A "final" post on model railroading

I found a copy at a decent price of Malcolm Furlow's book on a narrow gauge HO railroad.  I always kinda wanted to buy this book back in the 80s when I was buying these books, but I hadn't done so.  I clicked on "order" from an independent Amazon retailer earlier today, so I'll have a copy.

Malcolm Furlow seems like my kind of guy, honestly.  I prefer his approach to that of the Tony Koester types.  Here's some quotes from this thread that apply:

If you try to approach Malcolm Furlow through the operations/prototype/serious paperwork /serious history/serious track planning lens, you will never understand him nor the work that he did - nor why that work gets so much recognition. 

You have to start with the understanding that Malcolm is first and foremost an artist who chose model railroading as his medium of expression, and he did a phenomenal job doing it.   In a lot of ways he was a bit of the Bob Ross of model railroading, he made it look easy, and produced scenes that are the entire back story to the railroad without any exposition whatsoever.  No histories, no operating schemas, no grand stories written in the text; just track, buildings, and a collection of scenes that together and alone tell the story, no further explanations necessary.  For those who cannot figure things out without the full dissertation behind the railroad ["I'm modeling the New York Central between Albany South and Albany North on December 2nd, 1934 from 12:08 to 15:62 but NOT 15:63"] his approach is very frustrating indeed - what do you mean, you can have a layout without all those other parts??? 

Malcolm left the spotlight after he became frustrated with the Koester crowd - that's the easiest way I can put it, from what I can collect reading what Sam Posey wrote in "Playing with Trains."  And by frustrated, I mean, tired of having people show up on his lawn in the dead of night to argue with him about how his way was wrong and detrimental to the hobby.  Now you have Reverse Runnings like the one Joe wrote last month about the Era Police, repeating the common [almost rhetorical, at this point] question "has it all become Too Serious?"...   [...] 

Now about the San Juan Central, I've read in places that Malcolm didn't necessarily use any of the track planning guides most people use; he started with a sketch of an idea that looked good in his head, ignoring things like even curve radius, and built it.  The result is the San Juan Central and the railroads that appeared after it.  They're the sort of work that frustrates the logical sequential mind where everything has to be connected to a sublying plot, but if you are willing to unhinge yourself from that anchor, you may find his work to be a real joy, intellectually.   

Now there may be many who gripe about his lack of adherence to "reality," the lack of "proper railroading background" to his premise, but consider this: In a span of about 3 years, or perhaps even only 6 months, from when he started the San Juan to when he sent in his first submissions, he went from a virtual nobody with seemingly little experience at all with the hobby to John Allen's successor/protege. He published articles month after month on end in the most serious of model railroading publications, he gave clinics, he produced a whole line of publications to support others in their pursuit of the hobby, he became as well known around our kitchen tables as any of the well established Old Guard.  And he made it look easy, by and large due to his background - the same background John Allen claims.  Engineering and fine drafting may make perfect structures and perfectly sound designs, but it is art that makes perfectly weathered images of what may very well appear to be a real scene - even if only on a planet imagined by Dr. Seuss or Lewis Carroll - that all together conveys a complete experience.  You've just found that steamer trunk full of old photographs, and alas, there's no text on a single one about where they came form or what is in the pictures, they're just pictures with no "historical" analysis... 

He left the spotlight because quite frankly, he get[s] a lot more appreciation from the art community than he ever did from the model railroading community, and they pay him Very Well for his efforts.  They don't line up to tell him how he's doing it wrong and how to do it right; they line up and hand him money for what he puts on canvas, be it 2D or 3D or whatever medium he decides to work in. 

Some more quotes:

Oh, I'm just the messenger this time... 

Sam Posey, Playing with Trains, pg 150-151 

"Scenes like this, and the creative impulses that went with them, had put Malcolm in direct conflict with Tony Koester in the struggle for what model railroading should be all about.  Bob Hayden had remarked, sensibly, that there was more than one hobby here and one approach was just as legitimate as another, but as I listened to Malcolm, I wondered if I would take the chance of putting him in a room alone with Tony.  Tony's total commitment to realism was equaled only by Malcolm's utter disdain for it.  "Accuracy is a crutch," he said to me and went on to describe a modeler who told him his embankments were too steep to be prototypically correct.  "Can you imagine that?"  he asked me, getting angry once again over an incident that had happened more than ten years ago.  

