We all know at least one person, and possibly you are one yourself, that modeler that goes to extremes to make sure there model railroad is as accurate as possible, but how far should you take prototype modeling?
For example, if you are modeling modern day railroading and a locomotive that you have for a prototype road is retired, or repainted should you repaint/re-decal it to stay true to prototype, or leave it be?
Personally I believe that prototype modeling is very important, but to an existent. Repainting and re-numbering would add to the realism of your railroad, but the extra time and effort will be lost to people who have no idea that the locomotive or car was repainted to stay in your roster. Leaving me at a crossroads, how far should you take your prototype modeling?
I am interested in what others think about this subject.
The answer, as flaccid as it may be, is truly “as far as the individual wants.”
I vascilate on the subject, but stay pretty well true to time and location. Things that are not quite right bother me. But I’m willing to live with certain compromises… Modeling the PRR in the steam era in N scale is quite difficult to do correctly; very little is available off the shelf in the way it is in HO. So if it means my kitbashed steamers have to be only 85-90% there, I can live with it.
I can tell you exactly what’s not prototypical about some of my stuff (for example, my PRR X26C boxcars have one too few rivet lines on each side of the door, incorrect ends, and grabs where there should be ladders). But I am at peace with it (for now).
For every modeler, there is a line where faithfulness to prototype crosses from “fun” to “work.”
For a guy like Jack Burgess, modeling the YVRR in exacting detail on a very sepcific date (down to the day), with every rivet and line pole where it should be, that line is farther to the prototype side than most of us. I suspect for a few, it stops at when you have to build an actual brick liner for the firebox in which you’ll be burning real HO scale coal…[swg]
It’s a modeler’s choice, of course… And some freelancers come closer to the prototype than many of the so-called prototype modelers because they make informed choices about prototype practices.
I find the closer to prototype things are, the more plausible they are, and the more I enjoy looking at or operating them. But that’s just me.
How far should you take prototype modeling? As far as a person wants to take it, assuming it provides enjoyment and satisfaction to the modeler. For example I tend to be a specific prototype modeler and try to use research for information to build my models. I enjoy doing it and appreciate it when others do the same thing. Others may have a completely different attitude and be more than happy to have a layout that just barely depicts a specific railroad or is completely freelanced.
There is a point when one modeling would stop or fail to complete a model because of insufficient information. At that point, I say you have to have enough freedom to complete the model and “fill in the blanks, so to speak”.
Trying to follow a specific prototype does make model railroading more fun for me. - Nevin
To use an analagy…if you were to ask how far do we take the organizational set up of our closets you’ll get many answers ranging from-“I can open my closet without anything falling out” to “I arrange all my shirts by style, and brand, and color, and how often I wear it, and they ALL must be front side to the right hand side when on the hanger…oh, I also color code my plastic hangers as well.”
To each their own. If you are happy/satisfied with your prototypical skills who are we to say otherwise.
I suppose my first post was a bit of a cop-out. I have three layouts in various stages of development.
I have the Indiana Branch of the PRR set in 1950 that is pretty close to the prototype in terms of buildings etc. I want it to be a fairly good representation of the town and so I am doing a lot of research into what the buildings looked like, etc. I’m putting more attention on the location now than I am the trains. For now, I’m buying rolling stock that is kinda sorta close, but I plan to switch to more accurate and higher detailed rolling stock once the structures are up (and my son gets a little older.) I need only one loco to work this layout, so eventually, this loco will be a smooth runner with good sound and accurately detailed. This one is my venture into prototype modeling.
I’ve started working on an N-scale layout in that I’ve designed it. I’ve collected enough for one train and I’ve almost completed one of two scenes in the form of a diorama. This layout is strictly railfan and has no turnouts with the exception of staging. The engines and rolling stock are accurate enough for my eyes from across the room. I will be adding scale coal to the hoppers and with the cooperation of a local coal drag, I will photo and weather cars to match the prototype. I will not alter the marks other than the roadname of the coal cars as this regional RR co-opts it’s cars from other’s rejects, sprays over the name and stencils BPRR in white letters near the number. The scenery is generic and I will be able to run anything from 1950 to present without violating time zones. The 1950 is determined by a 1950 Chevy pick-up parked under a bridge. So by changing a car, I can go back to the 1920’s or so.
