Filosophy Phriday 14/3/25

Model Railroader
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We all have to pick our battles as to what we can do when it comes to our layouts. Time is a valuable commodity. Some will spend hours putting down hand laid track, scratch building rolling stock and everything else. There is even the old joke of “I even grow my own trees and use the wood from those for ties and structures on my layout”.

I was given two large boxes of various buildings from an Estate a while ago, some of them are pretty nice, others not so great, regardless I don’t want to put any of them on my layout even though it needs more structures to populate its vast emptiness. For some reason I don’t want to put any building on my layout that I have not built, whether from scratch or a kit.

Is it just me or are there others out there that draw the line at what goes on the layout? Home brew, a kit or store bought ready to go out of the box. The one exception I would make is if something was a scratch build or even built from a kit that came from a friend.

How do you feel about what does and doesn’t go on the layout? There is no right or wrong response.

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I desperately need structures - want to send them to me, Batman? :grin:

My big thing is to not have many Walthers structures on my layout, and no “RTR” structures at all. Walthers kits are mediocre at best, but the main reason for not wanting many of them is because so many people have them! RTR structures are like RTR rolling stock - no thanks. I like to build.
My favored structures are either scratchbuilds or old kits from the 50’s and 60’s that I pick up at train shows. Pedigree on those isn’t nearly as obvious as most of the current production stuff.

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I have that little station by Atlas that everyone seems to have, I am not a big fan of it, however, it was given to me by a dear friend on my 50th Birthday and it will stay on the layout. It isn’t even finished yet. LOL.
There it is.

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I wont leave new rolling stock/locos on my layout til i have detailed/weathered/changed couplers/metal wheelsets on them. They may get a photo shoot when new but then head to “the shops”. Sometimes it may be a year before they get worked on dang it.

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OK, I am a builder for the most part - but I have fully embraced the idea of saving time in some areas to allow for time to be spent in others.

And thereby allow a larger layout to be built more quickly to some level of visual completion.

I buy kits of every type, and with rolling stock I buy my share or RTR too.

Price alone has kept me from RTR structures, so it does not even matter how I feel about them otherwise.

IF a completed used structure came alone at the right cost, that truly fit the scheme of things, I would consider it. I was not in on this process, my life was rather busy at the time, but a senior member of our local group dismantled his layout and now a long list of beautiful, mostly scratch built structures are on other members layouts.

I do have some kit rolling stock that I acquired already built - old stuff, Varney metal cars, etc.

I don’t go looking for stuff like that, but if it pops up and is good work, I will generally grab them, even if they need a little fixing.

Like Pruitt, I also buy lots of 50’s, 60’s, 70’s stuff “new old stock” - old structure kits - Revell, Campbell, Alexander Scale Models, Suydam, etc.

Back in the 60’s there was a company that made nice ready made structures called “Ideal”. I have the cutest little Cape Cod they made.

There are lots of “vintage” structures waiting to get on my new layout, some built, some still unbuilt.

Sheldon

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A Penny’s worth of philosophy: model railroading is all about pudding.

Pudding this here, pudding that there…:shamrock::grin::shamrock:

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The Bear, who seriously wonders if he is actually going to build his “own” layout; at the occasional shows he attends, does keep an eye out for buildings, either already built by someone else or in kit form, but has never found anything that catches his eye!

A friend who owns a laser cutting business has made the offer that any building I design, he’ll cut. I have a definite picture of the style of buildings I want, so it’s a good deal except that I’m going to have to teach myself Corel Draw or similar programme, if I want to achieve that “different” look.
So, being a Technological Luddite, how much time am I going to waste going down that path. Am I kidding myself?

That said, when the Club closed its doors, I did grab several N scale buildings and structures that were destined for the rubbish bin which will go on the small, simple N scale layout that I hope to build this winter for the adopted grandsons.

Good to see a Filosophy Phriday topic again, Batman, thanks.
Cheers, the Bear. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Reading through the replies so far, I see where modelers are passionate about scratch building, weathering, etc.

When it comes to structures, there are scratch builts, kits and built ups. I neither scratch build nor weather, and I have no desire to start now. Building styrene plastic kits are just fine by me for the structures.

When it comes to rolling stock, RTR meets all of my needs. Once again, no weathering.

As for locomotives, same thing, no weathering.

