I was watching "All aboard the greatest HO layouts the other day andwhen I got to the segment on the Furndale Model Railroad I noticed that many of the signs for business displayed took on such a different meaning once you sounded them out loud and realised what was being said. That led me to wonder if other modelers are being bad boys and girls.
This is nothing new–you can see examples of that sort of backhanded ribaldry in MR articles from the Fifties. Craftsman kits for movie theaters included playbills for “Nelda the Nudist”, a drive-in theater kit labeled the “Passion Pit”, etcetera.
My layout is pretty wholesome, although it may eventually include bars and streetwalkers in more developed forms–because those things were certainly around on the prototype. I just haven’t really had time yet to incorporate this sort of wackiness into my layout. My prototype city was notorious for its many taprooms and houses of ill repute in the transition era–to not represent at least a hint of such things would be untrue to the prototype, even though modern-day Sacramento is in many ways even more blue-nosed than it was…
Heck, take a look at those old Warner Bros. cartoons from the Thirties through the Fifties–the double entendre is rife throughout those, since they were intended for both adult and child audiences. The kids simply didn’t get most of the sexual/adult references because they didn’t understand the context and just laughed at the guy getting hit in the head with an anvil.
Personally I’d consider that sort of subtle double-entendre more appropriate, and more interesting, than simply plopping a pair of “Adam & Eve” miniatures onto a passenger platform.
Since the early planning for my layout took place in Germany, my son insisted that the town being named for him included one of the German “HAPPY HOUSES”. It does right down to the girls in the window.
My layout will always be strictly ‘G’ rated, and not because of my kids – the youngest is 20-years-old. I just don’t really see any purpose to it. There are many times and places in my life where I enjoy a little ‘sexual content’, but NOT when I am playing with my trains. [:P]
It is almost sacrilege to even THINK of it.!! [(-D]
My future layout will represent the time period that I grew up in, however**, it will be minus the R and X rated stuff.**
I’m not being hypocritical as I’ve had my share of adult content, but I see this stuff everyday on the streets and even at work (as a teacher, I get to overhear 14 -17 year old kids regularly talking XXX lingo! Good Grief! [B)] Some liberal parents that I talk to think it’s no big deal! ).
[;)][8D][:)] I’d rather not be reminded of it when I’m relaxing and running trains on my railroad. It’s my own little world away from the grinds. Here long passenger trains are packed, freight railroads are too busy, and the streets, while showing cracks, are clean.[:D]
Non modeling visitors to modelers homes often enjoy looking at model railroad layouts. If kids are present, I would definetly like to show them a layout without having to wonder if it’s too “risque”.
NO WAY. I am 12 years old and I have 2 younger brothers. my layout will represent a small town in the 50’s and I would like to have a nice, pleasent, happy atmosphere. I have briefly come in contact with such things, and I regret it.
I don’t have any kids (I’m 17), but regardless of whether I did or not, my layout is and will remain G-rated. I go to school and like AntonioFP45, I her a lot of simmilar things coming from students and myself would rather not be reminded of it all when I run my layout. I’ve always considered model railroading to be a good, wholeome hobby and like to keep it that way.
[#ditto][#ditto][#ditto]
Only I’m 12.
As a full blown pervert, even I think it’s pretty silly or pointless to do it.
For some reason, I pretty much equate model trains with innocence. shrug Even though they aren’t toys, i like how they bring me back to when I was a kid when I first saw them and the awe that they inspired, and as a young teen when I first tried brealing into the hobby… Of course after a few beers, I might change my tune and find the humor in a package store named “Beaver Liquors” on a layout.
Signed,
Son of liberal parents.
[:D]
I’ve never really had too many buildings or scenes on my layouts, but maybe I will include a scene with something of this sort on the one I’m starting next month.
Strictly G-rated. I have grandkids (which were not mentioned in the poll, BTw)[:(][;)]
Like others have mentioned, I live with R rated stuff in my daily life. I would like one area where no one is surprised (ala Super Bowl). The closest thing to off-color in my kingdom is some cussing when I make a mistake ( and that’s only when no one else is there).
End of sermon!
G-rated all the way (though I don’t have kids). I want to escape the realities of day living, not copy it. Sexuality has it’s place, just not in my hobby.
