulled on the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t open even a crack.

I gave up and turned and faced Brian. He was standing there with an outstretched arm pointing to the door to the hallway. “There’s someone else for you to meet.”

I’ll bet there was. 

CP

“Dude, it’s good to see you! It’s been a long time!”

“I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Dude, I’m hurt. I’m The Ghost of Christmas Present. Christmas present is every Christmas, because every present is the present until it becomes the past.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Dude, it’s a time and space thing. Don’t get too bummed out by it.”

“Do you have a name, like Brian?”

“People just call me CP.”

CP. Ok. The spirit realm seems to have far more informal naming conventions than I had realized. And dress sense too. CP was wearing a lot of beads that rattled in a disturbing manner.

“CP, what do you want me to do?”

“Do? You don’t have to do anything bro, just watch.”

Before I could ask watch what, he tossed me a bead. Which I failed to catch. Although it bounced off my forehead, and apparently that was enough to have the desired effect. The hallway melted away to reveal an all enveloping environment of…me at my bench, back in my workshop.

“We could have just used the door and walked in CP.”

“No man, we couldn’t. Take a look at the clock.”

“It’s after midnight. It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah, and where are you?”

“Still at my bench,” I said with some remorse.

CP took that moment of introspection to bounce another bead off my head. I gave him a sharp look, but before I had honed my glare the room had morphed again. I was still there at my bench.

“Big deal, we’re still here and that’s still me. Can I hear me?”

“No and no, bro. We’ve gone back a year, and no you can’t hear you. Or me. Or see us either. Notice where you are.”

I gave him a quizzical look and answered blankly, “At my bench?”

“At your bench on Christmas Eve last year too.”

I stared at myself. My hairline had receded a lot over the year. CP took my inattention to him to throw one bead after another at my head. I tried to intercept them by flailing my arms, but to no avail.

“Hey, cut that out!”

While shielding my head a series of all encompassing images flashed before my eyes: me here at Christmas Eve two years ago, then me here at Christmas Eve three years ago, and so on and so on right back to the time when I set up this place.

“Ok. I get it. I’m here a lot over Christmas.”

“And not just Christmas just so you know. And did you take a look at that wall?”

CP pointed over to the kit stash wall. We were still immersed in my first Christmas Eve scenario and there were only a couple of kits on the shelves.

“Let’s fast forward back where we came from, shall we,” asked CP in a not asking way.

I covered my head expecting to have beads rained on me, but CP had a new trick. He snapped his fingers for a time shift. At each snap through the Christmas Eves, that kit stash shelf grew fuller and fuller until we arrived back to the present where the shelves were completely full. 

“Ok, I get that too. The unbuilt kit stash has grown over the years.”

“Dude, grown is a bit of an understatement.”

CP snapped his fingers one last time and we were back in the hallway. 

I looked around to confirm this was indeed the present, and then had to ask the obvious, “I assume there’s one more of you guys that I have to see?”

CP adopted a tone that completely contradicted his happy go lucky hippy beads; “Dude, he’s not just one of us guys. He’s The Guy. You should probably go back to your workshop and sit down and rest before he gets here.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

The Guy

I used to think it was the future, or maybe just thinking about the future, that gave me stress. No, the real stressor was meeting The Guy, aka, The Ghost of Christmas Future.

I went back to the workshop as CP advised, plopped myself in my chair behind the bench, and waited. Did I fall asleep? Faint? Black out? Damned if I know. All I know for sure is The Guy stood right where Al had been who knows how long ago. No wailing and flailing from The Guy though. He didn’t need histrionics to chill me to the bone. It was all in his vibe.

The Guy was tall and stood there in a black, hooded, monk-like robe; he never looked at me, just towered. I tried to summon some courage, figuring the sooner I did, the sooner this would all be over. I looked up at him and croaked, “What do you want?” 

He didn’t answer, just pointed to the obscenely full kit stash wall, and then swept his arm over to point at the model train layout, before directing my gaze to the build table littered with unfinished projects. As he swept his arm, colours changed, objects came and went, and all sorts of people appeared and disappeared. It was like a stage set had suddenly materialized that sort of looked like my workshop, but sort of didn’t, and was populated by actors I’d never seen before. Unlike The Guy though, they all had speaking roles:

Man #1: Look lady, I’ll give you a grand for the works.

