03-23-2014, 09:26 AM
Via the latest PRRT&HS Keystone, I learn that Alvin F Stauffer passed away on October 30, 2013. Another discussion is at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="ahttp://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=153390">ahttp://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtop ... 3&t=153390</a><!-- m -->
Stauffer's motive power books were part of a next-generation of railroad and railfan books that went beyond Lucius Beebe in content. I remember buying Pennsy Power about 1962. It cost something like $18, and I remember the hobby shop guy giving me a weird look and wondering how anyone would spend so much for "a book". The PRRT&HS obit suggested that Pennsy Power was a major influence that got the PRRT&HS itself started. I've also heard that Rehor's Nickel Plate Story was the influence that got the NKP group started.
There's another side to this story, though, and that's that in the same Keystone that carried the obit, the editor put out a call for articles, saying that in his 30 years as editor, he'd always had a good supply, but now he'd run dry. This Keystone is keeping up the trend that's been happening, where there's mainly a lot of whining about how K4s 1361 is still in pieces, the RR Museum of Pennsylvania isn't restoring enough PRR stuff, etc. There've been a lot of multi-page articles on how UK railfans are able to restore lots of steam, why can't we do the same -- and less and less on the actual PRR and its history.
There's more to the problem than this, too. The ONLY actual PRR-focused piece in the Keystone (maybe 80 pages) was a self-important thing on the committee that was going to come up with the official PRRT&HS version of PRR paint colors. No actual colors, mind you, just who's on the committee, and what wonderful things they're going to do when they do them. I have two problems with this. One is that, if you look in any "all color book" or even on the web, no two pieces of PRR rolling stock seem to be the same shade. Certainly things came out of the shop in the same color, but after a few weeks on the road, in different environments, through tunnels, in different weather, etc, they turned different shades, either via chemical changes in the paint itself or via soot, road dirt, etc. So a guide to official colors is a nice to have, and it's a basic good thing to tell people there were no Tuscan GP9s or whatever, but I'd actually be wrong to have all my PRR equipment in the same set of shades.
But then I had a problem maybe 10 years ago. The PRRT&HS made a big deal about how they'd given Walthers the right colors for their PRR passenger cars. I picked up an R50 and was blown away -- yeah, I'd never seen a color that reminded me so much of what I'd seen on the New York & Long Branch in the late 1950s. I posted on the PRRT&HS Yahoo group and asked what they'd given Walthers, it was really great, was there a way to mix it with Floquil or Scalecoat? Their answer was that this was confidential, it would be "premature" to give anything out, the Committee was still in the process of blah blah blah.
Well, wait, you've given the formula to Walthers, and they've put out thousands of cars with it, but it's premature to say anything else? That was a major milestone in my disaffection with the PRRT&HS. And it looks like the Committee is still, ten years later, in the same place it's been.
I'm wondering if the passing of Alvin F Stauffer is sort of a bookend to this phase of modeling-railfanning. We probably now, 50+ years after Pennsy Power, have more than all the PRR books we'll need, and the marginal utility of each extra grows less and less. Stauffer's was among the first, and it was really needed and really useful. PRR Color Guide Volume XVII, not so much. Mr Stauffer, thank you and RIP. But this may well be the last year for me in the PRRT&HS.
Stauffer's motive power books were part of a next-generation of railroad and railfan books that went beyond Lucius Beebe in content. I remember buying Pennsy Power about 1962. It cost something like $18, and I remember the hobby shop guy giving me a weird look and wondering how anyone would spend so much for "a book". The PRRT&HS obit suggested that Pennsy Power was a major influence that got the PRRT&HS itself started. I've also heard that Rehor's Nickel Plate Story was the influence that got the NKP group started.
There's another side to this story, though, and that's that in the same Keystone that carried the obit, the editor put out a call for articles, saying that in his 30 years as editor, he'd always had a good supply, but now he'd run dry. This Keystone is keeping up the trend that's been happening, where there's mainly a lot of whining about how K4s 1361 is still in pieces, the RR Museum of Pennsylvania isn't restoring enough PRR stuff, etc. There've been a lot of multi-page articles on how UK railfans are able to restore lots of steam, why can't we do the same -- and less and less on the actual PRR and its history.
There's more to the problem than this, too. The ONLY actual PRR-focused piece in the Keystone (maybe 80 pages) was a self-important thing on the committee that was going to come up with the official PRRT&HS version of PRR paint colors. No actual colors, mind you, just who's on the committee, and what wonderful things they're going to do when they do them. I have two problems with this. One is that, if you look in any "all color book" or even on the web, no two pieces of PRR rolling stock seem to be the same shade. Certainly things came out of the shop in the same color, but after a few weeks on the road, in different environments, through tunnels, in different weather, etc, they turned different shades, either via chemical changes in the paint itself or via soot, road dirt, etc. So a guide to official colors is a nice to have, and it's a basic good thing to tell people there were no Tuscan GP9s or whatever, but I'd actually be wrong to have all my PRR equipment in the same set of shades.
But then I had a problem maybe 10 years ago. The PRRT&HS made a big deal about how they'd given Walthers the right colors for their PRR passenger cars. I picked up an R50 and was blown away -- yeah, I'd never seen a color that reminded me so much of what I'd seen on the New York & Long Branch in the late 1950s. I posted on the PRRT&HS Yahoo group and asked what they'd given Walthers, it was really great, was there a way to mix it with Floquil or Scalecoat? Their answer was that this was confidential, it would be "premature" to give anything out, the Committee was still in the process of blah blah blah.
Well, wait, you've given the formula to Walthers, and they've put out thousands of cars with it, but it's premature to say anything else? That was a major milestone in my disaffection with the PRRT&HS. And it looks like the Committee is still, ten years later, in the same place it's been.
I'm wondering if the passing of Alvin F Stauffer is sort of a bookend to this phase of modeling-railfanning. We probably now, 50+ years after Pennsy Power, have more than all the PRR books we'll need, and the marginal utility of each extra grows less and less. Stauffer's was among the first, and it was really needed and really useful. PRR Color Guide Volume XVII, not so much. Mr Stauffer, thank you and RIP. But this may well be the last year for me in the PRRT&HS.