By way of introduction, I'm an N scale model railroader, have been since the mid-70's. I model the Western Maryland as it might have operated in the late 60's and early 70's before that stupid cat messed everything up...
My layout is underway, and I'm building it in sections, trying to be as complete as I can with each section as I go along. It is an operations-oriented design, with continuous running capability, representing the Connellsville Sub and the Thomas Sub, which radiated northwest and southwest respectively from Cumberland, Maryland.
You can read more about me and my layout at my website, www.wmrywesternlines.net
Here's a couple of examples of my work:
I'll be lurking around to see what goes on here... I guess my first question is why this section isn't broken down by scale? Most forums have breakouts for different areas of interest... I'm probably just missing it, but I've always believed that good fences make good neighbors!
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Welcome,
To answer your question, it's uh, you know, uh, the way Klambach wants it. It's a constant subject of discussion.
Nice work by the way.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Welcome to the forum. I think it is altogether so those of us with various interests do not have to wade through a dozen forums to see what is up. I like scenery, in all scales as well as building techniques. Also when I have a question, I get a lot of people looking at it, it makes the likelihood of an answer higher.
By the way, I like your scenery a lot. I have been working on trees and forests and getting ready to attack Yellowstone river through the canyon. Your falls is great. I hope you hang around, join weekend photofun, and share your experience.
As far as fences go, shorter fences make easier talking, and no fence makes a chance to share a cool drink on a hot afternoon.
Different sections? Well... that would make sence.
Nice pics!!!
Welcome! Seems like you have chosen a good road to model, but why blame the cat for messing things up?? CSX was the real mess-up... Anyway, here in West Virginia there is a small line called the WVRR or the Durbin RR that used old F units for their frequents, pretty interesting stuff. If I can find the website I'll PM it to you for some good pics of the F's hauling some coal up some pretty wicked grades. I think its still operational, their are video's on the website showing this coal trains heading up as steep as a 4% grade and up! They had two F head units, and they were in a stuggle up the WV mountains. All of that is my , so welcome and have fun!
-beegle55
Welcome, and may I compliment you on your modeling skills?!
We seem to have our own highly vocal culture here, and this catch-all forum seems to do okay. We are quite straightforward with one another, even blunt, but we do have some good discussions. Someone on another major forum said he found us to be a bit too philosophical for his tastes, but I guess it has to be dispensed somewhere!
Apart from some heated exchanges now and then, we mostly like each other and are fortunate to have some very strong experience and talent. In time, I hope to be up with you myself.
Welcome to this forum.
That picture of the F unit and waterfall is great. Many are either in HO or N scale and you will see articles on the other scales also. If you have a specific question about some model or detail, it is best to name the scale or we would all be trying to give an answer to a question that you did not ask.
I notice the Atlas forum does have the three major scales separated, but we tend to talk about the hobby and enjoy all of the scales together. Many of us have more than one scale but do not run all of different scales.
Jerry SP FOREVER http://photobucket.com/albums/f317/GAPPLEG/
When you said that the cat messed things up, I thought perhaps that your pet cat--assuming you have one--jumped up on the layout and caused some damage, LOL. Then it dawned on me that, being out here on the West Coast, that you were talking about either Chessie or CSX.
That aside, I'm really impressed with your photos, and I hope you give this forum a try. Even though I'm in HO, I have some friends in N (yes, it happens, LOL!), and I'm always amazed at how much detail and smooth running can be packed into that smaller scale (and before you blink, let me tell you that when I started in HO, way back in the Jurassic Period, most of my friends said I was crazy, that something THAT small would never run!).
Western Maryland has always been a rather fascinating Eastern road for me, it went through some really beautiful scenery and had some really terrific steam on its roster (I'm a steam freak). And I've always been a fan of the way its diesels looked.
So, again, welcome to the forum, and as Gappleg wrote, share some of your techniques with us, okay? Good modeling knows no boundaries, no matter what the scale.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
selector wrote: Welcome, and may I compliment you on your modeling skills?!We seem to have our own highly vocal culture here, and this catch-all forum seems to do okay. We are quite straightforward with one another, even blunt, but we do have some good discussions. Someone on another major forum said he found us to be a bit too philosophical for his tastes, but I guess it has to be dispensed somewhere! Apart from some heated exchanges now and then, we mostly like each other and are fortunate to have some very strong experience and talent. In time, I hope to be up with you myself.
