R
ecently I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with
Tom Johnson, builder of the Logansport and Indiana
Northern. One of the comments he made was that he
views model railroading as three-dimensional art. I was intrigued
by his statement and I have been thinking about it.
There are many different skill levels when it comes to art.
There are the masters like Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh, and
others who have created priceless works of art. Then there are
those of us who feel we would be doing well if we could just
paint by numbers.
Why do some have the ability to make great looking layouts and
others struggle? The fact of the matter is we are not all created
equal. If we were, we would all be engineers or firemen. That
would leave a lot of society's other needs unmet. As a member
of the non-artist majority, what should we do?
Let's begin by looking at the definition of a model. Model:
A small
object, usually built to scale, that represents in detail another,
often larger object
With that definition in
mind, we need to think about what we are attempting to model.
Assistant Editor’s thoughts
by Don Hanley
The art of model
railroading
Assistant Editors thoughts - 1