My 1909 Freelanced Rock Ridge and Train City is a different animal entirely as there is a lot of fantasy involved–couple with the lack of accurate equipment. I may have to make a lot of compromises just to get operations going. I’ll do what I
In concurrance with what others have said so far, I think the important point here is to always keep “your” above paragraph in the first person:
Personally I believe that prototype modeling is very important, but to an existent.
Repainting and re-numbering would add to the realism of [my] railroad, but the extra time and effort will be lost to people who have no idea that the locomotive or car was repainted to stay in [my] roster.
Leaving me at a crossroads, how far should [I] take [my] prototype modeling?
Everyone is going to take detailing and accuracy to the level that they want to and/or are comfortable with. And this will span from one extreme to the other.
It’s important to determine and set your own level of detailing and accuracy and balance it with the time that you are able to reasonably put into the hobby, without sacrificing on other more important things like family and responsibilities.
Always remember that MRRing is just a hobby and not a reason for existence.
I think that deep down everybody wants to try to be as prototypical as possible, I know I was sure trying to be but once reality set in and I realized just how far I had to go to achieve it I thought the heck with it. I enjoy running my new ONR RS3’s at the same time I run my ONR SD75I’s etc so me being prototypical went out the window. My buildings and the scenery I’ve started represent Northern Ontario very well but my large roundhouse/engine service area/museum doesn’t. I guess if you want to be prototypical then thats great but you may miss out enjoying other aspects of the hobby. Good question…
Over the years my idea of “prototype” has changed greatly. Many years ago I bought anything that had a UP logo on it. I have Armor Yellow/Harbor Mist Gray MOW equipment & 34’ “old time” passenger cars!! (Still have them - won’t give them up!!) When I was younger, I didn’t have the budget to buy steam, so most of my older cars are Athern BB, with a few AHM, and IHC locos thrown in. Today I have a few steamers with sound & DCC - a years budget when I started!! Prototype? If I ever get that “Dream Layout” built I may have different towns, each one of a different era, so I can run all my “stuff”!! Modeling a specific day/month/year? Not my idea of fun, but if that’s what toots your whistle - go to it!![swg]
I used to be a ‘is it running today?’ type of person; then I model it and this is my ‘era’. The problem became that some of the stuff I built was no longer with us any more(mergers/abandonments/etc…). I then went to modeling what I remember when I was younger. I try at times to be very correct, but again - there are thing I like and I stretch the ‘era’ to give me a reason to have them. And I am very comfortable with that decision.
That said - I really respect folks who model everything to a tight era with the correct cars/engines/scenery… What I find upsetting is the ‘blowhard’ types who talk the very proto/rivet counting line, but then do not ‘tow the line’ themselves!
Myself, I am modeling MILW/C&NW branch lines and I just want to capture ‘the flavor’ of these lines.
Speaking of Jack Burgess and his Yosemite Valley Railroad modeling the prototype as it was on August 17, 1939, in every little detail – he’s a great example of going about as far as you can go to model the prototype accurately.
Jack showed me the street in front of his main depot at Merced and then took the manhole cover off! He showed me a peephole in the fascia that you can look through and see that he has correctly modeled the proper under-the-street plumbing, complete with a removable manhole cover – in HO!
Jack also told me of one structure on his layout that has interior detail and a removable roof. He was showing the layout to some visitors and one of them happened to be a child in 1939 who lived in the house he modeled. When he took the roof off and showed it to this lady, she remarked something like: “Green bed spreads? My mother hated green and would never have put green bed spreads on the beds!”
To me, the trouble starts with the word “should”. That implies an overarching authority of some kind to which one “should” look for eventual success or approval. The trouble is, who is that to be? Should it be the 103 year old gent living six houses down who actually worked there for 34 years? How about the other way down the street to an acquaintance who models in HO also, but who has a fanciful layout that looks enormously realistic? Or, the young fella published in the modelling magazine recently whose images are so stunning that he, surely, is the go-to guy. Maybe there’s a non-modelling photo-journalist who took hours upon hours of 16mm film and thousands of trackside photos who would be a great judge of how prototypically close to real your layout must be? Or, should (there’s that word again) it be you who gets to run the show and say when it’s over?
