‘Nostalgia is for losers’
This blog title is a quote oft related by my Dad through my late teens and early twenties. I think in part an effort to allay my frequent melancholy for what railways we had lost…
These days I find that my life experiences inform and direct my creativity and that nostalgia is a curious mix of melancholy and creative fuel. Sometimes complex, and yet sometimes beautifully straightforward.
I don’t need any more grain cars for Beaverbrook.
Yet a new one arrived this week from Prairie Shadows.
I will let the three photos do the talking, suffice to say every time I glance at the new white car on the layout I’m reminded of memories of the Saskatchewan prairies, the warmth of a low sun and the sound of crickets on evening walks around small towns in 1989. Of course those memories have fuelled previous work, such as when I helped Dad build Harris in H0 in the mid to late 1990s, a white Pool elevator forming the centrepiece of the layout.
Nostalgia isn’t for losers.
Melancholy when recognised is fuel for the soul.
Keep creating.
Until next time, more soon…
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Nostalgia was originally diagnosed as a kind of sickness. The Welsh say hiraeth. It is only one way of (mis)remebering the past. When people say they want to go back to simpler times they almost always mean their childhood, or the period just before they were born that they missed out on. It isn't the real experience of adults at that time. My memories both of the end of steam , when I was six or seven in lancashire, and of BR at both its best and worst in the blue era are fairly realistic. Not nostalgic, but affectionate. I hated smoke filled compartments, major stations where you couldn't get any refreshments from early evening, and lots of dirt. I loved a Summer evening journey with the window slid down, the Adlestrop moments, and the catering in restaurant cars.
ReplyDeleteWanting to recreate tha past in model form, doing it well, isn't nostalgia. It is about recreating a moment in time, both the good and the bad. It annoys me when I see models "set" in the late sixties or early seventies that don't reflect reality. Buildings that aren't black from pollution and so on. Probably why I like Grime St so much.
I suppose I have built one cameo that does capture childhood memories, my pastiche of Cadeby when we used to visit often, including Dad's Viva in the driveway.
Others have expertly caputured my memories of New St.
If I were to build one more it would be a small terminus in Lancashire or the Lake District, probably with a track lifted and a platform out of use, an overall roof darkened by smoke but with many panels missing. Perhaps a very dirty Black 5on a short train, a DMU already looking seedy, and a 37 or a 31, possibly a Rat. Evocative for me, yes, but I'm not nostalgic for those days, even if I can taste the slice of fruit cake or the Mr Kipling individual apple pie in the refreshment room.
I love the conversations we have here… the story you wish to tell is why this hobby is not craft but art. Sharing that story through the medium of model railways is a combination of static and movement, of remembered and accurate and he process, the journey can be as important to us as the destination. I love these reflections James. Thank you.
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