People like John Allen, Malcolm Furlow, Tony Koester, Allen McCLelland had an influence on the Hobby. In particular McCLelland and Koester valued operation over model fidelity (to a point) in that environment, RTR and Blue Box kits are a better investment than custom built engines. Scenery also often dominates.
In other words, this hobby takes different forms and the dominant direction dictates availability.
The big problem with RTR as I've said in other threads is perceived value.
people look back to being able to use their meager allowance to buy a shake the box kit and compare that to current MSRP of an RTR car or engine and see a price disconnect. This is not a Craftsman issue as they would never buy RTR anyway. At best/worst, this is an indication that the Craftsman side of the hobby is not as dominant as other aspects, but I don't know that that is a bad or good thing. It's just a thing.
Sometimes the "real Hobbyist" can feel cheated because a person who just starts out can have equipment that is just as good if not better looking then what they have. All you need is a few bucks and you get detailed and sometimes weathered equipment. A person can actually do his hobby part time and still have a decent layout. So in that aspect I guess the old way is on the way out. I personally won't miss it but I'm sure some will. I'll just keep running my well detailed dcc/sound equipped loco's and not have to worry about kitbashing.
Springfield PA
trainsbuddy:When you talk about what has been done by the "great generation" as far building a steam loco from a piece of raw brass or box car from a block of solid oak - you don't take into the account the a)standard of level of detail, b)average number of loco and cars owned by modeler then vs now and c)available free time and other venue of interest.
------------------------------------------------
Actually there's more to it then that..
At one time in the hobby there was very few road specific steam locomotives beyond Penn-Lines PRR locomotive kits..If one wanted a model of a IHB 0-8-0 he had to built it.Then came the brass steamers that the average modeler could afford-then the cry brass will kill the scratchbuilding segment of the hobby was heard -enter AHM and their line of plastic steam locomotives to include that IHB 0-8-0..Enter the brass diesels and there was little need to scratchbuild a locomotive.Freight car offerings improved with introduction of Train Miniature line of earlier wood freight cars..And yes,there was that cry of how the hobby was going to the lower inferno regions and won't survive the coming years.
It took the hobby years to what we have today...
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I think kitbashing is not as popular anymore is because of the quality bar raised by the latest products. When you talk about what has been done by the "great generation" as far building a steam loco from a piece of raw brass or box car from a block of solid oak - you don't take into the account the a)standard of level of detail, b)average number of loco and cars owned by modeler then vs now and c)available free time and other venue of interest.
When I look at the models from 80s or even 90s I don't understand why would someone buy it unless he's a collector. Heck, I won't even buy a loco now that is not a DCC with Sound. It simply not cost effective to buy a DC loco and upgrade it to sound with DCC. I enjoyed modeling when I was a kid and could spend my endless free time on building planes from plastic kits. Nowadays I'm lucky if I have time to operate, and it's a real treat when i have time to install grab irons and populate engine cab and passenger cars. So I start from the most detailed, best quality DCC loco I can get for a reasonable price and go from there. I can think of a million other things to do in a time it would take me to get there by kit-bashing. And realize, for a lot of younger modelers there is no affection for a specific small railroad, so most items we want are either readily available in RTR form or require little modifications.
Sir Madog - this is just an admirable piece of craftsmanship on display here. I wish I could do it, but my dexterity is not sufficient. That lines me up in the R-T-R plus detailing group.
- this is just an admirable piece of craftsmanship on display here. I wish I could do it, but my dexterity is not sufficient. That lines me up in the R-T-R plus detailing group.
"RTR Is The Devil's Work, Craftsmanship's Dead And The Hobby Is Drawing Its Last Breath"
I'm in madogs boat but I couldn't let the title of this topic go by without comment - it is over-the-top melodramatic prose even if it was tongue in cheek! Ok, it was shameless "bait" to get people to read the topic. As seen, there are still a few raw craftsman out there and I think there always will be. Many of us are greatful for HQ RTR products which reduce the long "to-do" list needed for a major model RR in a basement. Hobby drawing to a close? Poppycock! With all the amazing products of the past 10-15 years, we are in the golden age of the hobby. As always, anyone is free to find their guru and chant ohmmmm and get out the tools of the trade and go at it. This hobby has a wide range of folks, and there is still the old school hobbiests who love steam built from raw materials and the "manly-man" ways of the hobby. I think we can all agree, this its an admirable piece of work for sure!
