Hey, I didn't make those up ( " solar systems, dinosaurs, static models of The General, or piles of real rock/dirt" ). Followers of the Forum will remember the long and very drawn out threads about these very real "innovations".
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
tedtedderson mobilman44 - No solar systems, dinosaurs, static models of "The General", or piles of "real rock/dirt" allowed. I laughed so hard when I read this I woke up the baby and got yelled at by my wife. To each his own if you're into this, but man that cracked me up! T e d
mobilman44 - No solar systems, dinosaurs, static models of "The General", or piles of "real rock/dirt" allowed.
- No solar systems, dinosaurs, static models of "The General", or piles of "real rock/dirt" allowed.
I laughed so hard when I read this I woke up the baby and got yelled at by my wife.
To each his own if you're into this, but man that cracked me up!
T e d
Rich
Alton Junction
I love nit-pickers but I don't have to follow what they say. I model the late 1930's and try to keep everything close, some car dates are wrong and maybe some lettering style but everything else is as right as I can make it. Nit-pickers make sure I keep on my toes.
the old train manNow I dont pull freight cars behind my pacific (although I would like to sometimes)
Depending on the railroad it may be prototypical to do so, especially if it is a smaller driver model. I say go for it. In one of my railroad books there is a photo of a NYC Hudson assisting a Mohawk with a freight. Online I found a photo of a pacific pulling a freight train (CN I believe), and several photos of a NYC Hudson double header pulling a string of hopper cars.
As far as how nitpicky I am: I use Sergent couplers. The first thing I notice when I look at photos in the model press or models in contests is the presence of a trip pin and the spring, and oversized kadee couplers. To me it ruins the entire effect that people try for with copying an photo of a specific piece of rolling stock to make it look like the prototype. Do I comment on this to specific people directly, no.
I have seen many layouts on layout tours, very few if anyone I have met actually uses the Kadee under track magnet system for uncoupling. Most use a pick for uncoupling, one layout I have operated on used a h shaped magnet. That is about the only time I have seen the trip pin used. For most it is an appendage that they could actually do without (you could even snip it off and flip it over so it hangs like a air line.).
They make magnetic brake air hoses for HO scale (PWRS). I have a package that I am going to give a shot at using. If I find retrofitting not too difficult, I will use these so that operators have to hook up air hoses between cars.
Since I model an old town, almost any locomotive, rolling stock or vehicles are appropriate. When I'm running steam, I have hidden staging tracks for my diesels and modern rolling stock. My vehicles aren't mounted to the layout, just set out at various locations.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
SeeYou190 The angriest I was ever made by a nitpicker: . I build my layouts with photo locations in mind. Trains can be posed in dramatic location for great shots. There is a lot to this, and it is important to me. . On one of my N scale layouts there was an industrial spur that went around a corner to a feed mill. The way this curve was positioned, it was a great spot to place a couple of MU diesels pulling a freight for an action shot. I put a signal there to add to this photo location. . Photos taken there looked great! . One visitor saw the signal heading towards a dead end feed mill and became boistrous and superior. . I can still hear him syaing "Ha Ha... That signal better ALWAYS have red showing... Ha Ha! That was a stupid place to put a signal, no railroad would EVER don that! Ha Ha Ha" . You would have thought he found the lost gold of the Central America. . I told him the signal was there to add an asthetic touch to photographs. He just kept laughing at how stupid I was. . No more model railroaders in my layout room. . -Kevin .
The angriest I was ever made by a nitpicker:
.
I build my layouts with photo locations in mind. Trains can be posed in dramatic location for great shots. There is a lot to this, and it is important to me.
On one of my N scale layouts there was an industrial spur that went around a corner to a feed mill. The way this curve was positioned, it was a great spot to place a couple of MU diesels pulling a freight for an action shot. I put a signal there to add to this photo location.
Photos taken there looked great!
One visitor saw the signal heading towards a dead end feed mill and became boistrous and superior.
I can still hear him syaing "Ha Ha... That signal better ALWAYS have red showing... Ha Ha! That was a stupid place to put a signal, no railroad would EVER don that! Ha Ha Ha"
You would have thought he found the lost gold of the Central America.
I told him the signal was there to add an asthetic touch to photographs. He just kept laughing at how stupid I was.
No more model railroaders in my layout room.
