blackpowder1956I do not preorder anything. I like reading reviews. Almost anything can be bought at a discount through outfits like M.B. Klein or even better at train shows.
As a rule, I don't either, but if you want to order items that happen to be popular at a discount through say MB Klein, you have to watch Kleins website like a hawk as some items sell out very quickly after they are listed, like a few hours - next day, sold out. Train shows are more for treasure hunting hard to find items, not getting recently produced products at a discount, at least based on my many many trips to train shows since the mid-1980's.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761Train shows are more for treasure hunting hard to find items, not getting recently produced products at a discount,
.
There are two annual model train shows in Florida. At each of these, there are several dealers selling nothing but new items at very good prices.
All other train shows I know of are like you described. Great places for treasure hunting and finding out of production rarities.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL Kevin, you and I are the last of the freelance/protolance modelers.
Kevin, you and I are the last of the freelance/protolance modelers.
Sheldon,
I presume that comment was for dramatic effect.... There are lots of us out there...
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
riogrande5761The documentary comment comes off as sounding somewhat intolerant of other aspects of the hobby and isn't fair to those who "have fun" with models that are good matches to real freight cars.
Jim,Some times that's a two way street as you know from reading some comments on other forums.
Be that has it may.
My (as of now) 72 high detailed cars serves me just as well as my (gasp!) older BB and Roundhouse cars did and I still can't see the finer details while I am switching cars and looking at the numbers or while throwing a switch.
Without a doubt I have question my sanity for buying those higher priced detailed cars seeing my older BB and Roundhouse cars did the same job equally well.
OTOH.
They do look much better next to my detailed engines so,in the end and IMHO its a eye candy trade off.
I suppose the moral of the story is I'm still having fun switching industries on my ISL just like I did with my older BB and Roundhouse cars except now my cars are more detailed,accurate and yes,more costly..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
ATLANTIC CENTRALYou are welcome to compromise where you see fit, I will do the same, I was simply replying to Kevin and his lament regarding the lack of freelance modeling today. Sheldon
trainnut1250 ATLANTIC CENTRAL Kevin, you and I are the last of the freelance/protolance modelers. Sheldon, I presume that comment was for dramatic effect.... There are lots of us out there... Guy
Obviously, point being there are no where near as many people modeling their own fictional freelanced roadnames as there was years ago.
In the 50's thru the 80's you saw many, maybe even most, published modelers with their own roads, today you hardly see that at all in the hobby press.
And as this forum goes, Keven and I are among the most outspoken on the topic.
Sheldon
Sheldon--
Great career story above.
Unfortunately, your story is very nearly impossible to duplicate today. Sure perhaps a few, but not as common as...then.
I now work for one of the very best firms to work for in the state, and perhaps the country. It is still a family owned, non-stock-market-traded engineering firm, but has about 2,500 people in the entire company, all within the U.S.
Nobody is getting in the door here, in the state of PA, without a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Traditional drafters, engineering technicians, whatever are on the way out. The reasoning is that when times get tough, they want the engineer who today is viewed as being able to do everything from drafting to design (once trained), whereas the traditional drafter or engineering technician is viewed as being "limited" in what they can do, to mainly the drafting and related tasks.
It is harder to go the "non-degreed" path in many fields, but NOT all.
John
PRR8259 Sheldon-- Great career story above. Unfortunately, your story is very nearly impossible to duplicate today. Sure perhaps a few, but not as common as...then. I now work for one of the very best firms to work for in the state, and perhaps the country. It is still a family owned, non-stock-market-traded engineering firm, but has about 2,500 people in the entire company, all within the U.S. Nobody is getting in the door here, in the state of PA, without a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Traditional drafters, engineering technicians, whatever are on the way out. The reasoning is that when times get tough, they want the engineer who today is viewed as being able to do everything from drafting to design (once trained), whereas the traditional drafter or engineering technician is viewed as being "limited" in what they can do, to mainly the drafting and related tasks. It is harder to go the "non-degreed" path in many fields, but NOT all. John
Thanks John,
Yes, I agree it might be hard to do today. But then or now, I have known/seen so many "Willy Loman's" in my life, people just doing something because it is what they know, or went to school for, and because someone told them they could make a reasonable living, with no regard for their happiness in their work.
My father told me at an early age, "no matter what you do for a living, you had better like it, because most likely you will never be a billionaire".
I took his advice, if I did not like something, I moved on, or found a better situation. My life time list of job titles is very long........
