November 13, 2019
"You start off with a grey. And then you add a little concrete colour, so every paving stone is slightly different. And the cracks have to have some black chalk... and then you add a little bit of rubbish in the gutters, you add a little bit of rust here and there."
Said Rod Stewart, quoted in "I am railing: Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city" (BBC). Some pretty nice photos at the link.
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68 comments:
This I was happy to read. He has earned my respect.
Good for him. My boy will be inspired, again, I hope.
He does have the garden in San Francisco to himself now, to indulge those garden railway ideas.
And that magazine is a better use of paper than all the political magazines that ever were.
that is truly impressive
It really is an art form. But it’s also a hobby with many facets. Electronics are probably the newest aspect.
If you want my body,
and you think I'm sexy,
come on, Baby,
this train's gotta go?
His one-time guitarist builds/restores hot rods. Not much beats working with your hands.
He has had a couple of articles about his layout in the US magazine Model Railroader. It is a truly beautifully detailed model.
I can think of no greater endorsement than that. A life lived. Skilled home hobbyists are a dwindling minority, because the alternative is so strong an option.
The greatest hobbyist of this type, in modern times, was George Daniels, watchmaker.
Nerd.
Makes his companion accomplishments a bit more impressive.
Model trains at his age?? It's like coming out-of-the-closet!
Ahh, the Brits and their trains...
AA is a bit like this. You wake up, and go do it. Mastery is when the shower comes later.
Blogger madAsHell said...
Model trains at his age?? It's like coming out-of-the-closet!
What’s your all-available-spare-time creative pursuit?
Makes his companion accomplishments a bit more impressive.
I'll bet the model trains weren't discussed on the first date.
And then you poop and pee on the streets, and call it "San Francisco."
What’s your all-available-spare-time creative pursuit?
Making snarky comments at Althouse......I thought it was obvious.
Don't forget to use the Althouse Amazon portal!!
Blogger madAsHell said
Making snarky comments at Althouse......I thought it was obvious.
We were in a triple-hyphen groove, you bailed early.
That's a lot better than his singing.
I didn't know Sir Roderick was beknighted, but he deserves it for railroading, if nothing else. And yes, he deserves it for nothing else.
OH MY GOD that is fucking awesome!
I never cared for Stewart as a singer, but he is ACES at building miniatures! I would love to have a similarly-sized detailed model of Manhattan, (but I'm sure AF not going to build one)!
"His one-time guitarist builds/restores hot rods. Not much beats working with your hands."
Beck wasn't Stewart's one-time guitarist. Stewart was Beck's one-time vocalist!
Will I see you tonight
On a downtown train
Every night, every night
It's just the same
On a downtown train
"You start off with a grey... And the cracks have to have some black chalk... and then you add a little bit of rubbish in the gutters, you add a little bit of rust here and there."
And, if the city's been run by Democrats for decades, you add tent cities, human feces and discarded hypodermic needles.
"I find beauty in what everyone else sees as ugly - rugged skyscrapers, beaten-up warehouses, things that are very run down."
BINGO! I'll take a grimy, run-down urban scene anytime over Edenic nature scenes. It is a balm to watch old episodes of LAW AND ORDER (or other shows or films set in pre-Millennial NYC).
Blogger Char Char Binks said...
That's a lot better than his singing. I didn't know Sir Roderick was beknighted, but he deserves it for railroading, if nothing else. And yes, he deserves it for nothing else
There was no greater hero to the Scottish deplorables. He deserved it.
Holy Crap! He's GOOD!
Toys? Toys, did she tag? Models aren't toys, they are objets d'art, and modelers are among the last imaginative artists.
At one time Neil Young owned Lionel. His collection brought in $300k at auction.
Yes, Jeff Beck is a hot rod freak. Turning wrenches with those fingers...? YEOW! But it is him.
If you're gonna model a real railroad and real life, ya gotta have grit. Steward's doing it right, following the distressing techniques of lots of modelers who've gone before.
And what Steward's engaged in is definitely not toys. It's a lotta fun and there's a lot of role playing involved, but they are not toys.
Impressive. Very, very impressive!
I was always a fan, particularly of his early work with the Faces and his subsequent "solo" work. Then came "Do you think I'm sexy". This project almost redeems that unfortunate episode.
"People get ready, there's a train it's coming..."
For love, gonna board the midnight train to ride
For love, gonna board, gotta board the midnight train to go
For love, gonna board, uh huh, the midnight train to go
My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone
My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone
And all the Pips said,
Woo, Woo
Model Railroads. That's adorable. Also, it's high-level nerdom. It makes me glad I liked his music
“Some pretty nice photos at the link.”
Every picture tells a story... don’t it?