Welcome aboard the forum. Please forgive selector, he's actually a mental patient locked up in a padded room some where up in Canada. They let him have his train layout and computer to help keep him occupied, so we have to put up with him... (Just joking of course)
By the way. Like others have said, you do really nice work!.
Tracklayer
Tracklayer wrote: selector wrote: Welcome, and may I compliment you on your modeling skills?!We seem to have our own highly vocal culture here, and this catch-all forum seems to do okay. We are quite straightforward with one another, even blunt, but we do have some good discussions. Someone on another major forum said he found us to be a bit too philosophical for his tastes, but I guess it has to be dispensed somewhere! Apart from some heated exchanges now and then, we mostly like each other and are fortunate to have some very strong experience and talent. In time, I hope to be up with you myself. Welcome aboard the forum. Please forgive selector, he's actually a mental patient locked up in a padded room some where up in Canada. They let him have his train layout and computer to help keep him occupied, so we have to put up with him... (Just joking of course)By the way. Like others have said, you do really nice work!.Tracklayer
Tracklayer:
Well, DANG! And all the time the doctors here have been telling me that you and Selector and I had adjoining ROOMS!
From one N scaler to another...welcome aboard !
Well thanks for the warm welcome. I suppose with all the other forums I blab in, one with a "Big Tent" approach wouldn't kill me!
As you can probably guess, I enjoy building scenery probably more than anything else. Atlas code 55 track, blue styrofoam and Sculptamold are indeed the best things since sliced bread. My goal is to post photos that make people ask what scale I'm working in.
Mechanically, I've finally overcome my fear of DCC, and can hack up an N scale frame and solder in a decoder almost with my eyes closed (when you see how some of them run, that's not hard to imagine!)
I'll be stopping in often, and you can bet I'll show you a few more pictures...
Thanks again,
Welcome aboard. I really like the "diversity" in this forum. While we have a few different technical issues, mostly we all think alike, regardless of what gauge we model in. If we were truly segregated by rail spacing, I'd have missed an awful lot of good work, all the way from N to G.
And every once in a while, someone crosses over, tearing up one layout and starting another, with bigger or smaller tracks. I'm happy that with all that upheaval in their lives, they are still welcome in the same place.
A few years back, we had an air show in town. The local paper published interviews with a couple of the pilots, who'd taken back-seat rides in each other's planes. One flew an acrobatic bi-plane, and the other was with the Blue Angels. They were both so excited about what each other was doing. Without turning my stomach upside-down, I get a lot of smiles from looking at Marty Cozad's garden layout and Dave Vollmer's N-scale Pennsy. The multi-scale aspect of this forum really broadens my experience.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
ARTHILL wrote:I think it is altogether so those of us with various interests do not have to wade through a dozen forums to see what is up.
No, we'll just make you wade through pages of irelevant posts to find ones on the topic that's of immediate interest.
I have long believed this forum is not subdivided enough, but could stand more subcategories. Now you can go overboard with subdividing, but it's also well known that dividing things up some actually creates elbow room and promotes growth.
As to being able to see all the new posts all in one view, any forum tool worth its salt will still allow that, so nothing's lost with a few more subdivisions.
But subdividing would make moderation more work, which is my guess as to why MR doesn't do it. There are solutions to that too, but I haven't seen MR being in any hurry to consider alternative ways to do this forum.
So we live with it. It's okay ... generates a lot of kibitzing energy, which can be fun. But as an ever growing library of great hobby content that's easy to browse, this forum isn't.
Joe Fugate Modeling the 1980s SP Siskiyou Line in southern Oregon
Hello, there! Nice pic's... I look forward to more....