Woman: A grand! It’s worth at least ten. There’s all kinds of rare items in here.

Man #2: Most of it’s junk.

I looked over to The Guy aghast, “Junk!”

Man #1: That layout looks like it hasn’t been run in years. Look at that dust.

Woman: How about five?

Man #1: How about fifteen hundred?

Woman: Two grand?

Man #1: Fifteen hundred and we won’t charge you to haul it all away.

Man #2: And we can break up that layout and toss it in the dumpster on our way out.

Woman: Ok.

“Fifteen hundred!? Break it up? Dumpster? Good lord!” I said to no one in particular.

The Guy peered down at me. I looked up at him. There was some sort of void where his face should have been. I looked away real fast.

They say you shouldn’t stare into the void, and that’s good advice as far as it goes. But, maybe the void isn’t so bad when the only alternative is having The Guy direct your gaze to your own headstone.

At least The Guy wasn’t cruel. After falling to my knees while sobbing uncontrollably, but before I had time to rend my own flesh, he diverted my attention with the sight of two hideous trolls, one to each side of my headstone, and allowed me to hear him speak.

“This one is the procrastinating modeller,” he said pointing to the left troll, “and this one,” pointing to the right troll, “is the armchair modeller. Of the two, beware the joy-deferring procrastinating modeller the most.”

Christmas

I woke up under the workbench. Even after a bender, I’d never done that before. I crawled out and looked up at the clock. Its hands were on the floor. It wasn’t giving away any time today.

I went to the window and pulled up the sash. I saw a boy in the street. 

I leaned out the window and shouted down to him, “Hey you, what day is it?”

He looked up and replied, “It’s Christmas Day of course! Are you drunk?”

Drunk? No, but I was giddy. I pulled out of the window, peered across the bench to look for The Guy, and upon not seeing him, danced a jig around the workshop. I wasn’t dead after all. The kit stash wall was still full, the model railroad was still there, and the unfinished projects were still on the layout table.

I ran back to the window and shouted to the boy before he walked away, “Wait there a sec!”

I left the window, grabbed some kits from the stash wall, and then, returning to my window perch, with a hearty “Merry Christmas” tossed them down to the waiting boy. 

The first one hit him on the head, and elicited an exclamation of “Hey, watch it you old fart!” But, seeing the array of fine kits on the ground, his tune soon changed to a cheerful, “Thanks mister!”

And so I spent the day tossing kits out the window to bewildered passers-by, hoping that in the process a few would be introduced to the joy of model making. 

And when the stash was gone, I dusted off the layout, got rid of irrelevant unfinished projects, and left before sundown, shouting to all in my vicinity, “A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

---

*My sincerest apologies to Charles Dickens and all the A Christmas Carol variations from which I lifted.

Abandonment - Part 4

All the days are starting to mush together into one long day punctuated by periodic darkness. But here's something different. Part four in the rip roaring tale of New Toronto.

If you've missed Part 3, it's right here, but if you're up-to-date, let's get going!

I was in a room with three beds. Curtains hanging from tracks in the ceiling divided the room into three cells. The curtains were thin and didn't block out my roommates' personal dramas. I tried to ignore everything going on, but it was impossible, and I quickly realized I wasn't in such a bad way. 

My little cell included an outside wall and a window. I promised the nurse I'd stay in the room, but I didn't promise to stay in bed. I pulled a chair up beside the window and plopped myself in it. I couldn't lie in any bed. I was scared I'd fall asleep and not wake-up. I fell asleep in the chair now-and-then, but when I woke up and realized I'd been asleep I didn't feel any dread that the next time I fell asleep might be the last as I did when I was lying down.

I was lost in thought, staring out of the window, when I heard the curtain pulled back. In walked Leslie looking like a tall drink of cool water to a very dry desert rat. She said, "Why aren't you dressed? I thought you were getting released today?"

"Something happened last night. They caught me in the lounge sitting in a chair and talking rather loudly to myself. Long story short, they're keeping me for one more day for another round of tests, and a shrink is supposed to drop by."