But you've been posting here 8 years and I've never once seen you offer any visual evidence of being a modeler of any sort...
Raises hand. I don't offer evidence of being a modeler because I'm not! I do have dreams of building another layout and I've been a train nut all my life. If only "true modelers" are allowed here, this forum should suddenly hear a sucking sound as the majority of us high tail it out of here.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Sean
HO Scale CSX Modeler
Sir MadogBRAKIEThe point being we are all model railroaders, regardless if we prefer RTR,kit bash, scratch build, build plastic or craftsmen kits. I fully believe, the last thing we need, is more splintering of the hobby into smaller groups.. Amen to that!
BRAKIEThe point being we are all model railroaders, regardless if we prefer RTR,kit bash, scratch build, build plastic or craftsmen kits. I fully believe, the last thing we need, is more splintering of the hobby into smaller groups..
I fully believe, the last thing we need, is more splintering of the hobby into smaller groups..
Amen to that!
I agree.
Enjoy
Paul
sanduskyWho's lookin' for a fight? Raise your hand!!
Sigh... Why do I even bother to come here? I left the 5th grade long ago.
Guys,Building a craftsmen kit,adding detail parts or kitbashing does not the craftsmen make-the true craftsmen died with my Dad's generation.
I don't see anybody taking brass or tin stock with Kemtron parts and building a steam locomotive..I don't see anybody taking balsa wood and making a freight car,passenger car or caboose these days..Some may thump their chest and crow like a banty roster because they scratchbuilt a structure..Well that's all well and fine but,any simiskilled modeler can do that if they choose.
The point being we are all model railroaders regardless if we perfer RTR,kitbash,scratch build, build plastic or craftsmen kits.
I fully believe the last thing we need is more splintering of the hobby into smaller groups..
I think if you want to cry in your beer, go ahead-it's your beer. However, don't for one minute, think that craftsmanship is dead-it is not! In about five days, the Collinsville Prototype show will open for several days; this consists of some pretty good clinics, the usual hawkers, and some really well-built efforts-craftsman quality.
In November, there is another Craftsman hobby Show in Mansfield Mass, which is pretty well on the level of the serious craftsman-some good upper-level clinics with the likes of top line builders and producers like George Sellios, et al. These shows are, in their capacity, both very well attended, which says iniquivocably, that craftsmanship is not dead.
Rich
Yellowjackets are really 4-6-6-4s with a pantograph...
LMAO this is funny stuff. At least I learned something, and that's I'm not a "modeler" because I don't make my own stuff. Even though I and everyone here built their layout and most added scenery etc. Using that thinking modern railroads aren't real "railroads" because they use RTR equipment. They could probably do a comedy skit about it on this stuff for late night tv. Just picturing the overweight post middle age genius at the keyboard with his little choo choo hat on talking down to the lowly RTR using "non modelers".
Hey, verbal kung fu matches sometimes get the ol' blood apumpin!!
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
andrechapelon Incidentally, don't you have any such craftsman models of your own to illustrate your posts with? Most of it's in California. We're in Maine for the summer, although I brought some stuff to work on. Tell you what, you post a pic of your avatar engine with its Elesco feedwater heater correctly piped and I'll post pics of what I'm working on. Deal? Andre
Incidentally, don't you have any such craftsman models of your own to illustrate your posts with?
Most of it's in California. We're in Maine for the summer, although I brought some stuff to work on. Tell you what, you post a pic of your avatar engine with its Elesco feedwater heater correctly piped and I'll post pics of what I'm working on. Deal?
Andre
Hey, I'll be glad to post pix of anything I do and I have been doing so since this forum began. But you've been posting here 8 years and I've never once seen you offer any visual evidence of being a modeler of any sort, only posting silly threads and posts like this one, or attempting to weasel-word your way out of the statements you've previously made.
P.S. Please, no projects that you are "working on". After decades in the hobby you certainly must have completed something worth showing that excuses can't be made for!
