Just curious.

Next you'll be modeling little businessmen in gray flannel suits, standing on a 157 platform, with tiny tendrils of smoke coming out of their nostrils.

Prior to 2000, smoking was accpted and encouraged. While I'm not a smoker, I do have ads and cigarette machines as I model 1940-1950's.

I contacted Miller Eng. re: a smoking cigarette billboard. He has personal reasons for not promoting smoking as someone he knew died of lung cancer. While I respect that, he has no objection to making a Zippo lighter billboard, nor any of the (beer) alcohol ads. Alcohol is also very deadly, directly and road fatalities. Point is, at least be consistent. 

Back in my HO days Revell had a beautiful little station with a cigarette machine in the box.  I always thought it lent some character to my "1952 forever" layout.

The Minicraft/American Flyer newstand and waiting stations from the 1950s have

a huge Old Gold ad on one side and a Philip Morris ad on the other.

Lew

Wow!!!!!  This is something I missed completely.  You are right.  I model the 1950's period.  I don't have any cigarette machines, and no advertisement billboards either.  

How could I have overlooked that?.  Amazing.

Thank you for the reminder!

So, by extension, if one doesn't allow smoking in their house then it follows that he shouldn't allow drinking?

And just to be clear, I respect Miller's opinion. I quit smoking in my early 20s.

My father, (and mother) were heavy smokers.  Father died at a young 67.  Recently I attended a funeral of his cousin, both close to the same age, she was 90.  You do the math.

Lost my Dad to COPD; we weren't always smart about this stuff....

oldads3 by DSLR_Eric, on Flickr

I respect Miller's decision on this, but it was a big part of the culture for a LONG time...

quote:

 While I respect that, he has no objection to making a Zippo lighter billboard, nor any of the (beer) alcohol ads. Alcohol is also very deadly, directly and road fatalities. Point is, at least be consistent. 

Start a competing business and show him how things should be done,

My small layout has Arttista machines in a diner, outside a motel office, plus I have a detailed interior tobacco store with shelves of cigarette brands. Although I gave up smoking 6 years ago, I think all the hair-pulling over "second hand smoke" is a bunch of baloney. I wish everyone would give up smoking so states like PA can panic over loosing a billion dollars per year in state tobacco taxes.

I totally respect Miller's decision.  I wish more people felt that way.

Art

wow I am glad I dont have an appointment with Dr Batty.

Steve

Artista made a cig machine, maybe still does.  Some of us remember.

2009 Christmas layout

2010 Christmas layout

2010 again:

2011 Christmas layout:

Wellllll.......it's just a hobby, and we do have to admit the '40s and '50s era were a time of smoking, social drinking{nearly everyone had a small stash of liquor for friends coming over}, no seat belts in the cars, no dual master cylinder brakes or ABS{lol}, no cholesterol thoughts....a much simpler time.

One can not only model anything they want, but also model they're real life style as such too....and I'll respect them either way.

I own a Miller beer boxcar, but don't like Miller beer, and bid on a Camel cigarettes boxcar but was outbid....someone might walk a mile for a camel, but I wasn't gonna bid a mile for one.

My layout will be the '40s-'50s and I'd like to have guys wearing fadoras, women with skirts and real stockings{line in the back} and I'm slowly aquiring the needed cars to match...it's not to offend anyone, it's just what I want. 

I hate smoking.....pretty much killed my mother.....so not sure I'd put them on my layout. But if someone put them on theirs.....I could appreciate them being accurate.  Like graffiti on cars.....it just don't happen in my little world!

And that's precisely the point. It's our own little reality and we can depict it anyway we wish. It can be ultra realistic or Disney like and as long as it pleases you, that's all that should matter.

Hi Lee et al.

Here is another photo showing both the Philip Morris ad and the Brits contribution to smoking advertising. The Meccano/Hornby "hoarding" is advertising Wills's Capstan cigarettes.  I've checked the dozens of British lead figures on my layout and displays but have found no smokers Of course I don't have a Sherlock Holmes figure, which I assume smokes a pipe.

