Drawings from Model Railroader

andrechapelon · January 18, 2009, 4:01pm

CNJ/Andre, I’m not saying there are no scratchbuilders out there, but based on what I see in NJ hobby shops over the past 10-15 years. There is the Model RR Shop in Piscataway, I believe one of - if not the - oldest shops in the US, and several other long established shops that no longer carry the quantity of Evergreen plastic, Plastruct, scale wood, and details they once carried. There is also the long steady decline in the number on companys producing these items. I’m “guessing” at the numbers from what I’ve seen, since there are no reliable figures as to how many are even in the hobby, as past threads have indicated.

As to the “beginners” tag, it seems to me that 10 or so kids post over & over with poor quality pics, dumb questions, and use the forum as a personal e-mail rather than PMing their comments, as well as “atta boying” eack others posts. (now watch me get censored for this!!) (I have had posts deleted because I have been “sarcastic” to one or two of them!!)

This has become an interesting dialog, and everyone certainly has, and is entitled to, their own opinion.

Any other ideas on this?

I think you’re using brick and mortar presence for hobby suppliers and the volume of print media as the standard to determine the state of hobby activity and I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it. There’s a whole lot going on out there that never hits the pages of MR or RMC and why should it? They’re limited by a monthly publishing schedule that can only produce so much usable information per print cycle. Type “model railroad scratch building” into Google and see what comes up. You’ll g

JWhite · January 18, 2009, 4:21pm

It has 20 plans for box cars, hopper cars, passenger cars, composite gondola car, a small station, timber trestle, wagon top box car and several more. I have found the plans to be timeless. Just substtute styrene and other modern materials available to us now and go to work.

lvanhen · January 18, 2009, 5:08pm

Andre, I am using the brick & mortar etc in my opinions. I just got the new cyber mag, & belong to zealot as well as civil war & up modeling groups, where scratchbuilding is often the only way to get what you want. The problem is the lack of reliable info on the “state of the hobby”. There have been numerous polls etc about where the hobby is today as opposed to the '50’s, but there seems to be no real good acurate info. WS originally made mostly cast metal kits that were basically “craftsman” type kits - filing, painting, making roofs for some, etc. Now it seems that all they are making is pre assembeled buildings to go along with their painted figures! I wish they would sell more kits than RTR, but I can no longer do something like the old Walthers wood passenger car kits, which were very akin to scratchbuilding!! Kit bashing, OTOH, is something many of us would enjoy, if there were more car kits out there!! Rolling stock is now mostly RTR, and unfortunately it looks like structures are heading the same route!! [:(]

andrechapelon · January 18, 2009, 6:52pm

Andre, I am using the brick & mortar etc in my opinions. I just got the new cyber mag, & belong to zealot as well as civil war & up modeling groups, where scratchbuilding is often the only way to get what you want. The problem is the lack of reliable info on the “state of the hobby”. There have been numerous polls etc about where the hobby is today as opposed to the '50’s, but there seems to be no real good acurate info. WS originally made mostly cast metal kits that were basically “craftsman” type kits - filing, painting, making roofs for some, etc. Now it seems that all they are making is pre assembeled buildings to go along with their painted figures! I wish they would sell more kits than RTR, but I can no longer do something like the old Walthers wood passenger car kits, which were very akin to scratchbuilding!! Kit bashing, OTOH, is something many of us would enjoy, if there were more car kits out there!! Rolling stock is now mostly RTR, and unfortunately it looks like structures are heading the same route!!

In Continental Europe, rolling stock and locos have primarily been R-T-R from the get-go AFAIK. Even so, there is some superb modeling coming out of there. I don’t personally find it a big deal that there is so much R-T-R. The problem facing kit manufacturers is that, at the packing stage, there’s got to be someone making sure that all the requisite parts are in in the kit box. The more complex the kit and the bigger the production run, the more time consuming and expensive that task is and the bigger the chance for error. Just from what I’ve been researching about CNC machinery, I have a feeling that a lot of the assembly of R-T-R items is machine done or is done with a lot of machine assistance.

“Kitbashing” doesn’t require a kit. Bill Schopp was merrily bashing RTR brass engines way back when GM was profitable and made cars people were