New Display in Memory of Jock Oliphant

One of Jock Oliphant's structures, on display
at the Winnipeg Railway Museum.

Not many people know the name Jock Oliphant—maybe a few model railroad oldtimers. But in Winnipeg, where I live, that name is well-known in the model railroad community.

Jock, who died in 2000, was Canada's first Master Model Railroader (MMR #15), and the only person to win best-in-show at three successive NMRA national conventions.

The former Winnipeg Model Railroad Club member  was renowned for his intricate and detailed structures. A number of his award-winning structures were incorporated into his layout.

At club meetings, he did an annual scenery clinic where he would demonstrate the steps to go from raw bench work to full scenery in 4 inch increments on a 4 foot long module.

According to WMRC member Dave Downie, Jock invited new club members to sit up front to get a really good view. This was a signal to older members to move back—Jock always sprayed those in the first row with water. 

His children decided to donate some of his structures to the Winnipeg Railway Museum, where they are now on display today in a temporary exhibit space.

I only met Jock once or twice, and never saw his layout. It’s great to see his structures on display at the Museum. 

Jock Oliphant

Tim Berners-Lee, Model Railroading and the Invention of the World Wide Web

It's impossible to imagine the world today without the World Wide Web, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last year.

And it’s all because of model railroading.

OK—maybe not all because of model railroading. But the hobby played a significant role in the life and technological development of Tim Berners-Lee, considered the creator and founder of the Web. 

In interviews, Berners-Lee shared that as a boy he had a model railway in his bedroom.

“It was a long thin layout with a 4-track station in the middle, and on each side pairs of tracks going off into tunnels to actually loop back to each other,” he said, adding that he was also an active train-spotter (what the British call a railfan).

To help with operations on the layout, he “made some electronic gadgets to control the trains.”

This included making a making a whistle for his locomotives.

“To control a model train it’s useful to make whistles,” he said. 

“We would make a ace table multiplier for each of the back-to-back-to-back couple flip-flop, which made two transistors which will make a whistle—a ‘wee’ noise—and you might want to have the whistle run for a certain period of time, which is another way of coupling two transistors back to back so that one is stable.”

As a result of making gadgets for his model railway, “I ended up getting more interested in electronics than trains.”

He went on to build his own computer out of an old TV, study physics at Oxford and then, while at CERN in 1989, laid out his vision for what would become the World Wide Web.

As Stephanie Lynn put it on her blog, “the boy who tinkered with circuits for his model trains became the man who invented the single most valuable creation of our time.”

And to think it was all because of a young boy’s interest in model railroading.

Sources:

World Wide Web Foundation. 

Answers for Young People. 

Oral History of Tim Berners-Lee. 

Great Canadian Layout: Another Look at the Waterloo Region Model Railway Club

One of the best layouts in Canada is the Waterloo Region Model Railway Club in Maryhill, Ont. (near Kitchener).

The club, which is modelling CP Rail near Sudbury in the 1970s, is building a massive multi-deck and multi-helix layout in a country quonset hut.

Club members are posting photos of the layout on Facebook (an increasingly common occurrence these days). Find a few of them here; for more, including construction photos and other information, visit the Club's Facebook page.

Click here to learn more about the Club on this blog. Click here to ready about the ten helixes that make the layout possible. Click here to visit their website.

Going All O. Winston Link on the Thompson Canyon Layout

I'm no O. Winston Link when it comes to night photography of trains. But I tried to be "Linkian" the other week by taking a "night" photo or two of the N scale Thompson River Canyon layout, using only a flashlight.

The result is on this page.

The colour version.

Canadian and U.S. Elections and Whistle Stop Tours

Wilfrid Laurier on his 1904 whistle stop tour.

During the election that just finished here in Canada, leaders of the federal parties engaged in what the media called “whistle stop” tours.

Of course, there were no trains involved—the traditional meaning of a whistle stop. In these cases, the leaders used busses.

In railroad parlance, a whistle stop is a small station where a train only stops on a signal. (Also known as a flag stop, since a passenger at the station might wave a flag to stop the train.)

A typical whistle, or flag, stop.

According to one source, the “whistle” in whistle stop comes from how the engineer would whistle twice to acknowledge a signal from the conductor that he would stop to pick up a passenger.

It didn’t take long for politicians to realize the potential of using trains to help with election bids, including U.S. presidents (beginning with Theodore Roosevelt).

One of the most famous U.S. whistle stop tours was conducted in 1948 by Harry Truman, who used a special train to travel through over 20 states as part of his re-election bid.

Truman's 1948 whistle stop tour.

During the tour, he made up to eight stops and speeches a day in communities along the way from the rear platform of a passenger car.

In 2009, President Obama took the train to his inauguration from Philadelphia to Washington.

Here in Canada, politicians began using trains in the late 19^th century for election purposes. According to Michael Nolan of the University of Western Ontario, trains were a key part of election campaigns for politicians between 1867-1925 (together with newspapers, public meetings, picnics and, later, radio).

One Prime Minister who used trains to good effect was Wilfred Laurier. 

In 1894, as leader of the opposition, he used the train to visit various communities in Ontario. For the 1900 election, he used trains to travel through Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.

Another photo of Laurie's whistle stop tour.

As Nolan put it, when the train arrived at its destination, Laurier would hold an informal reception on the station platform with local dignitaries and others. He’d make a few remarks, shake some hands, and then proceed to the next stop.

The last Prime Minister to use a train for campaigning was Pierre Elliot Trudeau, visiting the eastern Canada in 1974.

Pierre Trudeau on his tour.

In 2008, Green Party leader Elizabeth May travelled by regular VIA trains across Canada to meet voters.

She did it partly to reinforce the party’s position on sustainable energy and climate change, but also because it was cheaper. She did it again in 2011, but this time from Toronto to Montreal.

Today, the traditional whistle stop tour is mostly a quaint thing of the past, what with politicians using planes and busses to get around. But the term lives on.

But now the son of Pierre Trudeau is the new Prime Minister. Since he displays his father's easy way of connecting with people, and a desire to do so, maybe one day he will resurrect his father's whistle stop ways.

For another look at railroad terms with political meaning, click here to read about the gravy train.