Reflections: how far we’ve come!
by Keith Wills H
appy New Year! As we look for- ward to the next twelve months let’s reflect on an earlier period in our hobby when model railroading was about to take off at the races. The immediate post-war years were excit- ing to contemplate, but there were hitches. There were material short- ages, continued rationing, strikes, sev- eral recessions, inflation and a lack of full manpower with servicemen still overseas. But, start we did. This month we will look at the elder generation (bite my tongue—I’m part of it), who remember what it was like to be freed from wartime limitations. For the younger hobbyists, sit back and enjoy what you have today.
It was a time of O, S, OO, HO and TT gauges. When I mention TT to younger modelers the question is invariably, “What was that?” It was a time when arguments raged in letters to the hobby press editors about which gauge was best, HO or OO. There was speculation that O had only a few years left. All sizes were gauges. The word “scale” was yet to become common vernacular. And, ¹⁷/₆₄″ O scale was considered bet- ter by some, being more accurate for the track gauge than ¹/₄″ (which it is). It was an era when the arcane mys-
teries of electricity were still to be re- vealed for all to understand. Could a tinplate transformer be used to run scale trains? Yes, if one used a “directi- fier” to convert a.c. power to d.c., along with other electrical components to make multi-train operation possible. Many were the articles about wiring blocks and the required gaps, and (gasp!) return loops, and how to route power from one track to another with a turnout. Whew! Some still operated with storage batteries and trickle chargers.
Marnold and Scintilla were big-name, big-lever power pack suppliers. There were no compact types, as they came a bit later with boxed HO sets. Primitive technology had yet to develop small power packs, let alone anything like the hand-held controls common today. Core HO locomotive kits for the most part came from Varney, Mantua, Penn Line, Bowser, John English, Baldwin, Lindsay and Walthers, while ready-to-
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run models from Tyco and others ar- rived later. A die-cast Penn Line PRR K4 Pacific was considered superde- tailed compared with simpler, formed brass Varney and Mantua boilers hav- ing soldered-on details. Actual su- perdetailing kits emerged later to raise Penn Line locomotives to this level. A modeler could solder on as many inap- propriate appliances and piping willy- nilly to really superdetail them even if the parts were wrong for the model. For those wanting something differ- ent, a modeler could kitbash locomo- tives to create new ones, though not al- ways successfully. These locomotives were often made without adhering to any specific prototype, being generic rather than authentic. With so few pro- totypes available, Pennsylvania K-4’s and NYC Hudsons appeared on all sorts of layouts. Diesels, too, were free- lanced for lack of certain models on the market, particularly smaller yard types. This magazine ran several articles on how to scratchbuild a double-end Baldwin Baby Face diesel, to my knowledge not commercially manufac- tured. Even a GE Gas Turbine Electric was created by splicing two Lindsay FA’s together. This was long before complex models we take for granted to- day ever reached the market. We didn’t have the details or ability to create them accurately. They represented pro- totypes rather than properly replicat- ing them.
Some kitbashing was reasonably achieved while others were execrable. We were very eager, but also very naive. In O scale there were companies such as Walthers, All-Nation, Central Locomotive Works, Lobaugh, Thomas, Hines Lines, Alexander, General Models corporation, Blum, Wentco, and Baldwin Locomotive Works. O scale be- gan its downslide in the mid-1950’s, and it took mail order suppliers such as Walthers, All-Nation and Boxcar Ken to keep the flame alive.
Post-war S scale moved rapidly ahead from its rather tenuous late 1930’s start-up. This was helped in part by the popularity of American Flyer S gauge tinplate. Companies such as Stinson, Midgage, S-Pikes (pre-war CD
Gage), Nimco, Super Scale, Dayton, Enhorning, Branch line, Perma Bilt and Rex made a decent range of steam and diesel locomotives. Also, Nimco provided materials to convert American Flyer lo- cos to full scale and tinplate in the mid- 1950’s.
Two other gauges, OO and TT re- mained marginal. OO returned after the war with few suppliers and suffered a decline compared to the burgeoning HO. TT, introduced in 1946, also had few manufacturers and low numbers within the hobby. Its major supplier, H.P. Products, never improved upon the initial offering and fell behind in developing the line. Like OO, it had few makers compared to HO, and while supported in this magazine with a monthly feature, “Off’n the Table Top” by Glyn Lewis, it faded soon enough. Both remain today in small numbers with loyal, hardy holdouts.
Many freight car kits had litho- graphed paper sides glued over wood bodies, though many cars had to be made from scratch because kits for them didn’t exist. Molded plastic shake-the-box kits were barely coming in, considered an abomination by older modelers. Others were die-cast or met- al clad over wood bodies. Passenger cars were of die-cast or wood construc- tion with pressed metal or composition sides. Some streamliners were made of extruded aluminum.
O, S and HO scale drawings in mag-
azines of freight and passenger equip- ment let a hobbyist see what was possi- ble. They inspired by informing modelers what they could accom- plished with wood, card stock and bought details. Without construction articles to accompany them, much was left to the builder’s imaginative inter- pretation of the printed page. It was the era before Kadee couplers became the new norm. The old norm was Mantua’s prewar hook-and-loop type, which was almost universally accepted. There were other automatics: Devore, Monarch and a few dummies, all in- compatible with each other, hence the need for one kind be used exclusively on a layout.
Examining early post-war layout JANUARY 2012
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