"It's come to 'shrinks' has it? I knew this day would arrive."

I didn't appreciate the sarcasm, but let it pass. Instead I got all factual with her and said, "They said that maybe the accident triggered some thoughts that were giving me trouble."

"Ok. Who were you talking to?"

"Adams again. I also talked to him when I had the accident. He was as real as you are right there. Maybe I was hallucinating."

"Maybe? There isn't any other explanation."

There might be. Both encounters seemed so real, just as if he was there. But ghosts don't exist. I keep telling myself that. I said, "I know it's crazy, but it seemed like he was right in front of me."

She seemed to sense I wasn't in a joking mood and simply said, "Tell me."

"It's like I spoke with two Adamses. Last night's Adams was different from Adams at the accident. There he was uncharacteristically mellow and laid-back, but last night he was back to his usual self, formal and tightly wound. Dejected and depressed too. At the accident he said he had a job for me, and last night he told me what it was. He wants me to get a box of files that has all the dirt on the criminals he was working for and give it to a high-placed guy at the bureau who'll blow the whistle on them. Those guys were responsible for wrecking your fusor research, your dream, not to mention they're implicated in murder, theft, and subversion. They might get caught if all this is true."

She had that intense look of hers I knew so well. I had her attention. I continued, "I've been sitting here all night wracking my brain trying to think of a time when Adams told me about his evidence stash. I don't remember anything."

"You aren't going to drop this just because I'm skeptical are you? What do you want to do?"

"I think it might only take a day or two to follow-up on this and bring it to an end. If it turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'll forget all about it. Are you with me?"

"You know I am."

"One more thing. You know my memory is not so good these days, but I have to ask: are we married?"

Leslie slipped on a mischievous smile. "No. When the ambulance picked you up I told them I was your wife so I could ride with you and get in the hospital. They didn't ask for ID and I didn't offer any. I didn't think anyone else would be with you while you were here."

"Thanks Leslie. I owe you."

Leslie's smile flattened. "Look buster, our relationship isn't based on owing. You don't owe me. I don't owe you. When I do something it's because I want to. You should know that by now."

Our relationship? I changed the subject and said, "I have an idea to get this little investigation over with quick. Instead of picking me up here tomorrow, meet me at the Kresge's downtown at Young and Ellington."

"The one with the long lunch counter and phone booths?"

"Yes, that one. Be there at 11:30. I'll buy lunch."

"That'll be a first."

Part 5 is here.

Abandonment - Part 3

You're cooped up. You've streamed so much, water is coming out of your tv. You've eaten more macaroni-and-cheese than is humanly possible. Friend, take a break on the electric streets of New Toronto. Missed part 2? Then take a detour here, otherwise, let's get on with the action. 

I couldn't sleep. Hospitals put me on edge at the best of times and especially at night. During the day they ran their tests on me and later told me my head seemed ok, but said I should stay over night so they could observe. Just in case. I didn't have anywhere to be, and I didn't want to risk some blow-out in my brain. I stayed.

But I couldn't sleep. I think it's the sounds. The only free bed they had was up on the seventeenth floor in the geriatric ward. During the day it was ok, but now there were all manner of disturbing noises. I decided to walk around the floor awhile and try to burn off my edginess. There was a small lounge near the nurse's station. It had a coffee machine that dispensed some fluid they referred to as soup. I walked over, dropped in some coins, and out squirted something steaming into a cup. I reached down to remove it from the machine's output slot and felt a cold grip on my left shoulder. I turned to see who it was and automatically jerked my shoulder back when I did. It was Adams. Again.

Adams released his grip and pulled back. He said, "Hello again."

It was either a ghost or I was having a stoke. I stood there frozen, staring at him. If it was a ghost, I could handle that; a stroke, not so much. He said, "Why don't we sit down."

I shuffled over to one of the worn out, half-dozen cast-off chairs that made up the lounging part of the lounge. I sat down and Adams sat in a chair opposite me. He said, "Are you ok?"

"I don't think I'm ok. I'm sitting in a hospital talking to myself."