-Kevin
Should have told him it's there for as part of a set for a movie being made on your railroad. Maybe even have a removable film crew and signs naming the movie to place there when you expect visits by nitpickers.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Here's my side,
Most people don't know how serious I am when it comes to model railroading, I google pictures, read various message boards, surf ebay, and then I make a decision on what to add to my collection. Would you want someone else running your railroad and messing up the carefully planned out roster you created? I certainly wouldn't.
Train Room Rules:
1. This is My Railroad.
2. I'm in Charge.
3. No one but ME is allowed to decide what gets purchased or added to the fleet.
4. It's for having fun and enjoyment.
5. Your side/prototype history practices and personal memories are welcome, but regarding any equipment operating or consist errors, Refer to ANSWERS GIVEN ABOVE!!!
6. Don't Argue With The Engineer.
At this stage, I'm glad to just have things running again, after numerous false starts, either through changes in track plan, expansion or moving.
Generally, I model the late 60's through the 70's. By late 60's I mean anything past 1967. I would say I'm in the "good enough" camp. The main details I'm concerned about on my layout are: 1) Does the motive power and rolling stock generally fit the time period and 2) Can I make the scenic details produce the feel of that time period. That said, I will have no steam locomotives, nor anything past a 2nd generation diesel on my layout. I may have too many 40 ft. boxcars on my layout, but I will have no wooden sheathed ones on it either. Cabooses, all steel, with no blanked out windows. I don't care if the cars are not with the times on what the FRA regulations were at the time, such as lowered brake wheels and the elimination of running boards, as many of the cars of that time had not yet been converted over to compliance standards. I also don't care if the manufacturer didn't produce a car or a locomotive that had all of the prototypical features for that road name. Heck, I even have a Roundhouse 5 windowed caboose in Erie Lackawanna livery. The EL never had 5 windowed cabooses. And, although I won't use it much, as I have other Erie/EL cabooses that are much closer to prototypical, it's still a keeper for me.
That guy gives nitpickers a bad name. TBH, he has much more going on in his head than being a nitpicker.
- Douglas
Living the dream.
I am a nit picker, but I have stopped commenting on other peoples car, locos, layouts, etc. unless asked for my opinion. I have made it a practice to do as much research as I can to build the most accurate car/loco that I can that is layout operable and can be transported easily as I belong to a club where I operate my equipment.
I have had a large stash of decals that I acquired over the years, and I have found that I needed to change the style of cars to meet what the decals really stated on them for car size etc. I have found that most of the Champ decals really only fit the 1937 AAR and 1937 AAR Mod. cars due to the interior lengths and heights on the decals. Same with a lot of Herald King Decals, that were designed for the Athearn Railbox car, but need the various Exactrail, Atlas, Intermountain cars to fit correctly.
Thanks for letting me rant!
Rick Jesionowski
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
As I often apply the "good enough" standard on my own layout, I'm not about to nitpick a layout I'm visiting. I'm much more likely to find something on the host's layout I believe was done extremely well and rave about it to everyone who'll listen.
On the other hand, when I've actually paid to be admitted into a train show, I do expect that the displayed club modules will at least have been dusted prior to the show opening. Far too often, I have found modules that look like they fell out of the van on the way to the show (understandable if that actually happened) or the modules haven't seen any kind of attention/up-keep in years! One particular club I see all the time has corner modules that are obviously owned by the club. Though the design for these modules was imaginative and well planned, the execution of these corner modules was rather poor. Add to that at least 10 years of total neglect and these modules do not put this particular club in a good light. I would never be rude enough to complain to the members of this club, but upon spotting these corner modules, I do tend to immediately move on to the next club display.
Hornblower
I'm nitpicky about nitpickers. Some of my models aren't as weathered as they should be, and two modern GE locos pulling 10 cars isn't all that protypical.. but so what. Chalk it up to artistic licence..
When looking at my own work, I adhere to the 3-foot rule for freight cars, the 30 inch rule for passenger stock, the 24 inch rule for locomotives and the 12 inch rule for trackside (and between the rails) structures. Not that I try, or expect, to achieve anything above an acceptable level of mediocrity. My target is an impression, not museum - quality modeling.
Why do structures get the highest level of attention?
As for other people's work, I bite my tongue unless commenting on something I find praiseworthy. I may offer suggestions, but never couched as, "You did that wrong," and usually phrased as questions. Constructive criticism will only come as an answer to a direct request, and even them will be devoid of any criticism of the modeler.
