Rubbish

You know what they say... one man's trash is another's treasure. And evidently I've built some trash, including and in particular my little Z scale model of an N scale layout, which still turns up on the odd blog now and then. And I still marvel at the comments left in reply to the posts.

Amongst the noise, I'll occasionally find remarks made by what would appear to be intelligent, articulate individuals who surprisingly fail to transcend the pure gibberish left by their illiterate counterparts. Granted, we're all allowed our personal opinions, but sometimes it's alarming to see such narrow-minded, incompetent nonsense uttered by people who, frankly, should know better.

Some of it I must chalk up to lame attempts at humor. For example, when clever remarks about the model escape them, they may resort to cracks about the condition of my skin. One person actually claimed that my fingers creeped them out. Really? I can only assume they've never before seen a macro photograph of an average person's fingertips. Blow up anyone's dermis 4000%—even that of a hand model—and I can almost guarantee it will creep out everyone.



Many people evidently lacking a hobby, some interesting skill, or even a little personality, automatically assume I have a surfeit of spare time to which I devote my utterly worthless endeavors. Surprise! Believe it or not, my model of a model was completed in only a few hours (one might think I've spent months or years slaving over my rubbish, the way some folks carry on). Anyway, I genuinely do not have much in the way of spare time for my hobbies, so there's nothing I can show off that represents my "life's work."

Another all-too-common remark is "Why?" Frankly, the people who ask this are just lazy schmucks. I can guarantee they never read any of the text associated with the video, much less followed any of the links I provided. Isn't it remarkable how the ones who do the least investigation have the most negative things to say? Isn't it remarkable how the only thing they succeed in doing is highlighting their own ignorance?

The "why" is not "because he could," which is a typical quip offered by equally-unenlightened—and entirely unfunny—wise-crackers. At the risk of repeating myself yet again, I built the little model as a detail item for a Z scale model railroad, to appear in the window of a model hobby shop. I most certainly did not build it to try and become a YouTube sensation or a Guinness record-holder. Perish both of those thoughts!

Then, of course, there are the so-called know-it-alls who insist that it's not a model railroad because it has no track, or it's not self-powered, or whatever other criteria it fails to meet. First: it was never intended to represent a real train; it's a model of a model. Second: it was never intended to be realistic in any way—it was designed to create the illusion of being a model train. Nothing more. Again, this question is answered if one simply takes the time and effort to read what I write about what I do. And finally: what I've done is meant to be light-hearted in nature, not to be taken with such deadly seriousness that it deserves endless scrutiny, although I imagine this is waaaay too subtle for most folks to recognize.

At the end of the day, I must conclude that the only thing separating supposedly learned individuals from those who ducked out of the education system a little too early is nothing more than vocabulary; otherwise, they're equally likely to be woefully ignorant. At the same time, I've also found that those who "get it" and appreciate the work likewise cross the intelligence/vocabulary boundaries. Therefore, there's no guarantee that education automatically gives rise to enlightenment—as if any of this comes as a surprise, really.

Why I waste my time making little bits of rubbish may escape some people (as if it's anyone's business aside from mine), but please don't try to tell me it's worse than hanging around the Internet wasting time and bandwidth making pointless commentary. I have one word to describe these people: losers.

Where Do I Find the Time?

Regular readers know that my hobby time is limited. A monster commute combined with the overhead of managing a household with 2-4 adults (depending on the day of week/time of year) and 4 (or now possibly 5) cats leaves precious little time for modeling. Yet, in addition to what modeling I do accomplish, I also manage to maintain five websites and three blogs. This may naturally lead one to wonder where I find the time—a question that's been put to me more than once.

It's easy, actually. Nearly all of my spare time is still devoted to modeling; the sites and blogs, despite their proliferation, consume a small fraction of my hobby time: I build websites for a living, so the effort I invest in them is comparatively trivial. Plus, writing about and photographing my modeling is helpful; it forces me to make sense of what I do, because I must present it to others in a way that makes sense to them.

Writing about the hobby can also be done away from my workshop. I can knock off a blog entry or two during lunch at work, or squeeze in a little editing on a web page just before heading out in the morning. One particularly productive period a while back was courtesy of a three-month stint of grand jury duty; I had a laptop at hand and took every opportunity—and there were many—to work on my sites and blogs remotely.