"You are not talking to yourself, you are talking to me, Zachariah Adams. Do you remember who I am?"

"I remember who you were. There must be something wrong with me." Believe me, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. I said, "I think I need to speak to a nurse."

"If it will make you happy, but before you do, please let me speak."

I was finally feeling tired. Maybe it was the shock. I didn't feel like fighting him. Fighting it. Or fighting period. I slumped back in the chair and said, "Ok, shoot."

"I need you to do a job for me."

"Can you tell me why I should believe you're here? Maybe you're a hallucination? Are you a ghost? I saw you die."

"Yes, I am dead, but I do not know if I am a ghost. All I know is I have seen no one or no thing. I do not know if I exist or not. Sometimes I believe I think or something thinks my thoughts. I cannot explain anything or even how I got here, but I am here, and I have a  job for you."

"Why me?"

"We are connected. Are we not?"

I was feeling tired and raw and my edge was getting ragged. I leaned forward and asked, "Is this how the afterlife works? Harassing the living and giving them jobs? Why should I help you after all the trouble you caused?"

Adams leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, rested his head in his hands and stared at the floor. He replied, "I do not know how all this works. Am I ghost? Am I in the afterlife? Heaven? Hell? I do not know what I am or where I am. I know I caused a death, ruined lives, and was responsible for all manner of trouble. I deeply regret it and I would reverse it all if I could, but I cannot.  All I know is I have a job for you."

He was distraught. I relented to try and end all this. I said, "OK, what do you want me to do?"

Adams looked up a bit and replied, "I kept a set of records documenting my activities with those men who were paying me to disrupt fusor research. I put the records in a file labeled Smith and stored them at my home mingled in with my family genealogy records. My daughter was to get the genealogy files when I died. Please retrieve the Smith file from her and send it to Phil Douglas. He is, or was, the deputy-secretary at the bureau. He is the only one there I trust. I cannot fix my sins, but Douglas will recognize what you have sent him, and have the proof to go after all those people who are bent on ruining things for other people so they can make life better for themselves. That is all I can do."

"Why me? Why don't you contact your daughter and get her to do it?"

"All I know is that we are connected and I need to ask you. I do not know why I cannot contact her. I do not know how any of this works."

"Do you know her phone number?"

"316, Russell, 738."

Here I was, in the middle of the night, sitting in a chair in the middle of a hospital lounge talking into thin air and asking a ghost for a phone number. You'd think someone would notice. Someone finally did. A nurse at the desk gently called over to me, "Are you alright Mr. Bryce?" I turned to look at her. She got up and started to walk towards me. I turned back to Adams. He was gone.

Part 4 is here.

Abandonment - Part 1

Here in Ottawa most places are closed down to help prevent the transmission of coronavirus and people are self-isolating. Do what you should to slow the spread and take care. In the meantime, being at home and all, I thought I'd finish some writing I started back in December and travel back to the weird, electric streets of New Toronto :-) Join me now for some new pulse-pounding adventures of mayhem and streetcars ....

"What makes you think you're dead?"

"For one thing I'm here talking to you, and you jumped in front of a subway car right in front of my eyes."

Talk about fronts. I was putting on a brave one. Yeah, here I was sitting on a nice couch, and across from me, sitting on an equally nice couch, was Zachariah Adams. The same Zachariah Adams who jumped on the track at the Crombie subway station just as the train was pulling in. The same Zachariah Adams who I'm told was scraped off every surface and traumatized me and the driver and all those poor souls on the platform who witnessed his departure. 

"Well, yes, but I'm feelin' better now."

"And you're talking funny. You never used to use contractions. You were strictly a full pronunciation man as I recall."

"I've mellowed."

"Mellowed? Are they adding marijuana smoke to the ventilation system down here?"

"Down here? You think you're dead and in hell too? These are pleasant couches, not boiling cauldrons of sulphur."

Adams shifted his weight a bit and plumped a nearby cushion.

"You're the one who committed suicide and I'm sitting here talking to you. The signs don't look too good to me."

Things in general were starting to look not so good to me.

Things were starting to go dark. 

