Sense of Humor
Armstrong was also noted for his quirky sense of humor that was demonstrated at many locations throughout the layout including an area known as 'Gasmeterszag', named for the detour the tracks made around a gas meter, and another named 'Warm River' after a nearby hot water heater.
At one location where the track passed behind a fiber-board partition on route to another part of the layout was a carefully hand-lettered sign that read 'Cut Here In Case Of Excruciating Trouble'. Alongside a spectacularly modeled gorge was a sign recording dates of significant events in the construction of the bridge over it, including 'Last Train Accidentally Backed Into Gorge'.
Among several brochures he designed for the Canandaigua Southern is a 'Timetable No. 9 Effective at 2:01 A.M.' with no date, 'For the Government and Harassment of Employees Only'.
Other humorous touches included a flatcar that had resting on it a piece of machinery labeled as a 'Dolorator', which was ultimately bound for the 'Depleted Lugubrium Reprocessing Plant No. 71' of the 'Lugubrium Corporation of America—Processors of the World's Saddest Material'.
Read more about this topic: John Armstrong (model Railroader)
Famous quotes containing the words sense of, sense and/or humor:
“A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities as well as those of other people will keep a man from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)