MR's September cover

"PEACHCREEK" wrote

OK. Everyone has their own style but Malcolm has gone over the top! I can't make up my mind if this is supposed to be a joke or just bad art!

All I can think of when I look at the cover is motel art or maybe Salvadore Dali. ~~~~~

Maybe it's just plain FUN! Perhaps he's been influenced by the works of Nick Bantock (artist/writer - his books are illustrated with wild collages.)

Val

Not much to my tastes, but very Malcolm Furlow. He has always had a theatrical sensibility, and often carries it to extremes. The execution is usually very good, even if the intentions are questionable. I can appreciate it as a different way of enjoying the hobby and as entertainment, but not as any kind of model of the real world.

Mark Alan Miller

Its not my cup of tea, but i guess each to their own. I just thought that maybe the cover could have been a little more mainstream. almost puts me off reading it with that sort of pic on the cover.

OTOH I must give Malcolm credit for his work though cos it is quite outrageous...

"Snowy" <

Malcolm's RM coverage has always struck me as being of the "Blue Eyed Boy" type.

-- Cheers Roger T.

In the article inside the issue, that little yellow switcher is a major mess - I've seen better looking engines on the Naparano Scrap-line. He says his layout is set in the 1930s, so that switcher (which looks like a early-mid 30s style) can't be more than 8 years old - and we thought George Sellios overweathers things. (Of course, knowing Malcolm, he'll just concoct a story about the switcher being swept down the Rio Grande during a flash flood, and the RR company having to drag it back with Oxen or something).

I wouldn't say that Sellios overweathers things so much as weathers things in too uniform or consistent a fashion. Looking at images of his layout, everything on it, regardless of it's supposed antiquity, displays the same amount of dirt and decay. Even if we accept the premise that he is modelling the "depression", I don't believe that every single structure in town would look shitty and distressed all at once.

Cheers,

Mark.

In fact, the dirt and decay of the 1930's Depression, so often depicted on period model railroad layouts, is far more fiction than truth. During the Depression it was often the case that a still functioning business saw a higher degree of maintainence that it did during the WWII period. Labor was plentiful and very cheap, so having your building painted, the grass cut, or getting the roof patched, required very little cash outlay. It was even common to assign employees these jobs part time rather than lay them off completely.

While I'm sure there were some smaller mid-western towns, or hamlets in Appalachia, that went to total ruin in the 1930's, major cities certainly did not. The filthy, crumbling slums and flop houses often depicted in Depression-era photos were already in that condition back in the teens or even earlier. Those Sellios-type cities only ever existed in Hollywood's film noir of the 1940's. Then again...Furlow's world never existed anywhere!

CNJ999