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Playing with Trains: A Passion Beyond Scale | 
 enlarge | Author: Sam Posey
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $0.89
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 337912
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0812971264
Dewey Decimal Number: 790
EAN: 9780812971262
ASIN: 0812971264
Publication Date: November 8, 2005
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Product Description
Why do grown men play with trains? Is it a primal attachment to childhood, nostalgia for the lost age of rail travel, or the stuff of flat-out obsession? In this delightful and unprecedented book, Grand Prix legend Sam Posey tracks those who share his “passion beyond scale” and discovers a wonderfully strange and vital culture.
Posey’s first layout, wired by his mother in the years just after the Second World War, was, as he writes in his Introduction, “a miniature universe which I could operate on my own. Speed and control: I was fascinated by both, as well as by the way they were inextricably bound together.” Eventually, when Posey’s son was born, he was convinced that building him a basement layout would be the highest expression of fatherhood. Sixteen years and thousands of hours later, this project, “the outgrowth of chance meetings, unexpected friendships, mistakes, illness, latent ambitions, and sheer luck” was completed. But for Posey, the creation of his HO-scale masterpiece based on the historic Colorado Midland, was just the beginning.
In Playing with Trains, Sam Posey ventures well beyond the borders of his layout in northwestern Connecticut, to find out what makes the top modelers tick. He expects to find men “engaged in a genial hobby, happy to spend a few hours a week escaping the pressures of contemporary life.” Instead he uncovers a world of extremes–extreme commitment, extreme passion, and extreme differences of approach. For instance, Malcolm Furlow, holed up on his ranch in the wilderness of New Mexico, insists that model railroading is defined by scenery and artistic self-expression. On the other hand, Tony Koester, a New Jersey modeler, believes his “mission” is to replicate, with fanatical precision and authenticity, the way a real railroad operates. Going to extremes himself, Posey actually “test drives” a real steam engine in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to understand the great machines that inspired the models and connect us to a time when “the railroad was inventing America.” Timeless and original, Playing with Trains reveals a classic, questing American world.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Whay a Read May 31, 2008
Whether you're into model railroading or not, this wonderfully written
peek into that world is worth twice what you'll pay for it.
Call it a no-brainer, buy it and enjoy.
An absolute delight! August 22, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I happened across a copy of Playing With Trains at a local bookstore, and from the first page I was hooked- the author's enthusiasm just jumped right off the page. I was immediately transported to my youth, and my long gone Lionel Southern Pacific set, screaming accross the ping-pong table top layout. Then I camed across the author's reference to racing cars for a living, and glanced at the cover- of course! Sam Posey was not only one of the friendliest and most likable men ever to set foot in a race car, he was, and is, a great story teller. Back in the 70s he'd written a book about his life in racing (The Mudge Pond Express) that may be the best book ever written about what it's like to be a race car driver. Posey's prose style is right up there with Tracy Kidder or any of the best contemporary non-fiction writers.
The tale begins with Posey's own childhood trains, and then jumps to the birth of his first son, and the construction of what begins as a simple oval but becomes a fifteen-year obsession. Along the way we're introduced to other model railroaders, and we learn a bit about the makers, the sellers, the hostory of railroad and model railroading, and of course Thomas the Tank Engine, who personifies railroading for so many children of the eighties and beyond. There's even a trip on a full-sized train, as well as Posey's experience driving a full-sized steam locomotive for the annual April Fool's road test in Road and Track magazine. At one point in his fifteen year oddyssee Posey is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease- something that chnages his perspective a little, but doesn't slow him down in his pursuit.
Serious model railroaders will find fault with this book- there are no layout diagrams, no closeups of engines, and none of the detais and minutia that make up the model railroader's hobby. That's okay, though, as this book wasn't written for them. It's really for anyone who has owned a model train- or perhaps wished they'd owned one- or anyone who has looked longingly at the elaborate layouts in hobbyshops and department stores of the past, and thought how nice it would be to play with trains again.
A Good Read.... February 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My uncle built Mr. Posey's house and is mentioned in this book. I had to laugh, especially when he related how a support post in his basement had to be removed and it took three experienced carpenters to put in a new post and remove the old one. I know the blue foam boards very well having installed them while working as a youth during winter and summer breaks while in college but had no idea they were the perfect material for building mountains on a train set. Sam gives great background on the history of the Hobby and John Allen's Gorre and Dephatid layout, which is considered the seminal HO layout of the Post-War era. He's also correct in his observation that men tend to regress to where they were as boys and as a father with a son in elementary school, my interest in slot cars and trains has suddenly become rejuvenated. Now, it's off to the train shop....
Indeed, a passion beyond scale... August 11, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book. Sam Posey, known to most people only as a highly successful race car driver and/or Emmy-winning broadcaster, uses a description of the construction of his basement HO-scale train layout-- 6,000 hours of work over 16 years-- to anchor a broader examination of model railroading. He describes some issues in the design and construction of layouts, and he interviews some of the stars of the hobby.
That would be a good enough book, but Posey goes beyond that to examine the phenomenon of men and boys playing with trains, and, further, the nature of obsession. The message is that while the people who build elaborate model railroad layouts may indeed be obsessive, obsessions that are passions for excellence are not necessarily problematical.
At one point, Posey considers a simple question about his own layout: When is enough enough? The answer for him is "never," and that's probably the answer anyone passionate about anything would give.
Posey is an intelligent, articulate observer of the most challenging subject of all: himself. The result of his study is this outstanding book. I bought it because I'm a fan of Posey's racing and broadcasting, and I'm mildly interested in trains. I was rewarded far, far beyond my expectations.
 A little history, a little autobiography, a narrow view March 17, 2006
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is interesting in ways, but perhaps a bit narrow. There are some lovely reminiscences from the golden age of Lionel, some lovely insights into Posey's childhood exposure to model trains, and a dash of the history of grandiose, fill-the-basement, HO-scale, railroad modelling. However, as a view of model railroading at the end of the 20th century it is very much limited to the "grand obsession" view, the view you get from basements in the mid-west of America. Posey concludes that you can divide model railroaders into those obsessed with meticulous scenery and those who seek to simulate real railroad operation, modelling the control of traffic in a system. Yet there is much appeal in the hobby that the book never mentions, or mentions only indirectly. Microlayouts are never mentioned. Z-scale and G-scale barely rate a sentence each. What is railroading like in Japan, or Great Britain, or Germany? You will not be told here. You will not meet people who prefer to watch train layouts here. Towards the end, the book gets a bit boring, when he has run out of interesting things to say and is documenting trips to see layouts. Wives of grand obsessives may have had entertaining stories or comments of interest (like why they put up with it or what they do while hubby is playing), but spouses barely get a look-in. The book is worth a read as a yardstick of obsession, to reassure yourself that things could be a lot worse, and it is certainly on a subject that appears scarcely in books.
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