General Discussion (Model Railroader)

 Maybe it's just me, I'm new to this whole thing.....after our train club meeting last night I was re-reading Great Model Layout 07 (they had a good feature article on deck height) and it occurred to me that since I've been subscribing to MRR and seeing all the outstanding layouts month after month after year and being apart of this forum I can only remember like one thread that was started from a guy who actually had his layout in the magazine.

So what gives?!?!  You get published and they ban you from posting??  Do the master train guys not have computers??  Are you all posting under secrecy?!?!   How does MRR find all these top notch layouts?!?!?   If you start getting really good at stuff does MRR contact ya and say, hey, no posting, we may want ya to do an article so we can sell it and your like giving away to much info.....

Guess I'm just a bit confused... and that's normal for me.  So just to be on the safe side, from now on I'm not going to post any more updates/photos on my "New Train Room Started" thread or any or any cool ideas, tips, or suggestions cause some day I may actually be good enough be asked to be in a COOL MAGAZINE or SPECIAL EDITION and I don't want to ruin my chances by posting here!  Or at least until I figure out this conspiracy...

HEY, wait a second!  I bet they have their own super secret board!!!! YAH... that's got to be the deal.  Their own Master Model Railroad forum .... The inner sanctum!

Ah well... maybe some day I'll be asked to join..... but most likely not, as I tend to be, somewhat of a rabble rouser - an ain't establishment sort of guy. 

Loco:

 Maybe it's just me, I'm new to this whole thing.....after our train club meeting last night I was re-reading Great Model Layout 07 (they had a good feature article on deck height) and it occurred to me that since I've been subscribing to MRR and seeing all the outstanding layouts month after month after year and being apart of this forum I can only remember like one thread that was started from a guy who actually had his layout in the magazine.

So what gives?!?!  You get published and they ban you from posting??  Do the master train guys not have computers??  Are you all posting under secrecy?!?!   How does MRR find all these top notch layouts?!?!?   If you start getting really good at stuff does MRR contact ya and say, hey, no posting, we may want ya to do an article so we can sell it and your like giving away to much info.....

HEY, wait a second!  I bet they have their own super secret board!!!! YAH... that's got to be the deal.  Their own Master Model Railroad forum .... The inner sanctum!

To be quite honest, you're not all that far off the mark with that comment. Only just a few of the folks who have had their layouts in the magazines seem to participate in any of the more general on-line forums. Most choose posting to more specialized venues, populated by others working at comparable skill levels.

CNJ831.

L:

Keep looking in Trackside Photos and Boomer Trail. Every now and then I run across a name I recognize from the interwebs.  It's fun when that happens.  :)

One thing to remember is that a lot of us are using various Internet handles which aren't necessarily our real names.  Another thing to remember is that this is a very big hobby, and any magazine or online forum will probably include a very small fraction of the total, just because that's how such things work, and the fractions won't tend to overlap a lot. 

Getting published also has a lot to do with non-model-railroading skills.  Most people who have appeared a lot in the magazines have been somewhat into photography.  Photographing miniature scenes is tricky.  This is getting easier, now that digital cameras are cheap.

I think a lot of people don't realize that the apparently perfect layouts in MR and RMC aren't so unusual.  They're excellent layouts, to be sure, but I've seen plenty of work by posters here that is every bit as good, and often the builders only show it with all sorts of apologies, because they don't think it's "as good as the stuff in MR".   Usually, though, it is. 

The key is that the layouts in MR are photographed well. Take a good ordinary layout, set up a decent scene, light it well, and take a good clear photo that captures the best features of the scene, and you might find you've got a masterpiece after all.

CNJ is right on the mark.  This forum tends to be too rapid fire, and very broad in its discussion.  While it would be great to have some of the heavy hitters answer questions about which train set to buy for a beginner, or how to decal a locomotive, the fact is that they've typically moved on to more meaty topics such as the quality of motor armatures, micro-engineering an N scale climax, or operations topics related to their favorite prototypes.

More engaging topics that require more in depth discussion than can happen here, where topics can sink like a stone due to sheer volume.

