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| HBS 700 cleaned up and ready to tackle the mean cobblestone streets of Hoboken, NJ. |
A
recent long email thread between modelers in Kansas City and Austin
has centered around CV settings for realistic operation of
locomotives. The concern has been to accurately set momentum,
braking, and sounds properly to achieve the feeling of running an
actual locomotive. This feeds directly into a running conversation
among several of my modeling friends about the central organizing
principle of layouts, or the thesis statement, that governs decisions
about the construction and operation of a layout. Like anything in
life, I believe having a central conceptual basis, or reason, for
what you are doing with your layout makes your endeavor more
cohesive, focused and helps it communicate your vision and intent
more clearly.
I
will concede that a majority of modelers may believe that a rigorous
conceptual basis for a model railroad takes the fun out of the
pursuit, because the enjoyment comes from doing whatever seems like
fun at the moment. I can not stress enough that I have no problem
with spontaneity and undirected play at all as a fun way to practice
model railroading. (See my Fall 2013 LSR Marker Lamp editorial in vol 59, number 4 where I talk about modeling
to escape
versus modeling
to engage.)
But, suspend your disbelief for a moment if you think that modeling
to engage
sounds too much like work, and please think of it as just getting
really involved in playing.
A
huge part of any game and even undirected play involves a set of
rules, or constraints, that make the game more fun for everyone, even
if you are the only one playing, because how are you going to know
what you are doing or if you are doing it well or not without rules?
For me, having that central organizing principle or thesis statement
is rule number one. Without knowing what I am setting out to do, how
will I know if I do it or not? There may be several types of theses
possible, but I would say that they are all sub categories of a very
large catch-all bucket of categories that involve the idea and
communication of the qualities of place.
On
my layout, I am still developing my thesis, but the trajectory has
something to do with conveying identity and the relationship of
customer and railroad. Being a short line railroad, the Hoboken Shore
had intimate interaction on a daily basis with its customers. My
questions for this are, how could one model this closeness, and how
can personalities come into play? On
the Waterfront,
which was filmed along the HBS right of way, provides an
excellent example of the turmoil and roughness of the moment in time
of the environment surrounding the HBS. I'd like my layout to impart
some sort of understanding of this, and what it may have been like to
work on a railroad in that particular place. Because of this
trajectory, it becomes necessary to focus on the operator as
individual within the context of 1950s Hoboken.
The
HBS was already waning on the heels of its busiest time during WWII.
There must have been a malaise settling on the town and railroad as
things were falling apart all over the Mile Square City. The mayor
owned the local garbage collection company, and when decisions
weren't made to his satisfaction, he refused to pick up trash for
several weeks until the decisions were reversed. Graft, corruption,
and general New Jersey politics led to empty buildings, dirty,
malnourished children roaming the streets, and general hard times
while the rest of the country was enjoying a post-war boom. It was so
bad, that the mayor enacted a law that made it illegal to photograph
the city during this time.
Capturing
the idea of a place
is a topic of an excellent blog post entitled "Power
of Place"
I read recently from Mike Cougill at his OST Publications blog. In it
he explores the notions of place and the challenges of modeling them
on a layout. He says,"in modeling, we give scant notice to how
the railroad and community grew together. We only give a cursory
acknowledgment of how the railroad fits the landscape and in turn, is
shaped by it." We do tend to become fixated on the stuff and
techniques of the layout instead of the overall effect we are trying
to achieve. A 'can't see the forest for the trees' sort of thing, but
I believe that creating an idea of place
is the central reason behind creating any layout.
The
place
of Hoboken in 1959 is what I am modeling, so what does locomotive
sound have to do with this? Simply and directly, the pace of
operation for switching multiple industries in an urban setting is
necessarily slow, so I want to make operation about the little things
that were apart of the everyday movement of goods and products around
the waterfront. This was what the railroad crews had, everyday things
in small quantities that made up their entire lives. No varnish
whizzing by at speed, no thundering Big Boys belching steam, nobody
to really notice what was going on except for the people they dealt
with everyday at the coffee factory, the shipyard, and the piers. The
world was a small one connected to the globe, and it was these
individual sounds that made up the ebb and flow of the aural
scenery.
It
is easy to get sucked into tweaking CV settings on a locomotive just
for the sake of getting the sound right. My driving interest, though,
is to provide user feedback that makes prototypical operation easier
and more enjoyable for the operator on my layout. Keeping this in
mind while performing a seemingly isolated task of CV setting is
important to me.
So
hearing the small, but can-do nature of the revving of a 44-tonner
before it moves is modeling the character and the reality of the
Hoboken Shore Railroad. It wasn't glamorous, it wasn't pretty, but it
was specific and part of the everyday experience of the individuals
of the railroad, and that's important in supporting the thesis about
the place that I am recreating on my layout. This small sound detail
directly helps the central conceptual basis for my layout to
communicate the particular place
of Hoboken, NJ and how the railroad fit into it. For me, this makes
for loads of fun, even though I am focused, rigorous and deliberate
in my play.
More
For
a great example of a strong, central thesis, see the layout of Jim
Senese of Tulsa, OK. He has a clear intent for operators explore the
interaction of multiple railroads with differing personalities on his
"Kansas City Terminal RR" layout in Model
Railroad Planning
1998.
I
think place
is a great topic for further exploration and conversation. I'd like
to hear from you if you know of modelers who make place an important
part of their layout.
This first appeared in Vol 61, Number 1 of the Marker Lamp.
