I think the display layouts have them to get a hold of the viewer's overall attention. Once you see one odd item you by nature will search the layout for others. This is after all a hobby, not a vocation. Having fun, being entertained, challenged if that's your form of delight, whatever, is the reason there are hobbies to start with. Even the most meticulous prototype copying rivet counting perfectionist can put someting fun on their layout. They might make it easily removable if the NMRA convention comes to town.
As far as dinos being older than the Biblical history, I have my own ideas on that but this isn't a religion forum so we'll keep shut on that save that God is always bigger than whatever (figurative) box we put Him in.
A large percentage of the model railroaders I know have extinct beasts on their layouts - even those who'd never consider adding a dinosaur to the scenery.
Of course, the extinct critters in question are steam locomotives that had been scrapped before their newest diesel was built....
As for me - guilty as charged. My Baldwin 0-6-0T and 0-8-0T are models of prototypes that was scrapped in the 1920s, 40 years before my era.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
HEdward wrote:In several public layouts that I've seen(even the motion display at the camera shop that I was manager of)they've had dinosaurs on the layout. I've had a plastic dino since I was a kid and put it on all my layouts as well. Does anyone know why so many hobby shops, public displays and us not so finicky modelers have them? It's kinda weird that these long gone creatures have found homes on essentially technology displays.
This might be an old topic, but here's my answer.
I think that so many people (except rivet counters) but dinos on layouts because it's funny. Here's this model of something that's within a couple hundred years of history, and here are these beasts that for the most part, (and before you read this, understand that I believe the earth is only about 6,000 to 10,000 years old) have died off. There are still some (loch ness monster, champ [America's loch ness monster], and others]), but for the most part, you don't see them. Oh, and a bit off topic, but do you know why the word "dinosaur" doesn't appear in old texts or even middle ages and such? Becaus the word dinosaur wasn't invented until 1840s. So how can you use a word that you didn't know about back then. dragons in the middle ages were probably dinosaurs.
BTW, I'm not a rivet counter, but you won't see any dinos on my layout. I think it's just a stupid joke. But if you like it, go for it. just cause I don't like doesn't mean others can't enjoy it. It's your layout, do what you want.
Sawyer Berry
Clemson University c/o 2018
Building a protolanced industrial park layout
I've got quite a few extinct beasts roaming my layout....
mustanggt wrote:How about the T-rex escape scene from Jurassic park 2? it attacks a bus in the movie, so why not have it attacking a BNSF or Metrolink train
concretelackey wrote: Autobus Prime wrote:Folks:I think the important thing is to find a prototype justification. I. E. spacetime malfunctions at the Acme Portable Posthole Factory.LOL.....now I need to go to Lowes and special order 2 dozen post holes!!!!!!!
Autobus Prime wrote:Folks:I think the important thing is to find a prototype justification. I. E. spacetime malfunctions at the Acme Portable Posthole Factory.
LOL.....now I need to go to Lowes and special order 2 dozen post holes!!!!!!!
Lowes only sells them in groups of 10. I understand there's a website that sells them in different sizes.
In the area my In'laws reside, there are some homes painted in totally tacky color combinations, so if you paint a structure and it comes out UGLY, just blame it on Montclair NJ.
semi personal to Con-key...tornado watch the other day in your region, get any?
Not a BNSF fan are we?
alco49 wrote: BUMPBy the way, anybody feel like scratchbuilding a dinosaur?
BUMP
By the way, anybody feel like scratchbuilding a dinosaur?
Replacing rivet counting with scale, teeth and toe counting?
corsair7 wrote:I've after thought of putting the Stargate SG-! team standing around looking at trains on my layout. Irv
I've after thought of putting the Stargate SG-! team standing around looking at trains on my layout.
Irv
Got to have Samantha Carter and Vala Malduran!
de N2MPU Jack
Proud NRA Life Member and supporter of the 2nd. Amendment
God, guns, and rock and roll!
Modeling the NYC/NYNH&H in HO and CPRail/D&H in N
corsair7 wrote: I've after thought of putting the Stargate SG-! team standing around looking at trains on my layout. Irv
I've also had this thought but settled for the "SG1" graffitti on my bridge...LOL!
I still want to build a crashed ufo into my layout some where.
I love SG1 and will have them incorperated into my layout in the future also.