Rich

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I have scratch built a handful of buildings for areas where I am modeling a specific prototype. The rest are kits of various types, including plastic and laser cut wood. Most of those are painted to a realistic color and weathered to suit my taste for the area. As for rolling stock, I’ve never weathered any of them myself, though I have a nephew that is quite good at it, especially applying graffiti. He has done this to a dozen or so of the fleet.

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Normally I’m fairly picky, but I’ve posted photos of two structures my wife gave me for birthday or Christmas. Even though they don’t fit with what I like, I put them on the layout anyway.

When I started, I didn’t know about scratch building. I bought a kit, put it together, and when finished, I thought I could have made that from scratch. I never turned back, and scratch building structures has become my favorite part of the hobby.

I have never put together a kit of rolling stock – I think I’d like to try that.

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I’m just starting out, so my layout only exists in my head and in my computer, but I did purchase some Walthers kits (apparently much to my future disappointment reading some posts here) for use on the layout.

Scratch building is a whole foreign world to me, at least until I have something concrete down.

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Nonsense! Walthers kits are just fine.

Rich

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When I started building my layout I made a list of what must be on the layout. I have stood very close to that list.

Most of my buildings were made of card and stood the test of time. That is until recently. Thirty plus years old buildings are showing their age. Now I am replacing them (slowly) with resin ones as they become available and suitable.

David

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Walther’s kits are fine. Even better, many of them lend themselves well to kitbashing. For example, their modern concrete warehouse (933-4067) has modular wall sections and I am currently using it to model a long background structure. It looks nothing like the assembled kit.

I give Walthers credit for continuing to develop plastic structure kits. Most other plastic kit lines are stagnant, with many companies turning to laser cut kits instead.

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it isn’t called model RRing for a reason, most people in the hoby are model builders. But others need to be more pragmatic if they want the model becomes alive with operation

Koester’s book discusses how innovative Allen McClelland’s V&O was, that it had staging to represent connections with other RRs, walk around throttles, CTC and uses less expensive rolling stock, locos and structures providing an adequate and consistent amount of realism

in his column, Koester described a westhering technique where he could adequately weather a car in a minute or too minimize the effort to weather 100+ cars, saving time for other things

i’m at the stage where i’d like some structures to see how things fit and where spurs should go. i had cardboard structures on my layout before i moved.

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If I could obtain a structure that fit my railroad and save a little time, on it goes. Naturally that has never happened, good quality assembled structures that fit my layout theme are very hard to find. If there was a local modeler who would scratch-build on commission, I would give that a try.

Unlike a lot of people on the forums, I don’t ask for model railroad items as gifts (I have a hard enough time coming up with gift ideas at all) so I’m never in the position of trying to use something I didn’t really want because the person buying didn’t stick to the specific request.

I look at my modeling this way: I am scratch-building a model railroad. Like most scratch-building projects, some of the materials are raw stock (lumber, wiring, scenery supplies) and some are commercial parts (track, locos and rolling stock, some structures). It’s how I put it all together that makes it my unique model railroad.

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My new layout that I just started building will need approximately 450 structures. And that is far and away the “long pole” for layout completion. If someone were to gift me 1 or 50 built structures that are reasonably appropriate I would not mind. :slight_smile:

Weathering locos/rolling stock seems to me like a slippery slope. Once you start it seems like you have to keep going. So far I have not started weathering locos/rolling stock however I have some rolling stock that I bought “pre weathered” from train shows.

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First off, this is my first post on this forum. The question struck a chord with me. When I moved from a home with a basement to one without, I found a way to get enjoyment by scratch-building just about everything on the smaller room-sized layout. I learned to hand lay track and build turnouts using a Fastrack jig and scratch built several wood cars for my Maine 2-footish railroad. I even scratch-built a few dozen Eastern White Pine trees.

I have 2 small structure kits that made it to the railroad, one was suggested by my wife. I also have a couple boxcar kits produced by a modeling friend. Everything else was scratch-built.

I’ve discovered there can be great satisfaction (for me) in the journey. Everything on the layout was built and installed by me. That is part of my hobby fun.

I know this is not possible for those of you with large layouts. But if you have a small to medium space, building more and buying less may give you joy.

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That makes good sense.

Rich

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Brent, I would keep the buildings for parts. Modifying new kits is fun and allows you to have unique structures. Otherwise, you can donate them to a club. It’s among the best donations you can make - kits are very expensive.

Simon

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