Fun With The Hobby -- II

The one hobby figure I've always admired above all others is John Allen. Among other things, he broke a lot of the ordinary "rules" that people think govern the hobby with his Gorre and Daphetid layout. Linn Westcott said in his biography of John Allen that there were actually "two G&Ds", the one he operated with a group of regular friends and the one that was depicted in places like the ads he did for Varney and PFM.

Normally, for instance, he didn't run diesels, and the PFM O-8 on the upper track wasn't on the G&D roster. Still, when I first saw this ad in an MR sometime in the late 1950s, it inspired me, and I have an area on my layout now that looks something like this part of the G&D.

Allen was paid something by PFM for this shot, but it was probably a barter deal. PFM probably just gave him brass locos for this ad and other shots for their catalogs. By the early 1950s, according to Westcott, Allen's brother had invested their inheritance well enough that he could quit his photography business and spend full time on modeling. (Allen was 40 at the time.)

This means that, although he was probably very happy to get the PFM locos and rework them for his layout (he was a notorious tightwad), he really wasn't doing the ad shoots for the money. This ad appeared on the back cover of the November 1952 MR.

It's another diesel-powered streamliner of the sort that you wouldn't ordinarily see in a G&D operating session. There's also a Varney NW-2 with a bay window caboose closer to the camera. But even outside the ads, Allen photographed things that broke the rules of conventional expectations:

If he didn't really need the money, he wasn't departing from his concept of the G&D for the ads -- and there were plenty of photos not done for ads that went outside the concept of a "canonical" G&D. He was happily publishing a view of his model railroad that stressed visual interest and a general sense of fun. In this respect, I don't think there were actually two G&Ds. The one in the Varney and PFM ads certainly sticks in our memories, and it's the one I've found most inspiring.