It is after all, about having fun!
steamage wrote:Their not exactly extinct, but I have a bad case of THEM! in the Los Angeles River on the layout.
THEM bugs do get around but you forgot the model airplanes.
Well, let's face guys, to our kids and grandkids many of us are really dinosaurs who probably new Noah.
But seriously, model railroading is supposed to be fun and not work. So if having a dinosaur (other than ourselves) on the layout, where's the harm? Now if you insist on putting on the deck of a model of the USS Nimitz, then I might have a problem with it. But not on a model railroad.
Milepost 266.2 wrote: HEdward wrote: Hong Kong? Godzilla is a Japanese creation. Last I checked, Hong Kong was in China. Godzilla attacked Hong Kong in the opening sequence of Godzilla v. Destroyah (1995). Can't find a screen cap, but he came out of the water at the end of the runway at the Kai Tak airport, then proceeded to run amok, as usual.
HEdward wrote: Hong Kong? Godzilla is a Japanese creation. Last I checked, Hong Kong was in China.
Hong Kong? Godzilla is a Japanese creation. Last I checked, Hong Kong was in China.
Godzilla attacked Hong Kong in the opening sequence of Godzilla v. Destroyah (1995). Can't find a screen cap, but he came out of the water at the end of the runway at the Kai Tak airport, then proceeded to run amok, as usual.
I sit here, with Eddie on my lap, corrected. I must have missed the 1990's.
HEdward wrote:Hong Kong? Godzilla is a Japanese creation. Last I checked, Hong Kong was in China.
twhite wrote: alco49That's what I tried to tell him--I know of at least one found in the Coast Range in Marin County, I believe. He said it was an Icthyosaur and didn't count, LOL! I asked him if anyone had informed the Icthyosaur about that little detail, and besides the Sierra was a flat coast at that time and it was quite possible that all the Cretacous fossils got swept into the Central Valley and buried when the Sierra started to lift. We went on for hours. A musician and an English professor arguing about Historical Geology. You would have banged your head!Tom
alco49
That's what I tried to tell him--I know of at least one found in the Coast Range in Marin County, I believe. He said it was an Icthyosaur and didn't count, LOL! I asked him if anyone had informed the Icthyosaur about that little detail, and besides the Sierra was a flat coast at that time and it was quite possible that all the Cretacous fossils got swept into the Central Valley and buried when the Sierra started to lift. We went on for hours. A musician and an English professor arguing about Historical Geology. You would have banged your head!
Tom
lvanhen wrote:I was in the Dollar store yesterday, and after following this thread, I picked up 4 dinos that look close to HO!! Bronto & triceratops are in gons, stega is peeking out of the roundhouse, and T rex is of course standing on top of the RH looking for a meal!!
I love this stuff....that is great....we need pics!!!
My son, Kevin(on the right in the photo), has a 3" dinosaur who just finished taking a ride in the gondola of our O gauge train. This car has also hosted Testor's paint, various cat toys, balls, marbles, Matchbox cars, Christmas tree ornaments, Cherios, and an HO F-3 shell(the remainder of which was destroyed in an earthquake many years ago.)
wjstix wrote:Actually I'd like to use one if I could find one small enough...I have a Sinclair gas station on my layout, many of them had (a few still have) a green dinosaur statue usually out near the Sinclair sign. It was pretty small, maybe 3-4' tall at best so in HO would have to be maybe a Z scale brontosaurus??
So my Sinclair Dinosaur is going to be "prototypical" if I get a Sinclair gas station? Walleye might be able to forgive me afterall. I'm so relieved.
See, that's a good use of Dinosaur toys, as it's prototypical - same thing with a giant lizard sculpture on the roof of a Tex-Mex restaurant in Manhattan's East Village (don't remember which), the giant guy holding carpeting off 1/9 in Jersey City, the giant horse (double the real size) outside a riding academy, and not all that far from me, a giant shark mounted on the front wall of an Auto-Body shop (no, I don't get the connection either - it was lying around in their yard for years until they mounted it on the wall). Lots of other examples of this just around the NY Tri-State area alone.So there you go, get your plastic T-Rex, position him in front of a carpet store, add a rug in his shorten fore-arms (Far-Side cartoon: ""Hey, I'm TRYING to pass the potatoes, but my forearms are just as useless as yours!"), and there you go! No more haters or detail police!