SERIOUS THREAD - into trains but know nothing?

[ñiao]

Hey, I am one of those guys who don't know nuffin' about trains, and still build a layout. For me, the landscape is more important than the train. However, although I am freelancing, I do some research of the area my layout is situated at (somewhere in the hills along the Ohio River).

The esthetic is more important to me than the technical part.

... but to each his own. 

[lashedup]

I like TrainCat2's post. Only I'm several rivets short of a full pack  : : :. The thing that continues to bother me is the seeming intolerance toward people who have an approach to modeling. Call me old fashioned. I'm working on a kit for an RPO. I'm studying old topographical maps to better understand the route my chosen RR would have taken. I have a logical locomotive and equipment roster for the line.  But if someone enjoys running double stacks behind steam, let him have their fun. It's not like skiing, or shooting. You do something like that, and nobody gets hurt. Frank

Frank put it just about perfect. There are different levels of enthusiasm for any given hobby, usually dictacted by your personal time, money and expectations for what you want to get out of it. That doesn't make you any less of an enthusiast of a given hobby, nor does it give anyone the right to judge you differently just because your preferences differ from someone else.

Believe me, I don't expect people to do half the crazy things I do.

So long as you're having fun, it doesn't matter what other people think. Life is just too short...

- jamie

[engineshop]

After reading most of this thread, I just could not hold back anymore.

If somebody likes to watch a steam engine pulling a string of bombardier passenger cars behind it, with a FRED attached to a caboose, so be it. This is a hobby where everybody can go as far as he/she wants. If you like to know more about trains and you buy around 150 railroad books from all over the world that is fine too (needs an awful lot of room, let me tell you), but if you don't know the difference between PBS and BNSF that should be all right as well.

Of course I believe if anybody is serious about trains and locomotives, he or she should have at least worked 5 years for a major locomotive manufacturer, with a father that spend 44 years there. But that is just the level I believe you have to go to claim to take this hobby seriously.

[asciibaron]

the point of my post has nothing with what is prototypical, but rather, the person knowing nothing about trains.  i'm not talking rivet detail, i'm talking much less specific - like trains change tracks with turnouts not steering wheels.  yes, i know someone who has model trains and believed that's how they changes tracks - he also believed they had gear shifters and clutches like a truck. 

-steve

[wm3798]

Oh great, Steve.  Next you're going to tell me that they don't have radial tires!
Sheesh!

Lee

[cuyama]

i'm not talking rivet detail, i'm talking much less specific - like trains change tracks with turnouts not steering wheels.  yes, i know someone who has model trains and believed that's how they changes tracks - he also believed they had gear shifters and clutches like a truck. 

I'm new here, so I probably shouldn't be taking issue with the forum luminaries ... but .... who cares? For most people, it's a hobby, right? Not ascetic self-purification through discipline and rigor.

It would seem to me to be a better use of our time and energy to inform and inspire newcomers, who coincidentally will buy lots of stuff -- creating the volume that helps improve the availability and costs for all of us.

I did a layout design a while back for a guy who wanted a Warner Brothers-themed layout (yeah,the cartoons). It would send most of the pinched-face prototype purists screaming for the exits. But he enjoys it, his family enjoys it -- and is that such a bad thing? [I'm quite sure he doesn't know (or care) if there are shifters on F-7s.]

I've also done extremely accurate prototype-focused designs. Those owners enjoy them, too.

I think there's plenty of room in the hobby for multiple approaches.

Byron

[3rdrail]

i'm not talking rivet detail, i'm talking much less specific - like trains change tracks with turnouts not steering wheels.  yes, i know someone who has model trains and believed that's how they changes tracks - he also believed they had gear shifters and clutches like a truck. 

I'm new here, so I probably shouldn't be taking issue with the forum luminaries ... but .... who cares? For most people, it's a hobby, right? Not ascetic self-purification through discipline and rigor.

It would seem to me to be a better use of our time and energy to inform and inspire newcomers, who coincidentally will buy lots of stuff -- creating the volume that helps improve the availability and costs for all of us..............

..................I think there's plenty of room in the hobby for multiple approaches.

Byron

You're not taking issue with anyone. I believe if you read the other replies you'll see  most of them are saying essentially the same thing you are, just phasing it differently.

[pnolan48]

I admire hobbyists with great knowledge of the prototype. I'm not one of them, and doubt I'll ever have the time or interest to learn 1/100th of what they know. I've made a reasonable attempt, by my standards, to learn about the PRR in the mid-1950s, and to keep somewhat attuned to what's happening today. I stretch my timeframe a bit in both directions in terms of steam (early 1950s) and diesels (up to the early 1960s). And I keep learning. My 32-car fleet of beer can tankers is prototypically out-of-era. I didn't know that when I bought them, but I still run them, as few of my guests know that. After 35 years in N-scale, it's been just in the last few years that I've scrutinized rolling stock the same way I do locos.

I'm not proud of my lack of knowledge about trains. I learn what I have time to learn. I know much more about bridges and ships because I started building them much later in life, when the Internet could provide me most of the details I needed.

I agree there is a continuum. I enjoy the space I'm in within this continuum. There are, to me, no horrible layouts. I ran, as a kid, Santa Fe freights and New Haven passengers on that proverbial 5 x 9 sheet of plywood, which also served as a ping-pong table. We had just enough switches for a double loop with cross-overs, and two sidings for Lionel accessories such as the stockyard and lumber yard.

That's what got me into N-scale 15 years later. That's what will get youngsters today--a begineer's layout with all sorts of attractive engines and a mixed bag of rolling stock--into the hobby today.