Freelancing For Today's Model Railroader

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I decided to start a new thread for this topic. Big Daddy made this response in a different thread about Testors paints:

Please, I do not want this to become a talk about “Real” model railroaders, or anything like that. I want to talk about freelancing today and how it compare to yesterday.

I am a freelancer…period. I am not a proto-lancer, free-reality, or reality-inspired model railroader. The STRATTON AND GILLETTE is fake. It exists in fake region, in a fake world, where it interchanges with other fake railroads, and the whole thing should have a pseudo-fantasy feel when it is complete.

I make no statements for where the SGRR is, or even if it is in the United States.

The only thing we know for sure about the SGRR is that it only exists on Tuesday, August 3rd, 1954, at 2:00 in the afternoon.

So that is my railroad, it is mine, it is what it is.

I created the SGRR over 35 years ago when I was in High Sc

2

I guess it depends on how deeply you go into the free lance world.

My free lanced short line uses locos with patched out lettering and numbering. A little sanding or scraping, acrylic touch up paint mixed to match or even slightly off to get the typical patched look, and minimal decals.

If I paint the entire loco, it just a single color dip paint scheme with block lettering. Krylon rattle can and block letter decals and I’m good. I don’t have free lanced rolling stock.

3

I don’t even go that far. Fact is ;I don’t have a name for my RR. I run trains just for the fun of it.

So am I a ‘‘sub’’ free lancer ? Or don’t I count at all?

4

Since I’m still new to the hobby, I bought what I knew from my area – BNSF and UP.

However, after reading the Forum for a while and seeing pictures on the Weekend Photos, I’m considering a small attempt at some free-lancing.

I’ve been going over and over thinking about a name and symbol.

I’m a big 1950s science fiction fan, and I’ve considered trying a name that connects with that.

I don’t know. This is all just thinking right now. I’m pretty lazy in retirement, and it may be more work than I’m willing to do.

5

As a free-lancer myself, I use Tamiya spray can paint (which has a finer nozzle / spray than most ‘big box’ store paints) as my railroad’s colors. Red-Brown for freight cars, Bright Red for cabooses, Olive Drab for heavyweight passenger cars, and two shades of blue for diesels and lightweight passenger cars.

I agree about decals. I still have a fair number of Don Manlick decals, but haven’t found anyone to make new ones. I gave some DM decals to the folks at San Juan Model Co. at the Nat’l Narrow Gauge convention in 2018 to see if they could do the custom decals for me, still waiting to hear back from them!

6

I’ll address each of these points.

  1. I make my own decals. So far I’ve only done so on a lim
7

Freelancing. It’s fun if you can think up a good “legend” for your road, and perhaps a time period (do you want to run steam or not?) And a name that catches your fancy. And some good names for cities and towns, important industries, rivers, lakes, etc. And you want to enjoy painting and lettering and decaling. Freight trains only need home road (your free lance road) name on locomotives and cabeese and a couple of freight cars. The rest of the cars can be interchange cars from any factory painted prototype road that strikes your fancy. Passenger trains can have a lot of Pullmans and other prepainted road sleepers and baggage, but you ought to letter the coaches for your home road.

Custom Decals: I read (I haven’t tried it yet) that you can make your own decals on your computer and print them onto special decal paper on an ordinary ink jet printer. One hangup, inkjet printers don’t print white. I lettered my freelance cars with ordinary 1/8 inch alphabet decals or rub on transfer alphabets. Plenty of roads just lettered the road name on the sides of their cars, they didn’t bother with graphic heralds except on locomotives, and often not even them.

You don’t need undecorated models. You can strip the paint off a prepainted model shell. Just soak it in 91% alcohol for some hours, maybe over night and the factory paint will come right off with a little scrubbing from an old tooth brush. You may be able to find a good paint match and paint over car numbers and road names and the patch over doesn’t show. I did this on a set of BB GP38’s. My Floquil B&M blue matched the Athearn factory B&M blue perfectly.

