I found this letter to the editor in a July 1958 issue of model railroader and got a chuckle:
To the Editor:
Three cheers for Ed Clarke's letter in the May issue of your decadent Model Railroader. You really had a magazine in 1935 and 1936 when I first subscribed to it. Now it is not a craftsman's magazine, but for boys only. I dare you to print this letter.
I have told you before your magazine stinks. Yes, stinks. I can't in a dozen issues find as much information as I did in one issue in 1936 - no Thornburgh stories, just toys and HO gauge kits at 1.29. What a hobby! Not even a snappy story once in a while.
G. E. Grove
(back in those days they would publish someone's address!!!)
Sorry, i don't have the May 1958 issue to read Clarke's letter that Mr Grove references, but gee does this not sound exactly like current complaints?
So, has the hobby been in a gradual decline since 1936, or is there some other phenomenon related to reminiscence of "good old days"
The irony is, I was having a conversation with my dad the other day about how people remember "good old days" as always being better than today, and I ran into this letter while reading in the jon.
The letter by Ed Clarke reads as follows:
! ? !
To the Editor:
It so happens that I purchased your dollar book last week ( Build Your Own Model Cars And Locos ). I can change the scale from 1/8th to 1/4th or whatever scale I desire, but it would be a darn sight faster and easier if you would put youre measurements in feet and inches direct from the prototype and let the modeler take his pick, instead of putting it in thirty-seconds and sixteenths, and even sixty-fourths as you do.
Who are these HO people that they need prototype dimensions broken up for them? I would say that 80% of the guys in HO buy kits and ready made cars anyway. That same percentage buys ready made track. There are a lot of other things that they do that O gaugers don't do, but they still call themselves model railroaders. You deny all of this, and I'll laugh at you! That 80% or more don't know an ampere from a volt or an ohm from a micro farad. But in HO they don't have to know very much, for the Editors of Kalmbach Publishing Co. will give them the answers.
You state that you run measurements in feet and inches. You might do this once in a while, but the issues I have of yours which would fill a book case, and this book I spoke of, tell a different story.
As long as a guy in HO can go out and purchase a car kit for a couple of dollars, he is not going to waste his time building one from scratch. The word "model" to them is just a front when it is used in front of the word "railroader". They can't call themselves scale modelers, either. A lot of detail on HO models is either oversize, or left off. They can't make certain parts to scale for the simple reason that the parts wouldn't be strong enough.
I could go on like this indefinitely . . .
The editors reply...
( Since August 1956, Model Railroader's major construction articles have included -with few exceptions- dimensions given in prototype feet and inches. The book mentioned was published in 1954, before the present practice became standard )
So !!, I guess times haven't changed all that much at that.
Back then "kit builders" were looked down upon by "real"model Railroaders who built everything from scratch in O-scale. Today kit builders look down on the r-t-r crowd.
My biggest complaint is that in so many cases, my choices are to buy r-t-r, or scratch build. There are a few kit manufacturers left out there. The biggest problem is that if a kit is not quite up to NMRA standards, I can fix it. If an r-t-r model is not up to NMRA standards, I can convert it to a kit, or throw it away. I don't know how many are members of the NMRA who regularly read Scale Rails in this site, but fully 75% of the products that are tested in Scale Rails do not receive a conformance passing grade because they fail to meet NMRA standards. Over 90% of the reviews I've read show that the products fail on one or more of the "recommended practices." For reliable operation, locomotives and rolling stock should meet NMRA standards and all recommended practices. I'll take a chance on a locomotive I really want. A freight or passenger car has to be something really special for me to consider it.
Russ Bellinis Wrote:Back then "kit builders" were looked down upon by "real"model Railroaders who built everything from scratch in O-scale. Today kit builders look down on the r-t-r crowd.
I can just see the article in 2034 - MR's 100th anniversary. The RTR crowd will be chastising the VR/Simulator crowd: "In my day we used to get our hands dirty opening the boxes and running the actual cars on actual tracks...! Sure, we
ordered the stuff on-line, but we didn't
run them on-line. We had to negotiate for actual room in an actual house dagnabbit!"
Andrew
good one! 