December 24, 2007
FROM THE ARCHIVES: POETRY IN LOCOMOTION:
The Tenth Art: A new track for the old tradition of model railroading. (William Bryk, NY Press)
A toy train circling beneath the tree is an enduring element of the American Christmas. It first entered the culture a century ago when Joshua Lionel Cowen, founder of Lionel Corporation, invented practical and cheap electric toy locomotives, cars and track–and the marketing for them. Coca-Cola’s classic magazine advertisements showing Santa Claus resting from his labors, sipping Coke and grinning at a Santa Fe diesel locomotive on its three-railed track further established the model train as part of the secular Christmas iconography.Well into my childhood, most department stores seemed to erect at least a small model- train display during the Christmas season. I remember the wonderfully elaborate layout in the Montgomery Ward store at 150 Broadway in Menands, just across the city line from Albany, NY. The store was nestled in the chain’s regional headquarters, a 1929 Art Deco skyscraper–well, it’s eight stories tall–like those in the glamorous old movies about New York on television. The display had tunnels and signals and flashing lights and whistles and a gleaming Santa Fe streamliner, all silver and scarlet like the ones in the soft-drink ads. Even now, associating Montgomery Ward with Christmas seems appropriate: One of their advertising copywriters, after all, created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
From the late 1950s on, our tastes in recreation changed, television in particular proving a powerful substitute for many activities and hobbies that once amused and occupied us, and holiday-season model-railroad displays largely disappeared.
This is a pity. Model railroading–all miniature modeling, in fact–resembles poetic metaphor.
We needed the jaws-of-life to pry our sons away from the model railroad set under the tree at last night's hospital holiday party.
[originally posted: 2003-12-20]
In the introduction of Stephen Ambrose's book on building the transcontinental railroad, he writes about a trip a few years ago in a steam locomotive. Where the tracks paralleled the Interstate, lines of cars -- at one point, 7 miles long -- paced the engine. Drivers of 18-wheelers stopped and climbed onto their cabs to take pictures of the engine.
Ambrose asked the engineer if truckers ever took pictures of diesel locomotives. "Never."
NPR had a neat little feature this week about musical instruments mimicking train sounds (except that, somehow, they neglected "Orange Blossom Special.") We have now reached an era in which musicians mimic sounds they've never heard in real life.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 21, 2003 6:44 PM