Rattle cans. I am conserving my stash of Floquil by using rattle cans as much as possible. Krylon and Rustoleum red auto primer makes a fine box car red, a good color for freight car trucks, and a fine brick red.&

8

Call me wrong and a pessimist, but the current generation of modelers are more and more verging on the “pay more, run RTR, no tinkering” type. Ive been finding more and more expensive engines that just have a broken wire, a backwards wheel(causing short), and forgotten decoder address on ebay, selling for 1/2 the price. Really simple issues that every modeler will encounter, and should know how to fix. Yet they dont. Car and engine kits are long gone, replaced with the newest ready to run, with sound and smoke. If so much as a little detail is bent, or a scratch in the paint, some customers will complain.

Now Im aware that theres many knowledgable modelers out there, and kits on ebay and train shows are everywhere, but seeing the transistion to RTR is pretty clear, I dont see the demand for undec engines, paint, and custom decals(or even brass detail parts) increasing anytime soon.

Its a shame, and maybe not true, but in my eyes, it seems so.

On the plus side, that’s just more engines on Ebay for me!

Charles

PS personally, I would like to model a freelanced railroad, but my skills on painting and detailing are dreadful as of the moment. However, Im working on improving them, especially during the coronvirus summer break, now that I got time. Maybe Ill go freelance one day!

9

This was the same boat I found myself in a few years back when the opportunity came to actively re-enter the hobby. My move from the armchair to the basement had always been planned to be a freelanced line connected to and probably owned by the NYC, as I always liked the NYC. When I had last been actively modeling, undecorated locos and rolling stock wasn’t that hard to come by. When I returned I realized that had all changed without me noticing. My layout now is a freelanced NYC branch.

10

I’m like Kevin, I have what I need for the rest of my life in terms of decals from Rail Graphics.

I would pass on a new freelanced railroad today, but not for lack of fantasies, of which I have many.

I don’t want to be exposed to any more solvent paints. If people wore solvent badges like radiologists wore xray badges to measure exposure. I would be prohibited anyway.

The detail in modern loco is enormous, windshield wipers, window trim. I do not have the skills to do the extremely detailed painting or removing and painting tiny details. You can watch youtube reviews of various new locos, and the reviewer can hardly get it out of the box without finding loose parts or breaking something.

11

This is the crux of it. Are you willing to accept what you yourself can do even when it’s not as good as RTR. Granted over time your skills may improve, but are you willling to put in the time? In the meantime will you be happy with what you can do?

And if you are building a layout larger than say 10x10, do you have the time? My current under construction layout is 13x36, I use as much RTR as is available. Loosely following the Ma&Pa RR is faster than modeling a free lance railroad.

Paul

12

I have posted the story of where the names “Stratton” and "Gillette"came from before.

On the layout, six cities are represented, only two are actually on the layout.

Centerville: Biggest city on the layout, from an epsiode of the Twilight Zone.

Port Annabel: Name inspired by John Allen.

East staging goes to Great Divide, also inspired by John Allen.

West staging goes to Manchester, inspred by George Sellios.

I have not settled on names for the cities for staging to the North and South yet. I might not. Since these are double tracked mainlines, it can be assumed that several cities are along that route.

-Kevin

13

I am most definitely a freelancer. As I have locomotives and rollingstock from multiple eras and road names, (and would not give any of them up for the world), the idea behind both my temporary dining room table layout and future layout plans is something along the lines of the ultimate railroad museum. I like watching trains run, and I like the wide variety of locomotives and equipment out there. I even have some British equipment. (Hogwarts Express) If I had to start over, I wouldn’t change a thing except for doing a few things better with skills I learned later on. As for the supplies I need/use, it’s anything and everything that is suitable, and usually obtained locally. Also, just for the record, I’m a younger modeler at the age of 29.

14

I think it is amazing that the decals, paint, and undecorated car kits all had to come from different sources. These companies all had an interconnected existence.

Now that freelancing is unpopular, there is little chance that it will be able to come back. Why would someone start making decals if modelers cannot get a good supply of undecorated kits? Why make undecorated kits if no one is going to decorate them?

-Kevin

15

Hi Kevin, Interesting Topic. Possibly a good, inspiring example of a Free-lance Model RR would be Eric Brooman’s ‘Utah Belt’ HO scale model? There are instances (on another Forum) where subscribers have asked, “where is the prototype UB R/R”, because they can’t find it on Google. Proving it aint what you do, its the way that… but also proof that Freelance MRRs are not to be relegated.