Even my work commute can be productive. Two and a half hours per day on the road leaves me with a great deal of time to do "virtual modeling." Indeed, in addition to regularly roughing out blog entries, I conceived the Pine Creek Railroad on the way home from work. Granted, I could accomplish a great deal more if I spent that two and a half hours in my workshop, but the value of pure contemplation should not be underestimated.

I'll confess that I could probably accomplish more if I really put my mind to it and tightened the screws on my time management. But I've found this can be overdone: being thoroughly saturated with modeling activity can lead to burnout. So I'll take time off once in a while to pursue other interests—or not; occasionally I'll just veg.

Still, like most modelers, I wish I had more time. I'd like to be able to invest more energy in T Gauge, because my interest in it is sadly waning. I'd also love to be able to return to N scale, as I tend to be happiest modeling at 1:160. While I could presumably do more multi-scale work, I've learned that (for me at least) having too many irons in the fire dilutes my efforts to the point that I never get to see any worthwhile progress. Which is to say that most of my modeling energy will remain invested in Z scale for the time being. Otherwise, I'd have considerably less material for my sites and blogs!

Digging in the Sand Pit

Since I'm planning to model the Pine Creek Railroad, I thought it might be helpful to have an understanding of how the railroad came to be. As I began poking around the New Jersey Museum of Transportation's website, I found their version of the history of the railroad to be a little, well, thin. My quest to flesh it out has taken me to some unexpected and interesting places.

First, however, I must confess my admiration for Google. Despite having a bone to pick with them over email security, I'll still be the first to assert they provide a tremendously powerful and indispensable tool for researchers. In this case, I was able to unearth quite a lot of valuable information on the Pine Creek Railroad, and many of the holes in their story have been plugged.

What's even more interesting is that a fair amount of this enlightenment came by way of some seemingly unrelated sources (example: the New Jersey Blacksmith Association). What I did was begin by searching for anything I could find about the locomotives they owned. This led to names of people, businesses and locations, each of which I then searched, and found yet more information. By following all of these loose threads as far as I was able, I unearthed many miniscule yet still useful elements to incorporate into the larger picture.



Of course, along the way I've also uncovered plenty of misinformation as well. Faulty memories, mixed identities, and plain old tall tales have all contributed to the colorful—if flawed—picture of the railroad's early days. For example, Pine Creek's first locomotive, which was rescued from the sand pits of the Raritan River Sand Company, was supposedly sold to a scrap metal dealer, who subsequently placed an advertisement for her in a railfan magazine; supposedly this ad was spotted by a Disney employee, who purchased the Baldwin from the scrap dealer. However, a Disney historian recently contacted the magazine publisher, who could find no record of the ad. Meanwhile, someone had posted a comment on a message board indicating that he vaguely recalled Disney had bought No. 1 from Pine Creek's founders directly, and it would seem this recollection—unlike many others—may be correct.

Thus my job as researcher has really been one of archeologist combined with arbiter: I'll dig and dig and dig to unearth every possible scrap of information from an absurdly wide variety of sources, including websites, old scanned books, old postcards, old threads on discussion boards, or anything else within Google's broad reach. Sometimes this would lead to email exchanges with various people, including other researchers, businessmen, engineers, or railfans, for additional details or clarification. (It's also involved buying old prints, old postcards, and even a DVD.) Then I'll evaluate each bit of information to determine the ones most likely to be accurate. Ultimately some of these tiny fragments can be pieced together into larger shards which, when assembled logically, begin to contribute to a more cohesive whole.

This process has been, in a word, fun. Correction: a lot of fun. It's also a process that fits my current life situation, which does not provide very many blocks of time large enough to accomplish much in the way of serious modeling. I can do online research from just about anyplace, during any free scraps of time. Although I would not say I'm done by any means, I have at least managed to create a fairly complete picture of Pine Creek's early years, from its founding in 1951 through its move to Allaire State Park in the 1960s—more complete than the history published on Pine Creek's own website. (This is not meant to be critical; the museum is an all-volunteer effort, which imposes certain limitations on what can be accomplished realistically.)

My next challenge will be completing Pine Creek's history from the mid-60s through to the present, which at this point will mean virtually starting from scratch, as it's not to be found anywhere. I admit, though, that this may not be as exciting as the first part has been, since things calmed down considerably for Pine Creek once they'd moved; their early years were filled with twists and turns, misfortunes and happy accidents, plus an ever-changing cast of characters—much as it's been for many a railroad large and small.

The image in this post is one of several rare and wonderful photos kindly provided by Steve DeGaetano, a Disney historian.