W. A. D. Strickland. Chronicles of a Garden Railway (1968) Strickland is an engineer, and it show. He doesn’t tell us enough about some things, and too much about others. The organisation of the book is somewhat haphazard, too. However, the personal tone, the odd flashes of family history, and so on, make up for these formal faults, and the result is a charming chronicle, just as the title promises. As with many English books, the illustrations are either badly or not at all keyed to the text, it’s as if the person responsible for the pictures hadn’t read the book. The technology of garden railways has much improved since Strickland built his 4mm scale, 16.5mm gauge layout, but I doubt that anyone today has had any more fun building and operating a garden railway. It’s quite clear that it was a family hobby. It helped that Strickland, like his wife, was an avid gardener. The information about suitable plants is worth the price of the book (15/- or 75p in 1971). ** (2005)
Monday, May 20, 2013
W. A. D. Strickland. Chronicles of a Garden Railway (1968)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Visual and other illusions
Visual illusions vary. Some can be controlled. For example, I find that once I’ve seen both images in a dual-image illusion, I can see ei...
-
John Cunningham. The Tin Star (Collier’s, December 4, 1947) The short story adapted for High Noon . As often happens, the movie retains v...
-
Noel Coward The Complete Short Stories (1985) Coward was a very clever writer. All of these stories are worth reading, but few stick ...
-
Patrick Hamilton. The Charmer (1953) Originally titled Mr Simpson and Mr Gorse , retitled and reprinted in 1989 to take advantage of t...
No comments:
Post a Comment