I did consider free-lancing, but the CSS&SB Freight is my first USA MRR and I don’t know enough about the Country let alone its Railroads and how they operate and so chose a prototype.

But had I wanted to freelance, I would have done it. Nothing or nobody would have stopped me. Certainly not Paints or Decals. You get a lot more Modeller’s Licence, for one thing. It might be easier modelling a Free-lance? Hence;

Luckily, I found “Switchline Decals” (online) who produced and mailed to me, the full range of CSS&SB GP38’s. I will use whatever Tamiya ‘near enough’ Orange, that I can get my hands on, here in the UK. That’s after I have stripped the Yellow & Blue Livery from my Santa-Fe GP38’s. Seems a bit like the Free-lancing Obstacle-course of today - I can’t compare with the past?

Of course, I could buy some of Atlas’s recent CSS&SB GP38’s, but I would have to import them, at great expense.

Freight & Passenger Cars, I modify, detail & repaint mostly old (cheap) models/kits from ebay-uk or Model Railway Exhibitions. Again, anything I can get my hands on, that is applicable and/or offers potential.

The standard of modelling in the photos you submit to the community shows me that you have no problem with acheiving good results. It’s not all or just - down to the quality of the Paints & Decals you are using-up, from your old supplies.

Eric Brooman constanly updates his Loco & Stock portfolio and along with the inspiring ‘Utah Belt’, he just gets on with it

16

Eric Boorman’s layout is a work of art. I used to think the scenery was fanciful, but when I drove through Utah last year I found out it is completely realistic.

I have the 1954 UTAH BELT represented in my fleet of freight cars.

-Kevin

17

I don’t think that would necessarily be a deterrent to someone who really wants to model a given locomotive or car. I’ve been trying to cobble together a small fleet of Colorado Midland Railway locos, and when I find suitable candidate loco it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s undecorated or not. I just paint it and make my own decals. I’d say it just depends on one’s modeling skills and how much effort they wnat to put into it.

18

I proto-freelance, in that I have a fictional route, that interchanges with multiple real lines, with trackage rights for a couple of those lines as well.

My route has very little of their own equipment, just a couple of locomotives, and a handful of used MOW cars and equipment. Locomotives will be a single color paint with decal striping and block lettering. (Microscale makes these, as do others.) MOW will just be patch job ballast hoppers, and a patched caboose as a shoving platform. (And the CMX and centerline track cleaners.)

Everything else is real lines equipment.

So, it’s easy to proto-freelance a line, even with the modern selection.

19

I have some freelance companies on my railroad, complete with rolling stock and sometimes even vehicles. I named the small railroad that services the carfloat area the Westport Terminal Railroad, after the layout of one of our late forum members, Wolfgang Dudler.

My layout mostly runs Milwaukee equipment, but I do like a few fantasy items to tie the structures to the trains a bit better. For these, I use either undecorated cars or rattle can spray over something cheap like an Athearn BB ice bunker reefer. I print my own decals on my computer.

My trolley and buses are decorated for my Moose Bay Transit Authority, again, starting with an undecorated kit, painting with rattle can paint and decaling done on my computer.

20

I’ve had three 50 sheet custom dry transfer sets from C-D-S, and two custom decal sets, 25 sheets each, from Rail Graphics. One of the latter was a tribute to a fellow model railroader and friend who had passed away, and I sold most of those sets (at cost) to other modellers wanting to honour him.
However, I friend sent me several decal sheets of lettering for a shortline railroad, of which he had been Manager before his retirement. Here’s a car, not yet weathered, lettered with those decals…

I thought the yellow lettering to be very vibrant (many yellow decals can be rather washed-out-looking), but when I looked at the lettering under magnification, using a jewller’s loupe, there appeared to be very small dots of red in it. I contacted the maker, Circus City Decals, asking them about the red dots, and in particular, asking if they contribute to the vibrancy.
I was surprised by a very prompt reply, apologising for the dots, and adding that they were not supposed to be there…the dots were actually magenta, and otherwise unnoticeable. I was offered replacement sets, at no cost, but quickly responded, letting them know that a friend had ordered the decals, and merely gave me a couple of sets, so any replacements should go to him.

I am sharing this information, mainly to emphasise that not only are the decals very well-done, but that Circus City definitely stands behind their products.

Here’s a [url=https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&s