As for the majority of nitpickers, I have found that there's truth in the old saw:
Those that can, do. Those that can't, criticize.
Nitpickers are welcome to pick their own nits. I can deal with mine. Any nitpicker, rivet counter or Scale Rule Harry who deviates in my layout space is invited to leave.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - to MY standards)
I don't nitpick anothers layout. I've visited a few and seen photos of many others that looked like elementary shcool projects, definately not up to my standards. But they please their owners and there is always something worthy of a positive comment. Being from Dayton, Ohio I was privledged to visit some great layouts including the Virginian & Ohio. For my own layout, I model the 60's, taking me back to the days I hung out in the NYC Moraine yard. If I see a car I like and the build date is post 1969, it stays on the shelf. I don't count rivets.
BRAKIE jeffhergert Milwaukee cars with MILW marks were still in use. Soo Line inherited the marks. There may even be a few still in service today, although it's been some years since I've seen one still marked MILW. Great stuff..I didn't realize Milwaukee cars was still in use in the 90s..That's good to know since one of my favorite cars is a Athearn RTR Milwaukee bulkhead flatcar with lumber load. Thanks Jeff!
jeffhergert Milwaukee cars with MILW marks were still in use. Soo Line inherited the marks. There may even be a few still in service today, although it's been some years since I've seen one still marked MILW.
Great stuff..I didn't realize Milwaukee cars was still in use in the 90s..That's good to know since one of my favorite cars is a Athearn RTR Milwaukee bulkhead flatcar with lumber load.
Thanks Jeff!
There likely are some actual Milwaukee Road cars out there although an ORER would tell you if bulkhead flats were amoung them.
I have seen some hopper cars with Milwaukee reporting marks. What I don't know is if they are actual former Milwaukee Road cars, or if Soo or CP used their ownership of the Milwaukee Road reporting marks to free up road numbers for newer cars. (That is what the UP has done with CNW and Omaha Road (CMO) reporting marks -- they were running out of road numbers and using those marks "created space" so to speak. the cars themselves were too new to have ever seen service on the CMO Omaha Road).
Dave Nelson
It depends.
I recently redid a factory paint touchup on a very expensive brass steamer because the paint touchup was not done well enough. Perhaps I didnt help it colorwise on side of smokebox but the finish is rubbed out smooth now and very lightly dusted with graphite. It is my number one layout runner and I like the engine despite having a little black paint showing through graphite paint at that spot...Howard Zane's weathering technigue using powdered graphite is very useful! It provides a shiny-greyish, well maintained look while bringing out the details and without looking like globbed on chalk powders.
I am picky about my engines and how they look. I am getting to the point where I prefer recent factory painted brass at any cost over others...
I do not like BLI's sound at all. Any wheel dirt and it just does not work well at all; I would rip it out of every BLI engine I buy if I could, along with ripping out the dcc.
I am not as picky with other rolling stock or anything else. My cutoff date is sometime during 1956, but a new Kadee Rio Grande boxcar from 1957 is on the layout. There are later cars my son didn't want me to get rid of yet, but only a handful remain.
Others' layouts...are theirs...I try to point out the nice things that I appreciate most.
John Mock
jeffhergertMilwaukee cars with MILW marks were still in use. Soo Line inherited the marks. There may even be a few still in service today, although it's been some years since I've seen one still marked MILW.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I'm very picky about era. If I run the railroad as if in the mid 2000's or in the early 1990's, the locomotives, rolling stock, and to a lesser extent the surrounding scenery items, need to be appropriate.
I'm picky about details on locos and rolling stock not being molded on, for the most part, and strongly prefer hand applied fine details.
I'm picky about locos and rolling stock being dimensionally correct with major items being in the correct place.
I'm NOT picky at all about prototype fidelity....roadname specific details. I model a free lance shortline and most of the locomotives would have been modified to some extent by the 1990s and 2000s, or the shortline can have its own back-story reasoning for details to be where they are. As for rolling stock, I simply don't care about proto specific details and "close enough" is good enough.
cx500 Now a question. I once saw a display diorama that was essentially 99% correct in all railroad details. To make it 100% would require repainting a couple of switchstand targets to show yellow and green (yard tracks) instead of red and green (a main track switch), quite easy to do. No idea if they actually operated, not important. Obviously it was an innocent error on the part of a superb modeler who was trying to get everything as accurate as possible. Should I have mentioned it?
