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…