By Betty W. Acker
Westcott Society Historian, 2000
Linn Hanson Westcott was born July 13, 1913 in Los Angeles, California to Linnaeus Hunt and Regina (Hanson) Westcott. His father died when Linn was 5 years old. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota and married Harriet Kron in 1939 and had three children, Paul Arthur, Russell Linn and Jane Westcott.
For over 46 years, Linn Westcott contributed to the hobby of model railroading. He began in 1934 and contributed over 100 feature articles, many track plans and drawings, photographs and nearly 200 editorials. Many of these were during his tenure of 16 years as editor of Model Railroader magazine.
L.H. Westcott
The eight booklets that he published sold nearly two million copies:
1943 – Train map of Colorado Railroads 1/16″ to the mile
1950 – How to Wire Your Model Railroad
1954 – Small Railroads You Can Build
1956 – Track Plans for Sectional Track
1958 – HO Railroad That Grows
1962 – HO Primer – Model Railroading For All
1979 – How to Build Model RR Benchwork
1981 – Model Railroading With John Allen
Also, in 1941 he published a small 5″ by 8″ booklet, which sold for 10 cents called Model Railroading for You, and in 1952 he published a 5″ by 8″ booklet titled Introduction to Scale Model Railroading, which sold for 25 cents.
“Westcott’s ‘L-girder’ technique of building strong and lightweight benchwork to support layouts is widely followed in the United States today, largely because of its flexibility and economy, as is his ‘hardshell’ method of building landscapes. Linn also pioneered a scenery finishing technique known as “zip texturing”(South Pasadena High School Alumni Association). In 1996 Linn H. Westcott was given the honor of being elected to the “Pioneers of Model Railroading.”
Linn Westcott – A Retrospective by Harriett Westcott
In 2017 Editor Cody Grivino interviewed Harriet Westcott, wife of “the late great Model Railroader Editor and hobby pioneer Linn Westcott.”