Hello. !
Today, a friend taught me this curiosity, and I wanted to share with you.
Hope you like it !!!
http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/xavier/January1934.jpg
Xavier
Very neat. Would love to read it!
Yeah, the first issue is all of 12 pages! It’s nice to have access to these old issues. The DVD starts with that one.
It’s not the same to read the article in PDF to have the pleasure of having the magazine in your hands physically.
I like the promise about reinvesting the profits (in fact “every dollar”) back into the magazine.
Greg
I’m sure the early topics were mostly devoted to “How to make your hopelessly toyish looking trains look and operate more realistically” sounds familiar ???
Xavier Alvarez said:
It’s not the same to read the article in PDF to have the pleasure of having the magazine in your hands physically.
You might have a tough time getting one in your hands X.A. I weeding out magazines for the recycle bin and lookee what I found…looks like maybe a hundred copies total.
Xavier, maybe it’s just unusual choice of words, but “taught” and “curiosity” imply that you learned something unusual… I believe you are just sharing a rare glimpse of the first version of the magazine, and not really learning something puzzling and unusual.
I just wanted to make sure I was not missing something.
Regards, Greg
Greg, you have reason. English is not my usual communication language. I appreciate so much your words. Its a good way to learn.
Thanks
Xavier.
You have nothing to apologize for, Xavier…I understand you just fine.
After seeing your weathering on the small engine, I took the time to check on your other work. You’ve been compared to Chuck Doan but, frankly, I think your work is much more realistic, much more refined and interesting. And YOU have a really cool layout on top of it!!
Your modelling speaks for itself. I wouldn’t presume to teach you English…in fact, I want you to teach me modelling! Once my railroad extends beyond my porch I want to pick your brain as to how you do such great modelling outdoors.
Thanks Xavier, and like John, we all appreciate your contributions and no one is trying to teach you English, I just wanted to make sure I got the main point of your post.
I learned Japanese not so long ago, and many of the translation programs did very strange translations, not to mention the word for chopsticks also sounds just like the word for bridge and for edge.
Regards, Greg
Interesting! Thanks for posting.
Thank you very much for your kind comments.
I try to improve my English. But here (Spain) I have no one to practice with, and I try not to use the google translator.
John, you made me blush! Thank you very much for your comment, but I do not have the level that you grant me kindly.
Anyway, you have a round paid at best hovel in your city. !
Regards,
Xavier
The magazine has gone through several phases.
My favourite was the 1960’s as I was growing through teenagehood, as well as back issues through the fifties. In those days there was a heavy emphasis on scratchbuilding structures, rolling stock and motive power.
The magazine was the source of several ‘breakthroughs’ such as split ring turntable control, pulse power and soon after, transistor throttles, and zip texturing.
The back issues took us to Mel Thornburgh making a 4-4-0 on his kitchen table out of wood, and the era of cardstock and balsa rolling stock.
The authors would list parts you could get from your hobby shop that were utterly unobtainable here in Canada, so we young modellers became very resourceful.
As a teenager I learned the import/export business by buying parts from a large New York City mail order store. I’ve come to recognize that most people aren’t at all familiar with import and export, so for me that was great early experience. Model Railroader brought the wide world of the hobby to my attention and opened my eyes to things I could never have known about otherwise.
After the sixties, MR moved away from the ‘craftsman mode’ of earlier decades and more and more towards being a flat-out consumer magazine. It still wasn’t possible to be a consumer here in Canada to the extent that it seemed to be happening Stateside.
The magazine’s emphasis seemed to change from building it yourself to assembling kits and repainting diesels. Shudder. I had grown up without kits and I had become a dedicated scratchbuider, with no interest in diesels; I still loved the steamers of my childhood, and had also come to admire the trains of earlier days.
Now my Model Railroader arrived in the mail, but each month it was becoming a bigger and bigger disappointment, and I finally dropped my subscription and started getting more specialized publications.
Even then I had to admire the staff. When I dropped my subscription, Editor Linn Westcott, who had bought some articles from me, wrote to ask me what had precipitated my decision, and what the magazine should change. You’ve got to admire that.
The editorial quality of MR has always been extraordinary, thanks to the excellent and dedicated staff who have worked on the magazine.
I have always been a fan of RMC, which often seemed to be MR’s struggling poor cousin. In those cardboard and balsa days RMC always seemed to have something of interest on its pulpy pages.
I apologize if this sounds a bit syrupy, but I still feel a great sense of debt to both Kalmbach and Carstens for the many skills I learned from their pages, and the wide world of model building they both brought to me.
John, I bought an old magazine type book on how to build rolling stock. Its for the HO and O crowd, but it explained a little about cardstock and wood models. I like building in wood, and I am playing around with cardstock now. There were a lot of good techniques that have been lost over time. I think its a bit of a shame that many folks do not even consider making their own stuff anymore.
I have a scratch-built trestle in HO/HOn30 with hand-laid, dual gauge track. I had a very interesting discussion with a gentleman at a train show, who couldn’t understand that I didn’t just put together a kit. He eventually walked away, kinda put out that I wouldn’t tell him where I bought my dual gauge track from. Like I was keeping some kind of secret from him.
Thanks for your comments. You’re a man after my own heart, David. Good for you for your own scratchbuilding and handlaying efforts! You’re maintaining the finest of model railroad traditions.
Giving up on HO. when I was about 21 because I felt it was becoming too commercial, I modelled in Sn3 for several decades starting around 1968, when you had to make everything yourself. Including locos.
There were only a dozen of us throughout North America, and I knew all the other guys. I was the only one in Canada. For decades I spent far more of my time building trains than running them.
One editor long ago drew a distinction between model railroaders and railroad modellers. I guess I was in the second category.
That was ok when I was younger and time seemed to stretch on indefinitely. And I certainly don’t regret all the skills I picked up as a determined scratchbuilder and handlayer.
Nowadays, however, I have become much more aware of the pleasure of operations. I am also very conscious of the rapid passage of time, a startling decline in my own health and the likely brevity of my own life. It was these last concerns that prompted me a few years ago to finally buy the Large scale trains that I had admired for decades.
Now I allow myself to concentrate on building and running an operations-centered railroad. I now have a little more disposable income than I had when I was younger and much more of a purist. Part of me still feels like it was cheating, but in large scale I have bought pretty much all I need, except for several scratchbuilt bridges and structures.
I really did want to have far more than I could ever build at my age! I’m not proud of it, but in order to get a pretty massive project off the ground I guess I you could say I joined the ranks of the first category.
Now that my shopping is done I have returned to building, but it’s between operating sessions, so things are better balanced. I can honestly say now that I’m having more fun than ever before!!!
Cheers!