I love the idea of learning all listed, but one… NOT looking forward to being a Fireman!
[quote user=“riogrande5761”]
mlehman
Yeah, for anyone decrying the influence of RTR, imagine where the hobby would be if RTR wasn’t available? The last rites would be coming right up. Instead, there’s a flood of RTR that consumers seem pretty happy with. That flood is a lot like when the river floods the bottomlands 10% of the year, then recedes to leave renewed fertility the rest of the year. If we didn’t have the flood of RTR, we wouldn’t sustain the relatively smaller number of folks who do get involved in more eleborate scratchbuilding or kitbashing projects.
Hah hah, were you a geology major in the past? Your descriptions remind me of my geomorphology classes and surface water hyrology! =P Blast from the past.
I still don’t understand why people talk about RTR like it’s a bad thing or a threat to the do-it-yourself folks. It’s not a competition to see who is best - or who are “real men”. Heck, anyone who loves scratchbuilding can keep right on doing it, and many are! I still see tons of kits at train shows. I still buy them myself. I just bought some Walthers GSC flat car kits - sure I’d love ExactRails, which are gorgeous, but at $45 each, holy smokes, I just don’t have that kind of money. But I do buy RTR and it’s a big time saver and helps me model what I like.
Ultimately, most people find their own comfort level with the hobby. When they don’t they’ll likely leave it for what are perceived as greener pastures. But it’s hard to imagine a hobby as diverse in its interests and offerings as model railroading. Those in this hobby range from
Fireman - like this one:
… not this one:
I think the breadth of the hobby is as wide & encompassing as an individual modeler wants, or needs it to be. As an aside, I just don’t understand the negativity surrounding RTR.
At my rate of progress & knowing all the many projects I have undertaken that are in various stages of completion, it’s really something nice to come home with an RTR model that I can enjoy right out of the box & without the accompanying thought that there is still aways to go before the box of bits I’ve just bought is ready for the tracks.
I beleive that it is important to respect each others choices, not deride them because somebody models differently from you. In this hobby that is often characturized by a myriad of approaches to acheive the same or similar goals there are aspects of train modeling that are probably less than ideal. This is where staying on the learning cycle is so important so that it is possible to adopt modeling methods others have used to good effect. Increasing the breadth of the hobby is not just aquiring more models but is also, as many have suggested here, about leaning new skills & ways of doing things.
Dusty
The best part of this hobby is that there are so many things to be interested in.
I personally am very grateful for the excellence of RTR models… it is one of the things that has helped fuel more realistic operations! It’s easier to couple up at 4 MPH when your engine reliably runs at that speed right out of the box!