CNJ831
Yep, nice locomotives, but that's simply what traditionally skilled model railroaders do, although you won't find many of those sorts of folks here. And you can bet that you won't see work of that kind coming from many of those in today's growing RTR crowd.
As far as I can tell, the people that I've seen aren't the auld pharts that cut their teeth on Varney, Mantua, Silver Streak, etc., but are younger modelers. And of course you won't see that kind of work here. It would seem that this site has become something of a model railroading "Wailing Wall" where people come to complain about this, that or the other.
BTW, if the crowd's growing, how's the hobby getting smaller? Oh, wait a minute, I know the answer to that one. People are simply defined out of the hobby.
I've done kitbashes countless times to create something I personally needed. But that doesn't alter the fact, which you are actually responding to in your lead-off post, that virtually the the only thing you can get from the manufacturers these days is huge RTR steam that is largely operationally inappropriate for anyone without a basement-filling empire, or simply being a collector.
I wasn't responding to anything. When I used the term RTR, I was not limiting it to locomotives, although I'll grant you that there is too much emphasis on 4-8-4's and larger when it comes to available steam (except for Bachmann). That being said, I'm from the West. Out there a 2-10-2 IS a medium sized engine.
Yep, nice locomotives, but that's simply what traditionally skilled model railroaders do, although you won't find too many of those sorts of folks here. And you can bet that you won't see work of that kind coming from many of those in today's growing RTR crowd.
I've done kitbashes countless times to create something I personally needed. But that doesn't alter the fact, which you are actually responding to in your lead-off post, that virtually the the only thing you can get from the manufacturers these days is huge RTR steam that is largely operationally inappropriate for anyone without a basement-filling empire, ill-suited because of size for kitbashing into anything else otherwise useful, or suitable only for the collector. This even though far smaller camelbacks were very common engines on many roads in the northeastern U.S., to say nothing of countless other small steamers. The fact remains that the last reasonably accurate, non-brass, camelback model offered commercially in HO was issued in about 1980. How many RTR Big Boy runs have been done since then?
Incidentally, being supposedly so long in the hobby yourself, don't you have any craftsman models of your own to illustrate your posts with?
Without voicing any sentiments in either direction - this is just an admirable piece of craftsmanship on display here. I wish I could do it, but my dexterity is not sufficient. That lines me up in the R-T-R plus detailing group.
Andre--what yahoo group was that in btw?---
Barry, it wasn't a Yahoo group, but "The Site That Must Not Be Named Or Linked To".
m horton andre, what's up? someone does a great job modeling and you use his work to be utterly sarcastic? talk about self-appointed,mike h.
andre, what's up? someone does a great job modeling and you use his work to be utterly sarcastic? talk about self-appointed,mike h.
Given the amount of bellyaching about the death of craftsmanship, the hobby and how RTR is ruining everything, it's pretty hard not to be sarcastic with respect to the prophets of doom. I don't see much of the latter on any other forum. They seem to be concentrated here.. Why, I don't know.
twhite Andre: Those neat Spectrum 2-8-0's really lend themselves to kit-bashing. That's some beautiful work, IMO. Over on another forum I visit from time to time, another modeler has taken one and turned it into a very nice representation of a Rio Grande 1100 series C-48. Baldwin to ALCO, by golly! I've been looking at my 'stock' Spectrum lately and thinking about the same thing. They're good little lokies and VERY easy to work on. Tom
Andre:
Those neat Spectrum 2-8-0's really lend themselves to kit-bashing. That's some beautiful work, IMO. Over on another forum I visit from time to time, another modeler has taken one and turned it into a very nice representation of a Rio Grande 1100 series C-48. Baldwin to ALCO, by golly!
I've been looking at my 'stock' Spectrum lately and thinking about the same thing. They're good little lokies and VERY easy to work on.
Tom
Yeah, I saw the pics of the C-48. With some work, you could probably also recreate the most famous Consol of all, the Santa Fe 1950 class so beloved of PFM. Tom Dill modified one to look like SP's ex-Cotton Belt engines. It wouldn't surprise me iif the Spectrum 2-8-0 ends up being the most kitbashed engine of all time.
