Are "pure" free lanced model railroads dead?

[Anonymous]

Long way from dead to my thinking and hopefully my own imagination will continue to satisfy my enjoyment. Don't want to get too technical and exact to drive the hobby to perfection and take the real joy out of the creation. Wonderful to see in the magazine and capture some ideas but, too complicated to enjoy the hobby for me.

[Anonymous]

That word "pure" in front of "free lance" confuses the issue. My line is called "Prescott & Pacific". Prescott is real, it's the town I live in - but I'm not tryibg to model it as it is but as it might have been 50 to 100 years ago. Pacific is real, too. It's the big ocean that 100 years ago every railroad's name indicated that was where it was going. But it is pretty vague. Our Pacific coast is hundreds(maybe thousands) of miles long. I haven't reached it yet, so I don't know where it will be. Somewhere between San Diego and Seattle, probably. Is that "pure" enough, or does a real town bastardize it?

[Anonymous]

My Eastern Gully & Gorge RR is "pure" free lanced. I copy areas that I like and model equipment of several periods. In HO from the late 40's when I started to some things of 2000. My layout is half done and will take several years to finnish. Dead NO. Just still working on it.

[Anonymous]

From my experience I feel most modelers, including myself, create free lanced railroads because they have more freedom to create their "ideal" railroad. You have so much freedom to create your own world, your own scenery, your own paint schemes, operate in your favorite era, etc., etc. I and many modelers like to call ourselves "prototype free lancers" meaning that we take all our modeling cues from the prototype and simply tweake them a bit to fit our fictional railroad. An excellent example of such a railroad I think would be the Allen McClelland's Virginian & Ohio. He operates a fictional railroad that operates and looks quite a bit like the old B&O or C&O Railroads.

[Anonymous]

That's what in talking about. A back story, reason, etc. Al Kalmbach used to make brochures for his Great Gulch, Yahoo Valley & Northern in his spare time.

[Anonymous]

Certainly not mine! I even invented a whole new country called Dalreada with it's capital city called Marcstadt, a busy seaport called Melmatt with a major winter sports resort called Royston. I have even written a travel brochure for visiting Dalreada. The railroad serving all of Dalreada is called Dalreada National Railways No, free-lancing is far from dead, it is just not heard of enough. Have fun.

[Anonymous]

I would say not. It just depends what you are into. Some people like doing research, etc. And others just want to have fun with it. But, I believe that a layout should have a "back story" as to why and how it developed. If you are following a prototype closely, the story is already there. If free-lancing, you have to make up the story, like Gordon Odegard, Linn Wescott, Frank Ellison did. It was made up, but the lines had a purpose and reason. Just stringing track all around the basement without some sort of plan may not end up being fun to play with in the end.

[Anonymous]

No - mine is the "Wisconsin & Iowa Railroad Co." (WIAR) and the towns I've
modelled are:

Wolverine, Wis.
St. Catherine, Iowa
Pumpkin Patch, Minn.
New Moscow, ND
Wautoma, Iowa

None of those towns exist (or at least not that I know of) and personally I think it'd take
a lot of the creativity out of the hobby if you confined yourself to modelling only
specific towns/cities/lines, etc. You'd spend all your time slaving over details that will
wear-out even the most ardent enthusiast and lose the real fun in the hobby.

[Anonymous]

Me too, the editors of the magazines have tried ramming prototype, research, operating sessions, and narrow gauge logging down the readers throat and then they ask why they have a declining readership. Tell a lie long enough and people start to believe it? The rivet counters have taken over the media. FRED

[CNJ831]

I have to agree with Dave on this one. Most layouts I've had occasion to visit have been free lance. MR did one of its rather unscientific polls regarding this question not too long ago and, as I recall, better than half of those responding said they were free-lancers.

CNJ831

[dknelson]

I see plenty of free lanced layouts on layout tours but not so many in the magazines, which might tell us more about magazine editors than about what modelers are really doing .
dave nelson

[Anonymous]

Is there less interest in pure free lanced model railroads? By pure I mean fictional railroad companys running through fictional towns. I don't see as many free lanced model railroads as I used to.

What do you think?