I had this odd feeling of no longer fully inhabiting my body. I felt like I was contracting into a sphere just behind my eyes and was simply pulling some strings to make my arms and legs move. I was now a puppet master and my body was the puppet.

Way off in the distance I heard a woman scream my name.

She continued with,"Stay with me! You're not leaving me!"

I was confused.

"Adams, your voice is a lot higher than it used to be," I mumbled to the other couch. His deep, Vaderian voice was the first thing I noticed about him when we met. His little body didn't seem like it could produce anything so commanding. It seemed weird that now he sounded like a woman.

"I'm not Adams. He's dead. I'm Leslie."

Leslie? I tried getting up from my couch using all my puppet master skills. Trying to move my arms and legs seemed to help push back the darkness. Why did I think I was lounging on a couch? My clearing eyesight told me I was lying on my back in the middle of some road. The ground was cold. It was night. I could see flashing red, blue and yellow lights nearby. I could hear sirens and honking horns and shouts. My head hurt.

I turned my head to the left and saw Leslie kneeling beside me on the pavement.

I turned my head to the right and saw Adams standing by my side. He looked down at me and said, "You'll be fine. I've a job I need you to do."

I turned my head back to the left and saw that a uniformed man was now kneeling beside Leslie. He looked me in the eye and said, "Sir, I'm with emergency services. May I help you?" I think I said yes.

I turned my head to the right again. Adams was gone.

Part 2 can be found here.

---

Understory

My first attempt at a streetcar / model railroading / '30s-'40s noir pulp novella was Light Ray Blues, which I started back in the fall of 2012, and finished in late summer 2013. Until the E. L. Moore series got going it was the most hit series of posts here at 30Squares. 

There were a lot ideas I wanted to play with in Light Ray Blues, which included: how a single, unforeseen event in a person's hum-drum existence could permanently change their direction in life; show that day-to-day life in a world with more-or-less completely electrified transportation would still be full of crime, deceit, selfishness, and all the usual vices; connect model streetcar layouts with storytelling. And, most importantly, I wanted to have some fun with Chandler-esque dialogue, weird streetcar aficionados, inventing places in New Toronto, and concocting a strange, alternative electrified Canada.

Light Ray Blues, Series 2 didn't get started until the spring of 2015. There was a long publication gap between June 2015 and September 2016 when I picked up the series again and finally finished. 

I'm layout building again and feeling the strange pull back to New Toronto. I don't know where this will go - although I've got 10 instalments in the bag that set up Ed and Leslie in a direction for new adventures - but I figured I couldn't resist the ride.

You say layout, I say model railroad, Let's call the whole thing off

jingle plays - voices sing: WMRR, all rail radio - jingle plays

The Doobie Brothers’ song 'What a Fool Believes' plays softly in the background. 

Host Frank Madwood takes to the mic.

Frank: Last week we received a postcard from a listener in Charlotte, North Carolina, saying that on the show we too often confuse layout with model railroad. He wrote that we’d be doing a great service to the community by clarifying the terms so that those listeners of a more weak-minded disposition, such as his cousin Cal, wouldn’t prattle on about their tremendous model railroads that were in fact just layouts.

I don’t think we have any weak-minded listeners, but it seemed like an interesting topic, and we asked Professor Mary Ellesmere, director of the University of New Toronto’s Centre for Rail Guided Transportation to help us understand if there is any distinction between layout and model railroad.

Professor Ellesmere joins in me in the studio today to discuss what she found. Professor Ellesmere, welcome to the show.

Background music fades out.

Mary: Thank you, and, Mary, please.

Frank: Mary, is there any difference between a layout and a model railroad?

Mary: Yes and no. In everyday writing and conversation those terms get used interchangeably, but if we look back at some old writing in the field, we often see layout being used to talk about a temporary arrangement of track, often put together on a floor, especially near or around a Christmas tree, with model railroad reserved for a more permanent or fixed configuration that in some way tries to replicate something about an actual railroad. A model railroad, especially its track plan, will often be referred to as a layout, but those temporary setups aren’t referred to as model railroads.

Frank: So, layout is something temporary and doesn't necessarily represent a real railroad?