You know many of the great Architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were college dropouts, Sullivan, Wright, Van der Rohe, and others. Yet today that profession is full of well degreed mediocrity and they don't let you in the club without the degree.....
I'm happy to just be called a Residential Designer, Historic Restoration Consultant and Master Carpenter.
Glad I decided against architecture school. My primary business associate says I'm too smart to be an Architect, and one of my well educated clients says I am an autodidact. I will take their world for it, but I just think I have a mechanical mind that just gets this kind of stuff naturally.
ATLANTIC CENTRALObviously, point being there are no where near as many people modeling their own fictional freelanced roadnames as there was years ago.
I wonder if there is amy possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way in 10-20 years, and fantasy model railroading will make a return.
SeeYou190 ATLANTIC CENTRAL Obviously, point being there are no where near as many people modeling their own fictional freelanced roadnames as there was years ago. . I wonder if there is amy possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way in 10-20 years, and fantasy model railroading will make a return. . -Kevin .
ATLANTIC CENTRAL Obviously, point being there are no where near as many people modeling their own fictional freelanced roadnames as there was years ago.
Freelancer here.
But answering your question, I doubt it. I think freelanced model railroads were an outcome of modelers building their own specific models from more generic products. Not to mention the paint quality of those models were not the best. They were willing to create their own model, perform needed upgrades to the models, so why create not their own railroad. I can't see modelers today wanting to strip off the paint of a nearly perfectly painted model only to change the color and name to their own road. Overall, the quality of the model will be at best the same, but probably worse after they mess with it.
Then there's me. I buy highly detailed models but rub off the lettering for my own freelanced shortline. Keep the paint, change the lettering. Call it an ex-whatever-prototype that by the time it got to my railroad second or third hand, all of those details changed.
Because I can buy whatever loco I need on the second-hand market, just like my railroad, I have absolutely no need to pre-order.
There is enough rolling stock floating around that waiting for a specific kind of car to show up is fairly pointless also.
- Douglas
DoughlessI can't see modelers today wanting to strip off the paint of a nearly perfectly painted model only to change the color and name to their own road.
It's not just that. Locos nowadays are so detailed, it's hard to get them out of the box without breaking something. All those fine bits and pieces complicate stripping, painting and decaling.
My era is the transition era, so the current modern locos are of no interest, decorated or undecorated. If I were to buy a current production GP-7, instead of decaling it for my freelanced RR, I might borrow Howard Zane's philosophy of leasing foreign power.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Look at some of the big names that changed from proto-lancing to prototype - I'm looking mainly at the big guy, Tony Koester. (If you've never met him in person - he's rather tall) He's given, over the years, the reasons why he originally did the AM when all along he wanted to model the NKP. Availability of the locos and rollign stock is one of the main ones. If you go back 10 or 20 years earlier than when he started the AM, availability of specific prototypes was even more limited. Models were more generic - sure, you could scratchbuild anything, or modify any kit with specific details, But out of the box, they weren't often models of any specific prototype, so you had two choices - modify every single piece of rolling stock (not hard for a small layout - but a large operating one? While building the layout itself, doing scenery, etc...) OR you could come up with name of your own and letter everythign for that road. In the early days, the pun names abounded, but a silly name doesn't help much when you are trying to tell other people that model railroading is a serious hobby, not a child's game. Even John Allen came to consider his Gorre & Daphetid name a mistake, but the layout was too well known to change. Had John lived another 20-30 years, who knows. SO the next evolutionary step was, I can't build the PRR, or the Santa Fe, or the UP, but how about somethign that "might have been" - not just something thrown down willy nilly, but something plausible. ANd so we have proto-freelancing. Move ahead in time and now we can get locos and rollign stock with not only road NAME specific details but even road NUMBER specific details - ready to run, not even kits. Now you CAN model a specific prototype without spending the rest of your life just detailing all the rollign stock to be accurate. Down came Tony's AM, up went the protoypically accurate NKP he always wanted.
Unless the manufacturers all go extinct and go back to makign jsut generic equipment, I don;t see this changing. If the pendulum swing anywhere, I see it goign the way I'm going - which is my rollign stock and locos, and railroad related structures, lineside signs and signals, etc, will follow a specific prototype, but I am not attempting to make my track plan accurately replicate any particular place or places. Similar to but not exact.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Douglas,
First, as a freelancer/protolancer, I avoid stripping models, I buy undecorated models. I know they are getting harder to find.......I am well stocked up.
Randy,
I agree, we are not going back for all those reasons. Even as a protolancer, I model my interchange roads as accurately as possible.