That's not to say that this is a bad thing.  A ton of really good information gets posted here, but sometimes you have to weed through the Diners and Beer Barns to find it...

Lee

A number of our fellow posters have appeared in recent Trackside Photos spreads, just over the past few months.

Maybe if we'd spend less time in front of the computer and more time modeling, we'd be able to do that, too.

CNJ is spot on..The heavy hitters are on more specialized forums including one  of the forums I moderate on..

No,I am not a heavy hitter but,just moderate on one they conjugate on by happenstance.

There's another format you're missing, and that is the mailing list.  The Diesel Modeler's List and the freight car modeler's list (whatever it's called...Master Car Builder's List?) are just two examples I know of.  These represent high-end concepts and ideas.  They are usually moderated in as much as troublemakers are usually dropped quickly and you don't have the howling hordes yelling about how adding small grab irons on Walthers passenger cars is too much of a bother (or what-have-you).  On the diesel modeler's list, they have been known to replace the Blomberg sideframes on Atlas locos with Athearn ones using adaptors that require a complete tear down of the gear tower and use of a Dremel tool.  Now, I'm fairly detail orientated, but I'm not doing that. 

Quite frankly, advanced modelers would probably be bored on a general topic forum like this one.  Likewise, general modelers would probably be bored with advanced concepts.  On this forum, a topic about what a "real" model railroader is can go on for days.  Meanwhile, a thread about how to install a Cannon & Co. diesel access door would probably sink to page 2 within hours.  That's neither good nor bad, it just is.

Oh, and another thing...  Many "master" modelers are too busy working on their layout or on their models to contribute heavily to an internet forum or list. 

Paul A. Cutler III
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Weather Or No Go New Haven
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 Reading through the posts in this thread, it appears to me, as if those master model railroaders are a secret bunch of people, members of a secret lodge, hiding somewhere in the mountains. They also want to stay among their own kin and only now and then allow us to take a glimpse at their work of art.

Some of those "secret guys" are right among us and they do contribute quite a lot to this forum. I hope you don´t mind mentioning you, Wolfgang, as pars pro toto, but you are certainly a master model railroader.

Sir Madog:

 Reading through the posts in this thread, it appears to me, as if those master model railroaders are a secret bunch of people, members of a secret lodge, hiding somewhere in the mountains. They also want to stay among their own kin and only now and then allow us to take a glimpse at their work of art.

Some of those "secret guys" are right among us and they do contribute quite a lot to this forum. I hope you don´t mind mentioning you, Wolfgang, as pars pro toto, but you are certainly a master model railroader.

Sometimes they just get tired answering the same, endless "why can't my Big Boy go around 15 inch radius curves?"  questions.

dehusman:

Sir Madog:

Some of those "secret guys" are right among us and they do contribute quite a lot to this forum. I hope you don´t mind mentioning you, Wolfgang, as pars pro toto, but you are certainly a master model railroader.

Sometimes they just get tired answering the same, endless "why can't my Big Boy go around 15 inch radius curves?"  questions.

No problem, Ulrich.

English is not my first language, that slows me down. 

And - one big point - sitting in front of the computer gives no picture from a model. (I'm retired     )

Wolfgang

I thought that was you! When I get home tonight I'm going to dig out that issue and show it off. I can say "why yes, I know that person...sort of". I was also published in MR, but nothing like this. At the very front of the issue they usually have a page that advertises the MR website and online extras and such and a few months back (I will check tonight) they showed a pic of some of the forum posts and one of my early posts was featured in this little, um, featurette. Like I said, I will get it tonight. Rather proud of it even though it's true value amounts to nothing but self pride, but hey isn't that a very valueable thing in itself. I think I just talked myself into a circle and confused everyone.

They're among us, they just choose to be humble and helpful.

Does that mean that whenever I get my layout published in MR (I've written the article, but I need more photos to include in it!) then I can't post here anymore?

 Maybe if we would spend time modeling and less time posting on forums we all would be masters as well.

TrainManTy:

Does that mean that whenever I get my layout published in MR (I've written the article, but I need more photos to include in it!) then I can't post here anymore?

 

It may mean that, once you get paid to write, you'll decide not to give away your stuff anymore.