Eulogy for John
Armstrong, Model
Railroader Extraordinaire
August 5, 2004
Here is my small tribute
to John
Armstrong, on his passing from our world. I'm
neither
family nor even an acquaintance of John Armstrong,
nevertheless,
having visited his home and layout on a layout tour , I hope
this
humble eulogy gives a feeling for what I believe he contributed to the
model railroading hobby that so many of us enjoy today.
These photographs were
taken in on
that layout tour during the October 2002 NMRA Potomac Division regional
meet. I'm not the photographer (Clint Hyde of the local NMRA Potomac
Division took
the photos, and he/convention mailed a CD-ROM to us) .... Clint gave me
the OK to use these photographs.
Here is a shot of John
Armstrong
himself, astride Cattaraugus Yard on his O scale Canandaigua Southern
layout.
The CS was under
continual
construction since 1950. That's all the more remarkable given
he
starting building this first section of the layout, at a time when for
fine scale modeling, there wasn't much more than raw rail, motors, and
Lionel shells available. You can see his concept of the
'cosmetic
curve' (to enhance the visual appearance of the track) in the photo
above.
A closeup of John:
Further around to the
right, behind
where John was standing in the two above shots, is the 'Ott Dam Power
Co'. John never completely 'finished' the Canandaigua
Southern,
nor was he concerned with super-detailing his scenery. His
love
(he was a Naval engineer) was research and
development.
Look at the picture below from the standpoint of innovation: how he combined a
dam, a river, a
road, and two industries (power plant, coal), all in a space of roughly
3' x 4', in *O scale*! :
John was reputed to say,
"when I
figure out how to make or do something, the challenge is gone", as he
would wink and smile.
In the following shot,
you can see the
O scale outside-third-rail power system, next to the very nice 'Warm
River' station on the layout. I believe Warm River was
so named because it was
physically
located next to the hot water heater and furnace (layout is in the 24'
x 36' basement of his house). Thanks to the O Scale
Convention
website for the following photograph:
http://www.2004onational.com/John%20Armstrong%209b%20Low.jpg
And John could model very
well, I
think the prototype for the above photo is Point of Rocks, Maryland
station shown below, just on the Maryland - Virginia
border, right off US
Highway 15, and a
great place to railfan:
Throughout this treatise,
the
references I make to his O scale layout, the Canandaigua Southern, can
be read about in the easily available Kalmbach book, "Classic Layout
Designs of John Armstrong", wherein John himself, on pages 46-55,
describes the challenges, thought processes, and construction story
behind his layout:
=====
Part 2:
=====
Here is a shot looking at
the
Canandaigua Southern's Essex Junction and Irondale.
John's
layout was a walk-around peninsula type layout, with the train passing
through a scene only one time; behind the mountains is a
backdrop, which separates the scenery on this side of the layout's
penisula from the other side. While following your train, penisulas,
and backdrops are standard layout design practice today, remember that
John designed and built his layout in the early 1950's, this was a time
when even the best club model railroads were usually 'bowls of
spaghetti' with 'crawl-under popups' everywhere:
In the above shot, the
Canandaigua
Southern's famous 'reverted loop' is directly beneath this scenery, out
of sight.
John scratchbuilt big,
powerful,
smooth locomotives in the 1950's, and introduced the concept of the
'cosmetic curve' to enhance the layout's and locomotive's
appearance. Thanks to the O Scale Convention website for the
following photograph:
http://www.2004onational.com/John%20Armstrong%208b%20Low.jpg
(This is a closeup shot
of the the
Irondale plant in the previous photo)
Here is a photo of the
Canandaigua
Southern layout diagram from the "Classic Layout Designs of John
Armstrong" Kalmbach book mentioned earlier:
John had 'thinking man's
humor' in
liberal quantities all over the Canandaigua
Southern. Look
closely at the following diner in this (fuzzy) picture, does it look
familiar?
(photo credit:
the website of
"HiRailers Unlimited", a Yahoo Group of O scale
HiRailers (HiRail
definition:
three rail O-Gauge trains operating in a realistic environment))
In fact, the above diner
is John
Armstrong's modeled rendition of the famous 'Nighthawk' painting:
Here is the pull-back
view of that
diner, along with the 'Nuts To You' hardware store (this was
located just off the left end of Cattaraugus Yard).
John's work had the
characteristic
that the more you examined it, the more you studied his work,
the
more you realized and appreciated what he was really doing.
During the July 2004 O
Scale
Convention, due to the anticipated very large number of visitors to his
layout during the layout tour, the visitors had to get numbered tickets
to visit the Canandaigua Southern. His CS was one of the most famous O
scale model railroads ever built.
John Armstrong passed
from our world
on Wednesday, July 28, 2004.
As the sun sets on his
modest home in
Silver Springs, Maryland:
May we all be able to
remember his
presence.
May we all still be able
to marvel and
respect the remarkable innovation that he brought to our
hobby. Many of John's ideas, such as walking with
the train
and only allowing a train to pass through a scene in one direction,
were first tested in theory and practice on this layout.
John Armstrong
contributed a giant
legacy to our hobby for more than 60 years, with multiple books and
over 100 articles. It is with appreciation, and yet with
great
sadness at his passing, that I offer my little eulogy to John
Armstrong, one of the greats of our hobby.
Submitted in sincerity,
John Sing
San Mateo, CA
=========
Modeling the Santa Fe's
Peavine Line
(Ash Fork - Phoenix, Ariz) mid 50s and 60s in N scale