Destructive Behavior (continued)

11. If a hobby newcomer stops at your place of business, put him down sarcastically when he displays his lack of information or knowledge about the hobby or the prototype.

12. Double all those hints if the customer is a teenager; who needs them, anyway? All they're really interested in is that gaming stuff.

13. If your customer doesn't know what a Brill 67E truck is, sneer ! It took you a long time to learn that stuff, and he should wait until he's familiar with the hobby before jumping into it.

14. Pick a fight with another manufacturer. Better yet, put it in print, so that the entire Internet can read about it.

15. Make your website very large and difficult to navigate. You paid for 50 gigabytes of storage and you're going to get your money's worth !

Destructive Behavior (continued)

6. Don't bother answering eMails; less work for you and, besides, if they can't figure it out from the info on the Website, you don't want them as a customer
7. Start up a really beautiful line of models and after everyone is really hooked, discontinue them
8. Continually contradict everyone else; this will quickly establish you as an expert
9. Disrupt every forum of which you're a member with irrelevant fluff, like your mom's recipe for Christmas cookies. [Don't scoff : I've seen it done]
10. As soon as someone comes out with a model of an unusual prototype, in which --- maybe --- 20 people in the world might be interested, produce the identical model yourself. It's called "competition".

How to Destroy your Model Trolley Manufacturing Business

1. Criticize and find fault with every model offered by other manufacturers
2. When displaying your wares at a model exhibition, frown at visitors to your booth; glare at everyone who stops by
3. Make sure your website is full of broken links --- if you don't understand that term, maybe that's part of the problem
4. Proudly count your rivets. We'll bet that at least 3 out of every 100 customers care
5. At a model exhibition, leave your display frequently for a cup of coffee, to chat with a friend, or just to look around the Exhibition Hall; after all, your display is practically self-explanatory

TO BE CONTINUED

WHY A TROLLEY AND TRANSIT LAYOUT ?

Why don’t we build more trolleys and other electric transit models in very large scales, such as 2” = 1’ (1:6), and one inch = one foot (1:12) ?

Jimmy Sparkman, an active, build-from-scratch modeler of Philadelphia transit lines ---elevated rail --- has provided us with an excellent standard in his Fallon Street El, running at just below chest level on metal framework resembling girder bridges, and therefore providing an impressive front-car-window view to visitors. It has proven a hit at every East Penn Traction Club and other transit & trolley exhibition at which it has ever been displayed. Sparkman has chosen for his models a scale of ¾ inch to the foot (1:16), in this regard following the common practice of many tram modelers in the UK, where this is a popular choice.

Why ? We could give many reasons … so we will :

1. Small radius curves make gigantic scale much more feasible.
2. As the operator is not sitting on the car, but is operating it by remote control, trolleys --- with their fragile rooftop details --- are a new and welcome addition to possible rolling stock
3. As trolleys operate primarily in urban areas, the use of forced perspective and smaller scale backdrops --- say, in O Scale --- makes sense and is quick and easy to install
4. It would be unique, distinguishable from the live steam hobby
5. Trolleys cater to the trend in nostalgia
6. We maintain the realistic scale effect for which we strive: the motive power of the model reflects the motive power of the prototype.
7. Single unit trains are easy to run and require relatively little power.
8. Especially with passenger railcars, like urban transit, it is possible to stock the car with realistic --- even removable and therefore changeable --- figures reflecting the historic period we're trying to represent.
9. It epitomizes my feelings about sitting on top of mega-gauge models, as live-steamers do. It throws the whole scene completely out of scale, like a grown man on a child's tricycle.
It’s just one guy’s opinion, but we think that it might revitalize the hobby. Instead of just running a car around and around a repetitive course --- as attractive as the models are --- we begin to reproduce a segment of real life. We believe that the additional realities that we can then model in miniature will bring in hobbyists from many other skills and interests.
Until you’ve seen the Thorne Rooms, in the Art Institute of Chicago --- an entire world modeled in breathtaking miniature --- you might not fully appreciate what we mean.

Dreams of a New Dimension in Trolley Gauges

This came to me in a creative moment. What if ... ?

Arithmetic*** Progression Models LLC announces two new series of models in its product line of international electric railway traction equipment

1. The Heritage Series : Trolleys, streetcars and trams, 1900-1950
2. The Light Rail Series : Beyond the PCC

in the following three scales :

RJ Scale --- One-inch to the foot : 1/12th full size, 4 3/4 inch gauge, named for Rod Johnston, the prototype for the "For Better or For Worse" newspaper comic strip, who developed an inspiring commercial line of railway models in that scale

PS Scale --- Two inches to the foot : 1/6th full size, 9 1/2 inch gauge, after Mattel's PlayScale models and Barbie action figures

BC Scale --- Three inches to the foot : 1/4th full size, 14 1/4 " gauge, named for British Columbia, where the late Gordon Hatch built magnificent models in that scale, which are now exhibited in a museum in that Canadian province

*** with the accent on "...met..."