Now a question. I once saw a display diorama that was essentially 99% correct in all railroad details. To make it 100% would require repainting a couple of switchstand targets to show yellow and green (yard tracks) instead of red and green (a main track switch), quite easy to do. No idea if they actually operated, not important.
Obviously it was an innocent error on the part of a superb modeler who was trying to get everything as accurate as possible. Should I have mentioned it?
I guess the next time I get called to work I'd better tell my employer they aren't being prototypic. All their switch targets in the yard are now red.
There are a lot of generalization and conventional wisdom in the model railroad world. Some things that are correct for some, even most, railroads may not be correct for all railroads. Something may be correct in one era but not in a different era on the same railroad.
Jeff
Brakie, while in the mid-1990s any Rock Island car would need different reporting marks, Milwaukee cars with MILW marks were still in use. Soo Line inherited the marks. There may even be a few still in service today, although it's been some years since I've seen one still marked MILW.
No..I wouldn't since he was 99% correct and the majority of the people viewing the layout may not notice the error anyway.
Regarding my own layout, I am quite picky about the accuracy of details and accessories, but I am much more relaxed when it comes to looking at what other people have built. It took me a while to learn, that each and everyone has the right to his own mistakes and I don´t have to be the one to point them out, unless I am invited to do so. A friend is easier lost than won!
cx500Now a question. I once saw a display diorama that was essentially 99% correct in all railroad details. To make it 100% ............. Obviously it was an innocent error on the part of a superb modeler who was trying to get everything as accurate as possible. Should I have mentioned it?
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
cx500Now a question. I once saw a display diorama that was essentially 99% correct in all railroad details. To make it 100% would require repainting a couple of switchstand targets to show yellow and green (yard tracks) instead of red and green (a main track switch), quite easy to do. No idea if they actually operated, not important. Obviously it was an innocent error on the part of a superb modeler who was trying to get everything as accurate as possible. Should I have mentioned it?
That depends on the relationship that you have with the modeller and how you approach the issue.
If you didn't know the modeller and you were to take the 'holier than thou' approach by declaring loudly to everyone within earshot that you had actually found a mistake, then I don't think most of us could agree with that methodology. In fact, if it were my diorama and you did that to me, I would likely ask you to leave immediately. I might even help you through the door.
On the other hand, if you knew the modeller fairly well and had a good rapport with them, and felt that they respected your opinion, then pointing out the minor issue would hopefully be appreciated as long as it was stated in polite terms. I think most of us would recognize whether or not making the observation was appropriate based on our relationship with the modeller. In other words, if you don't know them really well, silence is probably golden.
Ultimately the safest approach is to smile and comment on the good bits.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Track fiddlerI will say that I kept my Nit Pickiness for radius easements and grades. I think that's a good place to be nitpicky.
I agree. Getting the trackwork right is where I do get picky. I will take up and re-lay track and roadbed to get it right.
Paul
Nitpicky you say.......... I used to be the biggest nitpicky picker of them all. All the way back to high school in wood shop class. I was so perfectionistic and nitpicky it wasn't even funny, almost like a disease. And then I carried it over into my carpentry business. I would see the tiniest little detail that wasn't right and would go seven steps backwards just to go ten steps forward again. It costed me money, Jobs are by bid. Slowly I realized that being so perfectionistic to a point of anal retentiveness was not a good thing. By my mid-thirties I got rid of all that. I realized the only one who saw the little imperfections and deficiencies was me.
So I carried that over to my model railroading. Do a quality job make it look good, then move on to something else much more productive, life is too short.
I will say that I kept my Nit Pickiness for radius easements and grades. I think that's a good place to be nitpicky.
I am modeling the 1950s transitional era. Great Northern mountain region. I will not be nitpicky about the era I picked. I built all my bridges and tunnel portals to modern era height. I love the modern low well double stackers. And I love how BNSF color schemed the new locomotives like the old Great Northerns. There will be no need to stay prototypical. I take my 50s era Great Northern stuff off, put my new BNSF stuff on and I'm good to go no worries. And I can do that for the old 1800's stuff too it's all just scenery and buildings
Take it easy Don't sweat the small stuff