Hi all
It has been said Railroad Modelling is a broad church with many pews and room for all.
This leads to the interesting philosophical question when does a Train layout cease to be a train set and become a model railroad.
What is it that set's us apart from those who are interested in train set operations etc. side of things and have there own equally valid train hobby niche
Particularly when the broader public thinks we all play with train sets.
Your views on this would be of interest.
regards John
... When it cannot be quickly and easily dismantled and put away.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
I don't think it has a physical definition... Like beauty, it is all in the eye of the beholder and what the view invokes in each individual. What one calls a toy train, might very well be a real RR to another.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
If it is set up to be run temporarily and then taken down and put away, it is a train set. If it is mounted on some type of bench work to be left up permanently, it is a model railroad layout.
That is how I have always looked at it.
The first time you look at it, and say "You know, that ______________ is NOT to scale..."
Remember: In South Carolina, North is southeast of Due West... HIOAg /Bill
One could argue that a train set is an integral box of stuff you buy, so that it ceases to be a train set the first time you add track or rolling stock or structures beyond what came in that box, even if the track remains unattached.
That raises the point that if one guy goes to the LHS and buys a train set off the shelf, and another guy goes in and buys the exact same stuff but buys it separately -- so there is not one iota of difference in terms of trains, track, power source -- does one have a train set and the other one, not? Just because the boxes are different? That seems to make no sense so perhaps there is something wrong with my initial definition.
Maybe the difference is really in the state of mind of the owner.
All I know is this: when visitors say they want to see "your train set" I take them down into the basement. If they say they want to see "your model railroad" I take them down into the basement. The only difference is in the quality of gin I pour for them when we get back upstairs.
Dave Nelson
I think it's not so much WHAT as WHO and WHY.
A train set is something that comes in a box bought by Grandma for Grandson's Christmas/Birthday... that will, with a (very) little work, assemble into a minimalist model railroad.
From Grandson's point of view, that train set becomes a model railroad as soon as he wraps his hot little hand around a control and makes the wheels start to roll.
If, on the morning after New Years, the whole goes back into boxes and stays there until a week before next Christmas, it's a train set.
If Grandson insists on putting his little empire on a permanent board (even if it's kept under his bed) and runs it every time he has the chance, it's a model railroad - and Grandson is a model railroader.
Fast forward three quarters of a century. Grandma is long dead, that first train set went to a cousin now also dead, Grandson is now Great-Grandpa and the empire is slowly but surely spreading nickle-silver tentacles across the steel stud benchwork. As far as I was concerned, even before I could talk, I was always running a MODEL RAILROAD.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I would venture to say that there is a continuum of possibilities here One could say that it becomes a model railroad once it is placed on a permanent structure, irrespective of complexity. A friend of mine as a child had a true "Plywood Central"; it was a couple of loops of track, with the odd siding, laid on an unfinished board. And my friend was quite clear that he had no intention of landscaping, adding structures, or doing any improvements what so ever to the "layout". All he was interested in was running his trains.
OTOH, I have a holiday display layout that spends 11 months of the year in a disassembled state. But when it is in operation it is very well detailed with structures, landscaping, figures and vehicles. So where does that fall on the spectrum?
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
John BusbyThis leads to the interesting philosophical question when does a Train layout cease to be a train set and become a model railroad.
Maybe the first time you look at something on the layout and remove it because it doesn't "fit in" with what you're doing. At that point you're trying to do something specific, rather than just collecting random stuff.
Train set - locomotive, three or four cars, some track, and a power supply sold in a box by importer/manufacturer and set up on a flat surface, usually running on an oval of track.
Layout - same as above, or individually purchased items of similar, worse, or better quality, running on tracks that came with the train set or purchased separately, with a power supply also purchased separately, wired more complexly, and the track layout is more complex, often larger, than that of a simple oval. There are often elevations, scenery, structures, and some operational capability.
Model/model layout - similar to a layout, but in this case there has been research and a concerted effort to actually represent, in scale, a location, even if necessarily in compressed form. The terrain and vegatation will be reminiscent, sometimes very highly, and the structures will look most familiar to those who know the area. The tracks will be laid to resemble the trackage in that locale with the some or all of the operational realities of that area. In most instances, people who go to these lengths will also acquire highly representative locomotives and rolling stock used in that locale, or they will will modify what they can acquire, or they must create those items from scratch.
Notice that my description becomes successively more involved in order to describe the more involved nature of each more involved way to enjoy toy trains.
-Crandell
When you weather it
Have fun with your trains
Well, that's true as well. It would be part 'n parcel of the 'modelling', just like painting and weathering a structure or piece of rolling stock, or....that essentially criminal form of ego-centric painting on the sides of rolling stock.
The objective of a 'model' layout would, to my way of thinking, have a person who lives in the area remark on how 'realistic' it is. That would elicit a wide smile from a 'modeller'.
I have to disagree with whoever said it is a trainset when it is easily taken down and stored, and that a model railroad is permantaly set up. There are some model railroads are modular and are built to be transported easily. A simple oval track glued to a 4x8 table would be considered a train set (unless you are working on adding scenery).
vsmith When you weather it
A low blow.
I have had a 25' x 42' layout in place for 10 years, fully landscaped and ballasted.
But I have never weathered a single structure, loco, or rolling stock.
Weathering is not the difference between a train set and a model railroad layout.
Rich
Alton Junction