Malcolm's extreme modeling was a lightning rod for people who thought the hobby should be about trains, not personal expression.  He has had people call him crazy to his face.  He has received hate mail.  When he was living in Texas, people would come to his house and wait outside his door for a chance to argue with him.  He said, "It's as if I was violating the Holy Grail of model railroading."  

When he had turned to painting, it had been a relief to leave all that animosity behind, but now that he was attempting a comeback in model railroad, he worried that the opposition had become stronger.  He told me darkly that Tony and his legions of operators had gained the upper hand.  "The operators will wreck it," he said, "because they don't offer people anything to look at.  Scenery—that's what attracts people, gets them excited.  The operators want to allude to model railroading as an art form, but when the art part actually comes up they practically run for the door." 

I'm not really saying anything new when I say "The Koester crowd." 

Such a railroad [the SJC] would have never existed.  The reason the San Juan Central is what it is, is because Malcolm designed it that way.  Malcolm had no more or less access to prototype information and the design tomes in the 80's as we do now; he simply chose not to use that information, and I suspect he never would - and in the face of the original, I dare say Malcolm proved such information is quite simply unnecessary.  Those sharp curves and steep grades is just what makes the pictures as dramatic as they appear - it's not an optical illusion! 

There was a layout tour in one of these magazine [It might have indeed been MRH!] a little ways back about a railroad that is in essence a replication of the original San Juan, but the builder went ahead and applied these construction philosophies to the original -better curves, better grades - and the end railroad is indeed gorgeous to look at too. The track plan is a fun arrangement, but if you were to embark on the project, I wouldn't be so bold as to dismiss the original in the manner that you have.  It all goes back to understanding the artist...

Now, to be fair, I have no interest in a model railroad that doesn't really run.  But Furlow's approach is more my approach.  Painstakingly reproducing realistic operation based on "the prototype" (i.e., real life) is much less interesting to me than any other aspect of the hobby.  I'm actually not super interested in trains, railroads or operations—although I would want a layout that actually worked, and I would want to come up with some operation cards to give me something fun to do with it after it's built.  But whether or not it's "realistic" or whimsical fantasy doesn't bother me in the least; in fact, the latter appeals to me a great deal more.

Here's some pics, magazine scans from the 70s and 80s, of Furlow's Denver & Rio Chama railroad.  It was obviously modeled to look like the G&D.  But word on the street is that it was a visual layout with poor attention paid to design considerations or craftsmanship of the trackwork, etc. so that it often didn't run very well.  That said... sure is pretty.  I can see why Furlow appeared, and by making everything look easy, turned into the model railroad equivalent of a rock star for a time period.

I've thought the same thing about John Olson, but maybe Olson was more the complete package, maybe.  I've seen scans of an article that highlight his Mescal Lines RR, but it isn't really all that much to go on, but it looks similar.  So does his small project J&SW, frankly.

"I think the primary goal in my photographs is to bring people into a world that doesn't really exist through my eyes; through my experience.  You can walk as a scale dimensional person through this little miniature world.  I'm not so interested in scale model accuracy as in sharing my little visions and fantasies with other people, and by taking them there through my one-eyed camera, I'm therefore much more able to bring them with me.  And I think that's kinda what speaks for my style and my brand."

—John Olson

And as one guy said in the threat linked above: "It's fine if Malcolm Furlow or John Allen style railroads aren't everyone's cup of tea. I get that because the 8 inch wide shelves with a static grass prairie and building flats slapped against the backdrop  aren't mine. But the thing is, I still consider all of them model railroads, they are just different approaches to the hobby. Calling anyones modeling a caricature or especially a "cartoon" is derogatory in my opinion, it irks me every time I hear it or see it written."