Lew Schneider

Although I dislike smoking (us reformed smokers are the worst) my last layout had a billboard of John Wayne pushing Camels.  I had made it from an ad cut from a magazine.

I agree with trying to replicate the ways things were in "the good old days" on our layouts.  I have struggled a little with how I wanted to handle smoking and alcohol.  We all know there was a lot of advertising about it and some of looked really cool.  The Marlboro man and Joe Camel are two that come to mind.  But I'm torn about how much or whether I want to play it up on my layout.  Both have caused a lot of problems for friends and loved ones.  As was brought out, I don't like all the graffiti on the cars and so I choose not have it on my little world. 

Art 

My mother-in-law just past away in Sept 2013 from lung cancer from smoking as did my father-in-law 10 years ago.  My grandfather and my mother smoked so much I'm sure they both died of some smoking complications.  These people all smoked like we would like our steamers to smoke.

I respect Miller Eng. decision.  Each to his own.  But, I don't tell everyone I see smoking not to smoke.  And as far as a business goes, if I were going to make money on it I would do it.  As long as it weren't illegal.

Rick

Interesting. The only reason not to have these things on a model representing that time would be if we felt that its presence would influence some of our young folks to smoke. I doubt that this would happen.

In the 50s, men died in droves in their 40s and 50s due to smoking and heart disease. It was called "cardiac alley" If you made it through you were good for another 20 years. My mother's friends were almost all widows. The husbands died 20 years before the wives. It was due in part to the number of men who smoked. As women's lib kicked in gear and women started smoking as much as men, their death rates rose accordingly.

It was a simpler and deadlier time. We were killing 50,000 people a year on the highways. I had one grandparent. All the rest died before I was born. My grandkids on both sides all have 4 active grandparents. Those times were simpler only because we were stupider. Lots of people died of cancers that weren't even diagnosed.

I've watched uncles and aunts die of emphysema and lung cancer. I had a secretary who was a 'secret' smoker who died of brain cancer that was metastasized from lung cancer. My best man from my wedding just died a 65 from lung cancer. He started me smoking when I was 16. I stopped at 25 when the kids were born... he didn't. If I kept smoking, I'd be dead too.

Whether you decide to have 50's smoking related artifacts on your RR or not, please don't romanticize that era.

I gave up cigarettes, about 3 1/2-4 packs a day for around thirty years, sixteen years ago, but my "approximately fall 1952 give or take some years" trains will run with whatever I remember from that period.

Can't stand to be around smokes anymore and don't have any health issues (Thank God and knock on wood.) from all my years of smoking and drinking, but those things were a large part of my life for a long time.  I wouldn't rejoin the Army or Marine Corps (yeah, BOTH of them) again, ever visit Maryland or Illinois again, and won't ever live in "winter wonderlands" again, but you can bet they will be represented if I can find the room. 

Lee, as I recall you have 77 Sunset Strip modeled quite well on your layout! During every epsisode I watched if the key characters weren't holding a gun, it was a cigarette in one hand a drink in the other. I don't drink (can't) and enjoy a smoke or two on rare occasions. But any representation of the period should probably have a cig machine or two.

No one will ever accuse me of being PC. Not that I haven't thought of it before but this thread gave me the nudge I needed, I guess.

You can see it here

Vulcan:   That is very nice.  Thank you,  Father never purchased cigarettes from a machine, in later years he rolled his own from Bugler Tobacco in a can.  I probably still have a few of the Bugler cans on the shelf, filled with screws, nails, and electrical parts.  Eventually when the roll machine wore-out, he had an interesting machine that filled paper tubes with the filter on one end.  Once told he was sick, he never smoked again. 

The other noted part of smoking that appears to have changed over the years, was related to work.  Most workers of my father's age, worked and smoked at the same time.  Today there are smoke breaks, and designated smoking areas.  

Just some points for those wishing to model the appropriate time period. 

note: I did a link to Bugler Tobacco (twice), but apparently this forum, or Wikipedia, doesn't like that link, (I guess we have an automatic, built-in, politically correct forum world). So you'll have to do your own search on Bugler. 

Mike 

1965.

Two bits a pack from the machine, twenty cents over the counter.

