An Introduction
We had electric trains as children. I can still remember the thrill of receiving my father’s “O Gauge” trains at the age of three or four. They were huge - almost large enough for a small boy to ride upon, and I used to lie in my bedroom mesmerized, as they buzzed and rattled along the baseboard and passed beneath my little bed.
The attraction remains today though the past seven decades have provided additional related interests. Landscape painting during high school, engineering in the Army, a short career as an architect/architectural model builder, and years of looking down on the world as a pilot (with one airplane I even built myself) have combined to educate both my hands and eyes. This has helped immeasurably with the project within this website, just as it has increased the visual stakes and goals at the same time. No longer satisfied to imagine like a three-year-old, I’ve been forced to create my miniature world in more satisfying physical detail - with color and texture, light and movement that convinces my eye every time I revisit the basement.
While at architectural school I used to make extra money building presentation models. And shortly after selling a publishing business I later developed it occurred to me that a respectable retirement might include some architectural modeling from my basement workshop. But after some inquiry I discovered that with the arrival of CAD/CAM, architects no longer draw, and they no longer build models. They squirt their electronic design files to a 3D printer instead - so no more market! When an old friend reminded me of model trains, he invigorated the notion that this might be an acceptable if solitary way for an old man to spend his time. All I had to do was forego the commercial motive. I started with the largest workable layout for the smallest model trains available.
But the trains were really just a pretext to engage.
It soon became clear that this unique opportunity to model landscape required the context and advantages of a diorama. And the diorama was best expressed not with background photography but with landscape painting. Lighting, “Dutch” perspective, and other tricks of the trade were visible to me when I revisited the world renowned dioramas at The Metropolitan Museum of Natural History in New York.
But more on the “how” of this project later.
The “why” is simple: a project this complex and engrossing keeps a 73 year old brain adequately curious, optimistic, and preoccupied on a 24 hour basis. The “what,” and “where” is a 25 ft cross sectional slice of northeastern America from urban industry (New York/Boston) to rural civilization (upper New Hampshire/Vermont), in a combined two and three dimensional presentation that is both impressionistic and realistic at once.
The “when” is best answered as “sometime between 1955 and the present,” which is dictated by the kits and modeling components available in “N” scale (1:160.) My brother, who helped me build my experimental airplane, and has also earned his stripes as a web developer, was quick enough to point out the value of sharing this endeavor, and is responsible for wresting it from the cool confines of my basement and placing it upon your computer screen for entertainment and participation as you see fit. And for those of you with similar aesthetic profiles, obsessive/compulsive modeling habits to my own, if you wish to engage your own modeling projects, I’ll be happy to offer tips and methods where I can.
Welcome to what my wife Gretchen has labeled “Ferdieland!” I hope it will never be finished.