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Roadtrp: I don't think there really IS any incongruity. The "rivet-counting-realism" , when it exists, is generally confined to specific pieces of rolling stock, or a foreground structure, and is a minor Special-Interest of the hobby itself.....not the actual hobby. If a layout is involved, the actual hobby is highly illusory in nature, meant to convey a "feeling" rather than represent actuality. -Most highly-detailed models exist in a highly compressed, non-scale setting on virtually all layouts. -Most exceptionally detailed and/or "accurate" locomotives and cars are generally operated on semi-scale prefab track, often with Atlas turnouts that are closer to tinplate than they are to scale. -Our trees bear little or no resemblance to actual trees, either in overall size or in leaf and limb detail...our grasses and ballasts are non-scale approximations. -Our distances between towns are laughable, and the sizes of our yards and division points are modest indeed. -Our mountains are puny in height, and we find excuses to build bridges where the real engineers would find ways to avoid them. BUT....so many good layouts have a 'realistic look"...because good modelers are conveying a "feeling" with their work. John Allen portrayed a late 1940's "Colorado" style operation....mountainous country, no frills, no money to waste, so heavy weathering showed on the OLDER home-road rolling stock, like the geared engines and narrow gauge stuff, BUT...his more modern equipment had substantially less weathering. In the case of the G & D's crack mandarin-red passenger train, it was downright "spiffy", as would be the case in real life. [:D] George Sellios' city scenery portrays run-down neighborhoods and grubby equipment during the Depression, and conveys exactly that "feeling", much as art or art-photography always seems to convey. Less weathering might well take away from the image presented. I remember a rather outstanding layout from the very first issue of Great Model Railroads in 1991 : John Swanson's Nebraska Main Lines. Very well done indeed....but it had almost no weathering at all, on anything. Everything looked brand new. He was conveying his own feeling with that layout, not to my taste, but not for me to find fault either.[8D] As for for that previous post finding fault with the weathering on the G &D or the F & SM, I don't like to see masterworks criticized just for the sake of trying to be fashionably cutting-edge, or to sound knowledgeable or authoritative. Anyone who finds the need to be negative about the work of an Allen or a Sellios, to try and make a point, means they HAVE no point.[V] regards; Mike
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