I have been recycling my model railroad magazines while cutting out the few articles and photos of interest. This is part of my reversal of my lifelong accumulation of MRR stuff. I have finished with MR and RMC and have now started on a long out of print publication called HO Monthly which started up in 1948 and was absorbed into MR about 1961. The first issue was May 1948 with 20 pages. It had an interesting HO history by Eric LaNal (the pen name of Alan Lake Rice). HO came about with a scale of 3.5 mm to the foot because that was half of British O scale, and thus they called it HO - half O scale. There were many arguments about scale and gauge in those days, so by the end of the 1920's there were two competing scales - OO and HO. A pioneer in the US, Hugh Boutell, built an HO model railroad called the Marysport and Diddystown. Other HO pioneers by the late 20's included Eric, E.P. Alexander, and George Stock. Alexander later changed to O scale narrow gauge. War was waged in the 1930's between the OO's and the HO's. Couplers were also problematical. Apparently the now vintage Mantua coupler was based on a design by Eric. There were a lot of other early details in the article, but we are so well off with what we have in HO and can thank pioneers like them for getting it started.
One early model railroad featured in HO Monthly that I always admired was the New Castle and Frenchtown built by Bart Crosby. It was about 7 foot square and represented a quaint small town with lots of structures and details. The famous John Allen soon appeared on their pages with photos of his original railroad.
There were no kits of any kind in HO when these guys started, and in fact many of them became early manufacturers.
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