Spookshow is an N scaler’s autobiography of his hobby experience.
I agree with him that he isn’t a master modeler, but if he’s mediocre, he’s upper-tier mediocre. The biggest difference I see between his layouts and the layouts in magazines is the photography–their photographers take clearer, “poppier” shots, and they don’t take photos of the layout’s weak points. (What you don’t show is as important as what you show.)He talks about everything that went into building his layouts, including his thought process, and his philosophy on the hobby. It’s interesting to watch another hobbyist think, and it’s kind of refreshing to see it from the point of view of someone who isn’t full of himself. A lot of hobby sites tend to pat the author on the back a lot (mine may have too much of that attitude too, for that matter), so I find this guy refreshing.
This site is worth spending some time reading, certainly. I don’t do N scale and I don’t go after the realistic look (I may try it someday, but not now) but his insights are very useful.
I don’t know if this attitude is a general thing, or if it’s just one particularly vocal modeler and it seems like a lot because he just talks too stinking much, but I get really irritated with a tunnel-vision approach to the hobby. I can still learn a lot from people who take a different approach from me. I think I can learn more from them than I can from the people who think just like me. After all, we’re probably all stuck in the same rut. I even look at what the tabletop wargamers are doing. They build scenery too…
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.