Brian
twhite wrote: Tracklayer wrote: selector wrote: Welcome, and may I compliment you on your modeling skills?!We seem to have our own highly vocal culture here, and this catch-all forum seems to do okay. We are quite straightforward with one another, even blunt, but we do have some good discussions. Someone on another major forum said he found us to be a bit too philosophical for his tastes, but I guess it has to be dispensed somewhere! Apart from some heated exchanges now and then, we mostly like each other and are fortunate to have some very strong experience and talent. In time, I hope to be up with you myself. Welcome aboard the forum. Please forgive selector, he's actually a mental patient locked up in a padded room some where up in Canada. They let him have his train layout and computer to help keep him occupied, so we have to put up with him... (Just joking of course)By the way. Like others have said, you do really nice work!.TracklayerTracklayer: Well, DANG! And all the time the doctors here have been telling me that you and Selector and I had adjoining ROOMS!Tom
I don't know about you Tom, but I'm strictly here for the medication...
Tracklayer wrote: twhite wrote: Tracklayer wrote: selector wrote: Welcome, and may I compliment you on your modeling skills?!We seem to have our own highly vocal culture here, and this catch-all forum seems to do okay. We are quite straightforward with one another, even blunt, but we do have some good discussions. Someone on another major forum said he found us to be a bit too philosophical for his tastes, but I guess it has to be dispensed somewhere! Apart from some heated exchanges now and then, we mostly like each other and are fortunate to have some very strong experience and talent. In time, I hope to be up with you myself. Welcome aboard the forum. Please forgive selector, he's actually a mental patient locked up in a padded room some where up in Canada. They let him have his train layout and computer to help keep him occupied, so we have to put up with him... (Just joking of course)By the way. Like others have said, you do really nice work!.TracklayerTracklayer: Well, DANG! And all the time the doctors here have been telling me that you and Selector and I had adjoining ROOMS!Tom I don't know about you Tom, but I'm strictly here for the medication...Tracklayer
And by the way, the conversations can get pretty inane sometimes, too!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Hmmm. Scale prototype drawings are more work, too... do you suppose that's why MR doesn't do them anymore, too?
Lee:
I'm an HO'er, but agree with all above--I kind of like not having it broken up into scale, as a lot of issues are similar across all(or at least most) scales. By the way, if you're interested in N specific issues, "The N Crowd" is an active thread--see on the first page of this forum, looks like up to 45 pages of activity!
Jim
Welcome aboard....
And thanks for the nice pictures too. Very nice work. Very nice in deed!
As Joe F. said, we do have to wade through the pages, but over all I have to say that I've learned from any number posts. Scale specific or not. There is a lot of great information here...Not to mention some good fun too!
And after reading through this thread, I would think that you've already gotten a good picture. We seem to be a babbling, insane, happy family under a BIG tent....Kind of like a family reunion!
I've browsed through several topics now, and I like the general nature of things... When I have an "N" specific discussion, I'll throw it to the wolves over at Atlas, ScaleRails Online or the Railwire.
This is a good place to look at those common issues, and to discuss the differences between scales, and the philosophy of modeling we all bring to the table.
That is mostly what we end up doing here...picking up on the differences. Unfortunately, it can sometimes get testy because, as you learned long ago, this is a very personal pursuit. Every one of us invests a lot of disposable income (relative to one's income), emotion, and time, so when we suspect that we are being judged, especially unfairly, we do lean towards getting peevish. And heaven help the person who goes off on a scale vs. scale rant. Just the thought gives me the willies.
Then, after a slug-fest, someone offers to buy drinks, we clap each other on the back, and belly up to the bar to figure out something else to liven things up.
trainfan1221 wrote:I don't mind the "we're all in this together" attitude instead of being specific with scales, as a matter of fact anytime a post goes on about specific scales it seems to lose direction eventually. If I need an N scale question answered then a general post about it usually is okay. A lot of info applies no matter what scale.
I like the idea that this forum is not scale-specific because there is a lot of useful information pertinent to all scales and gauges.
Hi Lee,
I'm a newbe planning my first layout. The forums as they are set up have been unbelievabely helpfull. At first I thought I'd build a table and lay the track. After spending time on this forum I learned how wrong I was . Now my first step is to put down new vinyl on the floor as the layout is going to be permant. Secondly to put up new lighting while I can get to the cieling. These are just two of the many things I've learned and I have a long way to go. Hopefully by the end of summer I'll be runing a train with a lot of scenery work yet to do.With segregated forums I'd have really been lost. I hate to think of the mess I'd be in.
Bob
Your layout looks great and it says a lot about your ability and knowledge. I'm sure you can help a lot of people on these forums.
Don't Ever Give Up