The word should must only apply to you. You are the judge, so you should determine when enough is good enough. When you slide down the slope of looking for the approval of others, you’ll never rest because yet another someone will always have a new way of suggesting “improvements”.
I satisfy myself, and when others signify their approval I appreciate it. Such expressions merely add to my conviction that I “should” do as I do.
An interesting fact that no one has touched on is that by definition, prototype modeling is impossible. Because very few of us have the space to create a true scale scene, except in bits and pieces. Even in N scale, to exactly reproduce one mile of a prototype scene would require a layout 33 feet long. So we all have to live with some degree of selective compression or we wouldn’t have a layout at all.
Have to go with Selector, I model Santa Fe, era 1989. But as close as I try to stay, I make little side trips out of reality. For example, I bought some of the new Kato SD40-2 mid productions. They actually should be on an early to mid 90’s version of the Santa Fe as they come, but I decided to leave them alone. Then I had a dupe number, and without consulting all my ATSF records that I have accumulated over the years, I decided to change the last digit of the existing cab number. Wrong! I found out the hard way during an op session that Santa Fe had not used the number I put on. ( darn these people with photographic memory) So, those units are wrong for my era, and one is numbered wrong.
After great deliberation and thought (about 2 minutes), I decided they were “good enough” to quote a great pioneer in the hobby.
The further back in time you model, the harder it is to module with accuracy even if that is what your goal is and for me, that is an very important but secondary goal. Fortunately my primary goal is to model the feeling of the time and place and if I miss some details due to lack of data, lack of availability of prototype equipment or time and cost restraints I can live with that. I model SP in the early 1900’s in northern California and I find it very difficult to achieve any reasonable degree of rivet counting success mostly because of the lack of data no matter how much research time I expend. I will give you one example.
In 1901 the Weed Lumber Company located near the base of Mt. Shasta purchased three locomotives and began building a logging RR to the north to gather their timber cuttings. I decided to model this logging RR along with a small portion of the SP which serviced the Lumber town of Weed along the SP Siskiyou line from From Dunsmuir to Portland ( Speaking of “prototype modeling”, this is the line that Bruce Chubb chose to …" change history a little to achieve the level of traffic and motive power utilization I wanted") I started to model the logging line in 1988 and planned to build the three Weed RR locomotives. Most of the historical literature and books at that time identified these locos as a ten wheeler, a 45 ton Heisler and a Baldwin 2-8-0. I had several pictures of the 2-8-0, one picture of the Heisler and what I thought was at least 5 pictures of the ten wheeler. After careful study, I concluded that the ten Wheeler in the pictures did not belong to Weed. Their locomotive was a very strange looking 4-4-0 and until last year ( almost 19 years later) I did not have sufficient data to built a single model of those three locos for all the reasons previously stated. I found the 4-4-0/ 4-6-0 mystery was a result of " The old post card trick" and when I finally built the 4-4-0 last year (C & NE No. 1) I had corrected history and had the definitive book on the subject revised. ( W
I want to model the way I want to model. If someone else likes it I’m happy. If someone would be upset over a Big Boy pulling a B&O train then that is their problem, not mine.
We should do what we like and change it when we like to.
There was a time when I would try to stay as close to prototype as I could, to the exclusion of all else. I didn’t run anything that wasn’t in actual operation. If I had a type of loco that was taken out of the service of the road I was modeling then mine were taken out of service as well and sold off. I wouldn’t even think of creating a ficticious road to use them on. If I had a fully detailed model of a loco that was in actual operation and I noticed one day that the prototype loco it was modeled on had something on it that my model didn’t have then everything else, homework, chores I was supposed to do, etc, all were forgotten until my model looked just like the prototype. I kept this up for eight or nine years to the point that it was beginnin g to effect my health then one day I thought ‘What’s the point? in a hundred years who’s going to care? In fact, who’s going to care in just ten years.’. It was at that point that I extricated myself from what I call the ‘Prototype trap’ and started doing my modeling on a much looser basis. Today I’m still using locos and cars that my prototype road (KCS) got rid of many years ago and I couldn’t care less. They’re part of my operation, that’s all that counts. I run them when I want and with whatever other locos and cars I want.