We live in a world where there is more than enough crime, vulgarity, sexual inuendo, etc., etc. . . I don’t need it in my model railroad too!
G-rated all the way. I never thought of anything else until i read this thread. As another teacher I fully understand where AntonioFP45 and Sask-Tinplate are coming from. I hear and see enough of it at school I don’t need to carry it to my hobby.[:)]
I model the period 1900-1915, aka the Progressive Era. There were manners and mores then. My humor tends toward political irony and my various layouts have reflected it. For example my premier dining car is named the “President Taft” a parlor car the “Alice Roosevelt”, my Doheney Oil tank farm was located in “Elk Hill”, an oil- fired tank engine named the “Albert B. Fall”. One of my barges was named the “Harry Bridges”. Currently I am working on a Spanish revival station to be located at “Las Pulgas”.
Randy
Not planning anything “Risque” on my layout - it is exhibited at shows where such things would probably not go down too well with younger visitors, and also I don’t really see the point. I’m no prude, but I’m not interested in modelling “adult” scenes, I’d rather build some more interesting structures (am planning a carfloat terminal on my next extension module, as well as one or two of those new Walthers low-profile buildings. Float bridge will be undergoing renovation - excuse to run plenty of unusual loads on flatcars!). I guess a bar might make an appearence, but it will be in the form of the museum’s cafe.
To be honest, I’m not really planning on having anything particularly risque’ on my layout either. I don’t consider a bar to be particularly verboten, and even if I do end up putting “streetwalkers” on a section of the layout, it’ll just look like a lady standing under a lamppost to any pre-adolescent visitor to my layout–and most post-adolescents, too. If I do model downtown streets they’ll probably be lost in the crowd of daytime businesspeople/night-time revelers I have planned for that section of the layout.
One thing I’m considering putting in, only because it is one of my most vivid childhood memories of downtown Sacramento, is a room inside a downtown building, most likely some sort of locker room or private office, whose walls were virtually covered with pin-up girls.
I saw this through a window in some downtown building while waiting to be led on a tour of the county courthouse downtown–I was maybe 9 or 10 and just happened to peer into an intriguing-looking ground floor window. This would be perhaps 1978 or 1979–but, despite the era, the pictures on the wall weren’t Playboy or Penthouse centerfolds, they were much older 40’s-50’s things like Vargas prints and WWII cheesecake pin-ups and calendar art. Being a mere lad at the time, I just sort of goggled at the room full of archaic pulchritude, not quite sure what to think of it. I was already quite smitten with downtown Sacramento even at that age, with the old buildings and the everpresent sound of trains rumbling in the distance and the undercurrent of quiet decay (which can still be felt at certain spots in downtown to this day, while the sound of trains never left) and filed the memory away for further contemplation.
In modern model railroading parlance, such a display should be easy to conjure up with high-resolution inkjet printers and the ready availability of such images. Reduced to HO scale they’d be maybe an eighth to a quarter of an inch high, and inside a building, probably large enough to be discern
As their are no kids visiting my layout, and as it is a Bawdy desert minig town, OF COURSE there’s going to be a Saloon and a Bordelo. “Madame Orr’s House” complete with Shady Ladies and maybe a few funny surprises for the nosey.
Sheesh, I’m laughing my head of at all these “my timeframe was so wholesome” replies, HAHAHAHA! Go read your history books on the period, This kind of activity was going on all the time. Their were police that were on the take in almost every US city right up to today to look the other way. OK if you want to cling to the believe that the past was all “Ozzie and Harriet” in reality the Truth was far more interesting than the Fiction and I want to model that onto my layout.
If you’ve got kids, kids that visit or a portable layout then having a G rated layout is completely understood.
I just want to model reality, not a fantasy, its far more interesting…
Weird, I never even thought about it…
I’m a teacher too and I’m constantly amazed at how R and X rated even Jr. High can be.
If one wanted to add a cheesecakey touch without going beyond the boundaries of a PG rating, and one modeled the Sixties or Seventies, one could simply include a photographer miniature and a young-woman miniature (perhaps in a mini-skirt, but clothed) near the railroad tracks–RAILROAD MAGAZINE regularly featured shots of young women (clothed) with trains in the background, which was often a subject of much controversy on their letters page.