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One thing I know that has put me off on subscribing to model RR magazines and what bothers me when I do see them at the hobby shop is the lack of what I call "real world" modeling. What I mean by that is, I see beautiful representations of mountains, babbling brooks with fly fisherman beneath an overpass with a Western Pacific dome liner passing above, quaint little Hometown, USA town scenes with a busy platform at the depot, packed with waiting commuters, etc., etc., and don't get me wrong - the scenes are tremendous in their visual impact and detail! But let's face it - when you go out train-chasing to do some photography or to just watch some RR action, those are not the kinds of scenes available most often. Instead, you see weeds growing between the ties on branch lines, spent 55-gal drums of oil or kreosote laying around the yard, piles of rusted tie plates and scrapped rail. You see mounds of ballast stone shoved-over to the side of the ROW where the work crew may have dumped too much or they left some behind for later use. You see oil-soaked ground around the engine shed and rails almost invisible in the dirt at grade-crossings, and graffiti sprayed on rail cars and bridges, vegetation along the ROW turned yellow by herbicides and even trees cut-down by brush-cutters where they've encroached too close to the tracks. Yet, in many of the model RR pictures I see in the publications, little attention is given to such "real world" detail and instead the focus is on the pristine. On my layout I have no babbling brooks or mountain tunnels, but I have plenty of scrapped ties, kreosote barrels and replacement rail to the side of the ROW (a recent addition thanks to the forum!) and I've intentionally made the ballast a bit uneven in places to show spot-repairs having been done. Am I the only one who notices this?
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