I mentioned in another post about a guy who had taken a Model Power USRA light 4-6-2 and made a Southern Pacific P-10 with skyline casing out of it. If Athearn/Roundhouse ever gets their act together and releases its HO version, a P-10 project could probably be done following some of the same techniques as the N scale counterpart (.e.g. the skyiline casing in the N version is a modifed Con-Cor GS-4 casing, you could use an old Lionel or Bachmann shell fo supply the casing in HO). Nice thing about HO is that it shouldn't be too hard to get a correct tender, especially if Athearn releases the 120C-3 as a separate item.
The N scale P-10 of which I speak was based on SP #2487, seen here: http://www.yesteryeardepot.com/SP2487.JPG The fellow who did it used a modified Spectrum C&0 VC16 tender to portray the 120C-8 tender on #2487. It looked pretty good. Not perfect, but good.
Hey--he was saying that to illustrate the point about doing the ding locos on your own. And by the looks of things I'd say the dude did very well thankyouverymuch
IRONROOSTER Enjoyed the pictures. For now, I'll skip the trouble you're trying to stir up with the subject line. But if it gets fun later, I may stick an oar in. Enjoy Paul
Enjoyed the pictures.
For now, I'll skip the trouble you're trying to stir up with the subject line. But if it gets fun later, I may stick an oar in.
I probably should have worded it a bit more mildly, but it seems to me that people are attacking the wrong targets and forgetting that the hobby exists in a larger society which has also undergone significant changes since I was growing up in the 50's.
I just got an update from several Yahoo groups that I belong to, including the Brass Loco Builders (full disclosure, I've never built a brass kit, let alone scratch build a brass locomotive). The update included a link to a file with several pictures demonstrationg the building of a boiler for a D&H 0-8-8-0. On another forum, I've seen several discussions outlining the construction of a B&O S-1 2-10-2 in N scale. Whle the boiler was scratchbuilt, many of the same techniques were used as in the construction of Max Magliaro's Pennsy I1 2-10-0 by starting with a Kato 2-8-2 chassis. The same group had a series by a guy who bashed an N scale Model Power USRA 4-6-2 into a Southern Pacific P-10, complete with skyline casing. Superb modeling, Another guy built a logging 2-6-2 out of an Atlas 2-6-0 in N. Again, nice job with realistic detail. Shoot, I even read about some glutton for punishment scratchbuilding an Erie 2-8-4 in Z scale.
The creativity's out there, although you wouldn't know it sometimes listening to the funeral dirges that seem to be the all rage here. The really funny part is that the vast majority of these projects have been started using RTR items as a base and turning them into models the original manufacturer wouldn't recognize. You don't see that here much, although Dave Vollmer's showed us some of his kitbashed Pennsy steamers and now and then doctorwayne will drop in with a pic of some of his work.
I don't know what it is about this forum. While I occasionally see complaints on other forums about this that or the other, it never approaches the volume you'll see here and I don't recall repeated prognostications of the hobby's imminent demise except here. Maybe it's simply because the forum belongs to Model Railroader and it's a convenient place for spleens to be ventilated.
I have to thank Greg for granting me permission to post pics of his work. I'd have posted links instead, but the pics originally appeared at "The Site That Must Not Be Named Or Linked To Under Penalty Of Death" and I had to copy the photos to my computer and upload them to my Photobucket account.
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!
Fantastic Bashing! This is what the hobby is about. If you want it build it youself!
Very nice modeling! I model anthricite c.1910, in freelance. The worst part is the limited selection of locos and reasonably priced rolling stock, and the best part is... the limited selection of locos and reasonably priced rolling stock!
Yes, it would be nice to be able to pick a coal gondola kit off a tree, but part of the fun is having to be creative; craftsman kits, kitbashing and scatchbuilding are all part of the challange.
We send all those butter-fingered, balloon-footed, need-to-have-RTR modelers to the modern or transition era period!
Jim
andrechapelonNot too long ago, somebody was whining about there being a dearth of Wootten firebox engines on the market. Rather than cry in his beer, Greg went ahead a created some.
I don't believe in worrying over things that are out of my control, and I will never understand why some do.
Great modeling.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/