Mary: That's right. Strictly speaking, layouts seem to be more about loose, temporary, free-form fun. But, in everyday usage, layout is often used to talk about any type of track construction from something temporary under a Christmas tree to a highly, detailed, fully operational, historically correct, permanent display of trains.

Frank: You brought along a number of quotes from old books and magazines to illustrate how layout has been used.  We set up Don in Studio C to read them to our listeners in his best radio voice. Don, are you there?

Don: Yes, Frank.

Frank: Mary, this first piece is from none other than H. G. Wells.

Mary: Wells' 1911 book Floor Games describes a game he and his two sons played called the game of wonderful islands. This book might be the earliest about play with layouts.

Frank: Didn't he write a book called War Games?

Mary: You might be thinking of Little Wars that was published two years later in 1913.

Frank: I probably am.

Mary: Floor Games is a bit different. It describes some games where using soldier figures - because not many civilian figures were available in those days - bricks, boards, toys, planks, wind-up trains and track, and whatever miscellanea could be found around the house, two islands would be laid out on a floor, and they'd play out stories that came to mind from the scenes they'd build. They'd continually iterate the physical scenes and stories based on the scenes and stories they imagined. This could go on for a few days until the floor had to be reclaimed for more mundane purposes. 

Frank: No battles?

Mary: Those came later in Little Wars.

Frank: How does our word layout figure in this?

Mary: It turns out Wells never uses the term layout in the book, even when discussing train track set ups. He talks about 'arrangements', but these arrangements share a lot in common with our train layouts. And arrangements is a good word for them.

Frank: That's your cue Don.

Don: Yes, Frank. These we arrange and rearrange in various ways upon our floor, making a world of them.

Frank: What's next Mary?

Mary. This piece is from the April 1927 issue of Meccano Magazine. Think of it as layout planning guidance where the terrain is a whole house. Floors are involved like in Floor Games. And the whole thing is temporary of course.

Don: It frequently happens that, owing to the limited floor space available in a small room, particularly one containing a good deal of furniture, a satisfactory layout is difficult to arrange. In many even quite small houses, however, there is often a fairly long hall or landing that can be pressed into service, thus making possible a much longer run than could be obtained in any of the rooms. In the case of a landing it is often possible to arrange the layout so that the line passes into and round a bedroom, and it is quite exciting to watch the trains disappear into the room and come into view again in business-like fashion shortly afterwards! The possibilities of a layout of this kind are almost unlimited. We know of one case in which three boys, each of whom possesses a good supply of Hornby train material, have a glorious time almost every Saturday afternoon by combining the whole of their railway material and laying out an elaborate track on a landing.

Frank: The Hornby company published that magazine, and manufactured Meccano and model train equipment didn't they?

Mary: Yes, the piece is a bit self-serving. Unlike Wells who looks at building an entire world from things you readily get - from a store or around the house - the focus here is trains. The model train and track manufacturers are always looking for ways to promote their product, which isn't bad, and one method is to suggest ways to use lots of track. But it plays on something boys and girls like to do: build their own miniature worlds. 

Frank: And the writer referred to that Hornby miniature world of track as a layout. 

Mary: Yes, and the term model railroad, or model railway in this case, didn't appear in the article.

Frank: And then there's W. K. Wathers of Walthers fame.

Mary: Yes, beginning in the January 1934 issue of Model Railroader he wrote a series of articles describing the journey from a layout under the Christmas tree to a full, permanent model railroad.

Frank: One last time Don.

Don: "Well, if this isn't the best Christmas I ever had." Such was the remark of 14-year old Bill Smith as he surveyed the electric train outfit all laid out under the tree.

Frank: How do you recommend we use these terms ?

Mary: That's not for me to say, but keep in mind that layout isn't always just another way to say model railroad. Layout can imply a loose, temporary and unfettered alternative way to approach the hobby, and for that, it's good to know its hidden meaning.

Frank: We'll keep that in mind. Thank-you Mary for coming in today.

Mary: It's been a pleasure.

Frank: Next week Wescott and Schopp return to discuss omnivagant trefoil streetcar layouts, er, model railroads, er, model traction layouts, er, oh fudge. Take us home Bobby…