One of Rod and the Faces’s best done live... https://youtu.be/umxx2Qjxfww
"Stewart was Beck's one-time vocalist!"
Insight from Cookie. Finally.
"Toys? Toys, did she tag?"
Whoooaa! Model railroads are NOT toys.
Next, she'll be calling sports uniforms "costumes".
When you're a young rich rock'n'roller, they let you grab them by the pussy, when you are an old rich rock'n'roller , they clear out the adjoining hotel room for your model railroad hobbies.
Man, that is a detailed model! Now, will he include The Blitz?
Oops, I see it was modeled on New York and Chicago, not London.
We were in a triple-hyphen groove
I failed to see my hyphen kindred. I like to use hyphens. I think it distinguishes English from German.
Which is easier to read? Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister or head-district-chimney-sweep??
Cook: "Beck wasn't Stewart's one-time guitarist. Stewart was Beck's one-time vocalist!"
Yeah, pretty coy statement about the most innovative of rock guitarists.
Long before this fool went disco and wore fookin straw boaters, he released mighty fine solo music, the Maggie May, Every Picture Tells A Story, Gasoline Alley period.
Now that's chops. Has a nice '30's and '40's elegaic glow to it too. Never a fan of his music and not a model railway dude but this is very respectable.
I always liked Rod Stewart, but wow. That model railroad was fabulous.
"Robert Cook said...
"His one-time guitarist builds/restores hot rods. Not much beats working with your hands."
Beck wasn't Stewart's one-time guitarist. Stewart was Beck's one-time vocalist!"
I seldom agree with you, but you're absolute;y correct on that one. Loved their version of "People Get Ready", Beck made that song fly
Robert Cook said...
OH MY GOD that is fucking awesome!
I never cared for Stewart as a singer, but he is ACES at building miniatures! I would love to have a similarly-sized detailed model of Manhattan, (but I'm sure AF not going to build one)!
11/13/19, 2:51 PM
Bob, have you seen the Panorama of the City of New York, at the Queens Museum by the old World's Fair site?
Once upon a time there was a city, a great, great city and it was called New York.
That is frickin' amazingly great!
Loved his early stuff, with Jeff Beck and Faces. The more mainstream pop stuff was just so common and routine, anti-special. Great voice though. 'Every Picture Tells a Story', the song, still gets me fired up.
Sir Roderick's model is evocative of many things, which is why I rank it as a work of fine art. (And don't quibble about the outsourcing of the electricals if you want to retain my respect. In a world were Dadaist charlatans get their detritus exhibited in the Guggenheim, this tabletop cityscape is the fucking Sistine Chapel ceiling by comparison.)
Among the evoked mental constructs are two movies. First, the low illumination angle and the warm ochre tones of Stewart's skyscrapers remind me of the model cityscape created by Perry Ferguson for Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope.
I've never been an admirer of the kaiju genre, but at least one always impressed me for its suspenseful style and engaging human characters, the original Rodan (1956), particularly the sequence regarding the gargantuan pterosaur's attack on Sasebo which shows a loving detailed model, right down to individually applied miniature roof titles, utterly destroyed by a man in a rubber chicken suit.
SIR Rod Stewart!
The Nobel Peace Prize!
And all the other awards and titles are just plain BS.
We live in a cheap world with a lot of low lives as our examples.
Like the lyric says, "It's a Barnum & Bailey world, just as phony as it can be..."
("Yip" Harburg & Billy Rose lyric. Music: Harold Arlen. Song: It's Only A Paper Moon)
okay, i admit it
Rod Stewart IS cool
(be cooler though, if he used O gauge, or better yet: G gauge! but even O27 would be cool)
I'll take a grimy, run-down urban scene anytime over Edenic nature scenes.
Not to try to thrive in of course. Because that would be stupid as shit. No. It's for others. This is a symptomatic statement from a twisted romantic yearning to see others suffer so some guy in his mom's basement can feel rugged. In Edenic nature scenes, it's possible to get eaten or sickened and killed by some nematode rather than cut by someone not civilized.
"Great voice though. 'Every Picture Tells a Story', the song, still gets me fired up."
Agree! And just listening to the drumming in that song wears me out.
Really like the self unloading bulk freighter at the dock.
Model railroads are minature, scale depictions of real railroading as it was during a certain, specific, period of time. Althouse errs greviously when she tags this post as being about "toys."
Some forty years ago I had the privilege of being invited by a friend to join a group of modelers at the basement layout of the late John Armstrong, a famous model railroader and prolific author of articles on both model and real railroading. His layout was called the "Canandaigua Southern Railroad," and it featured both scale depictions of real locomotives and train cars as well as fanciful -- but plausible -- locomotives and rolling stock. I never built a model railroad of my own, but I got to know a fair amount about it.
