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the best part of the father
the place of strength and solace
will not suffer, will not abate
the children seek him still

while we yet live he will not be forgotten

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My father and I did do some things together, and one of them was model railroading. Historically, MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club in Building 20 was a crucible of the computing revolution, since it was one of the few places where MIT students could build and design electronic projects without having to turn in a lab report for it, but I was just a kid at that time: I liked the clickety-clackety sound from the heavy-metal American Flyer locomotives chuffing round the tinplate track; I liked the ozone smell from thrown switches; and my father and I liked to turn out the lights and see glowing red and green lights of the signals, the white lights of the engine headlamps, the warm yellow glow of the caboose--and the occasional sharp blue spark. Running "the trains" through their circular courses gave me (at least) a timeless, comforting feeling.

So, almost forty years on, I've come home to the model railroading magazines I read through my teens, and it's interesting to see what's changed: Read more…