Joined the Army mid-year and they were seventeen cents a pack, a buck fifty a carton in the commissary and PX.  Two dimes got a pack from the machine at the O club or in front of the commissary and PX

I quit a three-four pack a day habit almost sixteen tears ago when they were still running just over three thirty five a pack.

I don't miss them (had a few rough weeks at first) and zero smoking related health problems.  I'll be seventy-two in six weeks.

I'm not a drum-beater and don't mind others smoking as long as they respect my space.  I still love to walk in to a tobacco shop and just stand and sniff.  As

long as it isn't burning it still smalls wonderful.

I'll put a couple of smoking related items on my layout, too.

I'll also add some drinking related items and I haven't been a drinker for over thirty years now.  I spent nearly twenty years being a pretty heavy drinker, too.

One difference is that small amounts of alcohol may be beneficial to health. There is no safe amount of cigarette or other smoke.

Tell you what: I won't preach to you, you don't preach to me.  Howzat?

Hey, if anyone has Prince Albert in a can, you'd better let him out! 

I'm not a smoker, certainly don't condone it, but I grew up with my maternal grandfather smoking Marsh Wheeling stogies (yuck!), seeing Mail Pouch barns, and various cigarette billboards.

At this point if my layout had a spot (and I'm not really certain if it does - that's TBD), I might consider one of these signs simply as a piece of art.

George

Brings back more than few memories and one can still spot a few barns about PA with those signs....

But, since my modeling interests are more pre-1920, I do frequently find a place to spot a spittoon in various scenes,  

As a former smoker, I would like to be given the choice of adding smoking billboards/ads, and cigarrette machines to my layout if available. As it is, the locomotives I'll be planning on, will be smokers.

Just to add some info: my grandmother was 106 years old, grandfather was 99, dad was 93, mom was 91. They all were heavy smokers.

I quit, because when a pack became 2.00. I decided 2.00 could be used for other thinks. They did see me through some trying times in Vietnam.

Guys,

I have not thought about it but why bring up and model something so painful?

I do not model hobos smoking but it is clear that they did!

Each of us is free to model realism in any way they like! What makes modeling interesting is leaving out the things you don't like about a particular memory or scene  and even as you "change" your memory in this way you make it more idyllic and consequently more appealing and more of a draw to fine tune (except for those details).

We can all beam with pride when we point to our layouts, for my part, I want all my memories to be pleasant!

Even though death is as much a part of life I don't model a cemetary or a Funeral Parlor.

I suppose we all could point to tragic deaths in our own families from smoking.

Face it, realism has its place. But this is my boundary, one that I shall never cross.

Smoking in my opinion has claimed to much of my attention as it is. (Not On My Layout Yard!) NIMLY!

On my layout no one dies! Even though they frequently ride in or underneath my trains on the box cars.

Aren't you glad that you asked?

Mike

Terrific that you had your grandparents and parents around that long.  And congratulations on quitting. 

George

Mike,

My layout is a pleasant place as well.  It's 1953-4.  We have an integrated functioning American steel mill with full employment.  Mill workers are living the American Dream just like it happened in real life.  They are sending their children to college, buying a new car every 2-3 years, and (as they say) living large.

I think most of our layouts have one thing in common: they are places in our memory that are happy and frozen in time.

And that's as it should be.

George

Oddly enough, the very next structure kit that is slated to be built for my layout is in fact a funeral home complete with caskets.....and the headstones for "out back".

George,

In 1972, I was a smoker too but gave up quickly because of an antismoking ad in which Hustler magazine was denied any advertising from big tobacco because they disagreed with the way the were objectifying women! In this ad that I saw there was a picture of a pink healthy lung as well as a black lung from a cadaver that had died of lung cancer.

Well that was all it took at the tender age of 15 for me to quit.

Mike Maurice

Yeah, nothing like a little hypocrisy to drive home the point.  I grew up smelling those god-awful Marsh Wheeling stogies.  By 1972 I was captain of my high school swim team.  Didn't smoke (for obvious reasons).  Never got into the habit.

George

Now you all know why none of us model the 60's - we can't remember the 60's!    Russ