Some of the things that distinguish modelers from people who play with trains include:
(1) Careful attention to details. If you set up a painted backdrop, then the blue of the sky changes shades slightly, clouds have grey bottoms, and clouds get smaller and more closely packed as you move towards the horizon. The inside of a train rail is shiny, from steel wheels rolling over it, but the outside is generally rusty. Oil is often found on the centerline between the rails, so the top modelers darken that area. Sir Roderick already discussed the details of modeling roads and paved areas.
(2) The best modelers cut their own ties and will spike the rails to the ties with tiny, but scale, each spike put in place by hand.
(3) Snap together tracks, the sort one gets with Lionel or Bachman or LGB train sets, consist of straight pieces and curves of a constant radius. In real life the rails ease into turns, gradually tightening up the radius of the turn until the apex, then opening out. Also the rails on the outside of the turn are higher than on the inside (called superelevation). Model railroads replicate these effects.
(4) Good modelers generally stick to one time period, so there is no mixture of early 4-4-0 locomotives such as were used in the middle to late 19th century with modern diesels.
Looking at Steward's layout, I note that he is modeling big city operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad -- the coaches are marked with the "Pennsy" name and one of the pictures shows a T-1 locomotive, which Pennsy built for itself and was the only railroad to use such a distinctive wheel arrangement (4-4-4-4) and "shark nose" streamlining. Judging from the rolling stock, the selection of locomotives, and model automobiles, the time frame is the early 1950s (though why a Liberty Ship would still have its gun tubs that late is a good question).
"I find beauty in what everyone else sees as ugly - rugged skyscrapers, beaten-up warehouses, things that are very run down."
Take me back, carry me back
Down to Gasoline Alley where I started from...
Near the top of the best lyrics to a top 40 song I have ever heard were "You wear it well", written by two people, one of them Rod Stewart.
I am tired of long comments so rather than explain the song I will just point you to the easy to google lyrics, in case you care.
but I will say this ------ "sat down and cried on the stairs", in the context of the song, is Falstaff-level (a context that includes 1970s-style telephone calls from Minnesota from someone with a deep Scots accent who assumes the person he calls is gonna assume he has nothing better to do, and the sad karate of a girlfriend's brother, and other details that have made me laugh and made me very thoughtful about life).
And the guy who sang that song is definitely someone who knows how to lead a cover article on Model Railroad Aficionado magazine, or whatever it is called.
"(be cooler though, if he used O gauge, or better yet: G gauge! but even O27 would be cool)"
Shit, might as well buy a real locomotive. N gauge, so you can have a real layout.
BINGO! I'll take a grimy, run-down urban scene anytime over Edenic nature scenes. It is a balm to watch old episodes of LAW AND ORDER (or other shows or films set in pre-Millennial NYC).
You New Yorkers really are weird...
:)
All kidding aside, RC, I don’t care for grime and dirty areas, but I always thought the maze of train lines - subways, commuter trains, tunnels and bridges for them, etc., was the coolest thing about NYC.
My old priest from Good Shepherd Anglican Church said the greatest satisfaction of being a priest was spending time with his people at their most important moments. He was there soon after the baby was born, he was there for the baptism, he was there for high school graduations, for marriages, for marriage problems, for illness and hospital visits, for tragedy and for celebrations. He lived a good life in what is a genuine way to have community--in a church.
What time he had to himself, he built model railroads. Like his ministry to the people, the dioramas were were beautiful. He sold all his trains to help he and his wife pay to live in a retirement community for their last few years. Fr. Don passed away this morning.
I guess he will be played by Bill Nighy in the movie.
Every broken-down old UK rocker is eventually played by Bill Nighy - or should be.
This is really cool. I am really impressed. Makes me wish I liked his music.
" the time frame is the early 1950s (though why a Liberty Ship would still have its gun tubs that late is a good question)."
Korea.
When were were playing on the road, we stayed at a motel -- I forget where -- and the owner invited us down to his basement. There, he had built a scale model railroad city of the town we were in. We absolutely loved it.
"Beck wasn't Stewart's one-time guitarist. Stewart was Beck's one-time vocalist!"
I officially announce that for once, and only once, I am in agreement with Robert Cook.
A wonderful thing, when Robert Cook, buwaya, Freder, Crack Emcee, et alii can comment on a post all in tones harmonious.
I recall living in the dorm-- so freshman or sophomore year-- and having to listen to snippets of 'Do You Think I'm Sexy' at volume dozens of times a day for what seemed like months: have detested 'his music' since. Happy to know that RS is much more a musician than that one awful song.
Big Mike, you got to see John Armstrong's layout? I have to admit I've not seen much about that particular layout, but I've read his "Track Planning for Realistic Operation" several times, and imagine the layout was pretty darned nice. Very jealous.
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