For the rustle […] implies a community of bodies: in the sounds of the pleasure which is 'working,' no voice is raised, guides, or swerves, no voice is constituted; the rustle is the very sound of plural delectation - plural but never massive (the mass, quite the contrary, has a single voice, and terribly loud).

-Roland Barthes, 'The Rustle of Language'1

Gathering Dust

Like clockwork, from 1958 to 1993, the Model Railroaders Club would meet every Tuesday night near San Diego, in a hangar at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on Jimmy Durante Boulevard, and run model trains. The word 'hobby', implying the business of amateurs, is surely too moderate for the concerns of these 'train people', for whom work and leisure are seemingly indistinguishable. Approaching their train-playing with earnest seriousness, these men - with all-American names like Chester and Corky - appear trapped in a limbo between masculine responsibility and boyish fantasy. Signs posted near the club's elaborate train set read, 'When all else fails, try follow- ing directions' and 'It's difficult to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys', setting a droll tone for the intensity with which the group goes about their collective activity. Only chatting to ask a necessary question or to share a particularly noteworthy detail, their rustle may be difficult to see as anything but work, yet it surely exemplifies what Roland Barthes referred to as 'plural delectation' - a shared 'language' that develops over time while relying on histories and goals held in common, and many non-verbal forms of communication. Hidden well enough from public scrutiny as to seem hermetically sealed from the outside world, time stands still for the train