BUT, freelance, protolance, or prototype, I have no interest in trying to model actual places. I have only seen it done well a few times.....
Back in the day many modelers did pick regular prototype roads to model. They just accepted the "stand in" models, decaled equipment that was "close enough", and were somewhat limited to the "popular" roads - B&O, UP, PRR, SP, ATSF, NYC, etc.
But if you look at an old Walthers catalog, that ubiquitous Athearn F7 came in a pretty long list of road names......
Another reason we aren't going back to the way it used to be:
On today's prototype railroads, you can quite honestly see anything show up anywhere. One literally can see 50 year old Alco survivors show up in the Northeast--because they aren't always confined to the shortlines that own them--they actually get around, get off-line, and sometimes pass through Enola.
I see modern Mexican units at Enola Yard quite often enough, and I've seen just about every single one-off NS Heritage Unit at Enola as well. They all turn up here, sooner or later.
So the average more "modern" era enthusiast can find a plausible excuse to run most "typical" sized diesels on their layout.
Obviously, this does not include any steam other than excursion service steam...
rrinkerNow you CAN model a specific prototype without spending the rest of your life just detailing all the rollign stock to be accurate. Down came Tony's AM, up went the protoypically accurate NKP he always wanted.
Tony Koester's ALLEGHENY MIDLAND was one of my inspirations when I started in this hobby.
I was very sad when it came down.
From what I have seen of the NKP he built, nearly all that equipment, even the track he used, was available when he was building the AM.
rrinkerTony Koester. (If you've never met him in person - he's rather tall)
He didin't strike me as being very tall.
SeeYou190 rrinker Tony Koester. (If you've never met him in person - he's rather tall) . He didin't strike me as being very tall. . . -Kevin .
rrinker
Tony Koester. (If you've never met him in person - he's rather tall)
Tall is relative. I think Kevin has stated that he is 6'7" or 6'8". I was 6'8, but I have lost an inch as I gather in the middle.
This has been a very interesting thread.
I really like what Rapido has been doing; but they haven't produced anything I need, yet. When they do, I will purchase.
I don't have a source to pre-order; as there are no hobby shops within a 100 miles from me; and my principal source, MB Klein, doesn't do pre-orders.
I had my own road when I was in high school; first on a 4 x 6; then on a bigger layout in our Texas attic that never got beyond the Plywood Pacific stage; primarily because the only time I could work on it was when I was home on break from college.
As I learned about the history of the local railroads in my area; I became a Santa Fe / Katy modeler. When I build my next road; it will be a branchline of the Santa Fe.
I would love to meet Tony Koester some day. I love his current Nickle Plate railroad; and he has ties to Purdue. Doesn't get much better than that.
I don't think most of that equipment was available back when he started the AM. He mentions it across many of his books, the lack of reliable running equipment to represent the power used on the NKP at the time and location he wanted to model was one of the main driving factors toward doing the AM instead. Diesels were never a problem, it was the steam locos.
rrinker I don't think most of that equipment was available back when he started the AM. He mentions it across many of his books, the lack of reliable running equipment to represent the power used on the NKP at the time and location he wanted to model was one of the main driving factors toward doing the AM instead. Diesels were never a problem, it was the steam locos.
From what I remember reading, most of his steam locomotives are brass models that are 20-30 year old imports that he had someone (or a company) remotor, tune-up, and install DCC sound decoders. I do not recall him ever writing about new plastic or hybrid steam locomotives on the layout. I have not read all of his books.
I am certainly not going to go back and read all the Trains Of Thought columns from the past 20 years. I will just assume my memory is 50% at best on these matters and move on.
SeeYou190 rrinker I don't think most of that equipment was available back when he started the AM. He mentions it across many of his books, the lack of reliable running equipment to represent the power used on the NKP at the time and location he wanted to model was one of the main driving factors toward doing the AM instead. Diesels were never a problem, it was the steam locos. . From what I remember reading, most of his steam locomotives are brass models that are 20-30 year old imports that he had someone (or a company) remotor, tune-up, and install DCC sound decoders. I do not recall him ever writing about new plastic or hybrid steam locomotives on the layout. I have not read all of his books. . I am certainly not going to go back and read all the Trains Of Thought columns from the past 20 years. I will just assume my memory is 50% at best on these matters and move on. . -Kevin .
When he started the new layout, he took an interest in work I was doing on free rolling trucks and we had several Email conversations about my findings and methods.
While some of his steam locos are older brass, he was testing many of the various plastic/diecast locos entering the market, such as the Proto 2-8-4 and possibly even the Bachmann 2-8-4.