I don't think Neil and Lance's point was to argue that the examples given couldn't happen. Instead, they argued that such examples are often over-represnted in what is modeled.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I live in a "Victorian" house who's property once backed up to the now gone Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. The 1914 Ma & Pa station still stands a block away (it is a model train store, at least for awhile longer, the owner is retiring), and our little village of Forest Hill which dates to 1859 is full of Victorian houses like mine:
For twenty three years I have taken my children and grandchildren to a waterfront park in Havre de Grace, MD, a city which the old PRR northeast corridor mainline cuts right though. That park has a classic gazebo bandstand.......this is the house I just restored for a client, right across the street from the bandstand:
This house is just eight or ten blocks from the tracks, which cut thought the town on a mostly elevated embankment just before they cross the Susquahanna River. The town is full of houses like this, many in clear sight of the tracks....and the town is full of 100 year old "working class" housing as well.....
In fact, the way the tracks cut through the town, is like a something you expect to see on a simple layout, tracks raised on a fill mound, and a series of bridges at each city street........
We have a homemade candy factory just down the road a few miles that has been in business for nearly 70 years.....
Lance and Neil can model what they think is "realistic", I will model the places where I live which are "realistic".
Part of Lance's problem is that he is a "shelf" guy, only modeling what is right near the tracks....that's where he gets this kind of thinking. Some of us want to capture more than the 150' on each side of the tracks.....my house was only about 400' from the tracks......
Sheldon
After I read the article, I had much the same thougths, though not the pickle/candy factory. For example, in Fig 3, they show several Victorians and a haunted house (same picture as the pickle factory) as incorrect, but several one story white worker houses as correct. In fact, both are correct, just depends on where you are in town. Many southern towns, such as the one I live in now, have a row of Victorian "mansions" right across the tracks near the depot. And depending on the era being modeled, at least one is likely run down and "haunted" (though for a modern layout perhaps it needs some workers and a TV crew shooting the next episode of a TV show). And to add insult to injury, along that stretch of track there was a propane dealor that looks like it's right out of Walters catalog; a grocery wholesaler that was barely bigger than the box and reefers that served it; a warehouse; a billet factor; and a tannery. And across the road is a small downtown park with a bandstand right next to a bar.
Just trying to say that both examples can be correct, but what you wouldn't see is Victorians and small worker houses intermingled with one another, mostly, though there are exceptions.
jim
What if the prototype town on your layout really did have these?
A) Pickle factory
D) Candy factory
I give you Holland, Michigan. There is a Heinz plant that has been there for decades and was a Lifesavers plant there for many years. (The plant gave off a very sweet smell.)