I’m pretty much a novice at this, just got into the model railroading by accident. My dad worked for the Milwaukee Road for 43 years and after he died I bought a couple of HO scale Milw Rd cars just to sit on the mantle as sort of a way to remember him. Then I bought a couple more, attended a couple of train shows and bought some track and then I started a layout. It’s gotten changed a couple of times, expanded a couple of times and now it’s taking up half of my basement. I enjoy reading the posts on here and I understand some of the lingo, but not all of it. Roundy-rounders are those that like watching the trains go around without worrying about operations. Rivet counters are those that are very picky about model-prototype accuracy and free-lancers don’t follow a certain railroad to model. What are some other groups of modelers called? I don’t know what you’d call what I do. I have almost exclusively Milwaukee Road loco’s (diesels only) and rolling stock, with no particular era to model, other than post-steam and pre-Milwaukee Road disappearance. My scenes are a conglomeration of places from my past and they all hold some significance to me and my family. I’ve scratch-built Spring Hill Tower where my dad worked for many years in Terre Haute, IN; the auto paint store my son manages in Indianapolis, the double-wide motor home my mom lives in in Venice, FL; my in-laws house and pole barn from their farm in Thorntown, IN; the Golden Eagle Inn, where my wife works at the Conner Prairie Museum in Fishers, IN. I’ve built a ballpark like one my kids played on and a church similar to the Baptist Church when we lived in DeRidder, LA. I have one golf hole and the depot from Linton, IN, my birthplace. A coalmine to honor my mom’s dad, a grain elevator from my wife’s hometown, a billboard made by using my other son’s business card, a gas station “Smitty’s”, where I worked as a teenager, an airfield like the one in Homestead AFB, FL and a military d
You’ve pretty well described a free-lance modeler (not really a nickname, but a modeling type or style). Modeling what you like, the way you want to. As long as you are having fun, that’s all that counts!
Sounds to me like a sentimental form of post transition modernism. No particular era other than diesel and everything means something special to you.
I believe that is proto-freelance…or something like that. On the other hand, very few are actually true prototypes anyhow. Near everyone has to sacrifice some reality in order to stay within space constraints.
I am way behind you in the layout dept. I have started some track-laying on a couple sections of framework but have a long, long way to go. I have no people yet either. I’m afraid they 'd be too old to work by the time I get the line open and they sure wouldn’t be any help now. I have acquired a few buildings, several PRR passenger cars, some brass steam, lots of cheap steam and diesels, cars n trucks,… really a mix.
Why not post some pictures of your layout? Everyone’s always looking for ideas for the layout.
I’d call it your personal railroad that captures your world. No other category necessary.
I model the Texas & Pacific from the eastern border of Texas with Louisana all the way to Sierra Blanca where the T&P and Southern Pacific Sunset Line met about 90 miles east of El Paso. Every section of the layout --5 in all-- trys to capture specific things in my past during the transition era. I lived in both Dallas and Abilene during the period (1940-1960) and saw a good bit of East Texas around Jefferson where my great-grandfather had been station agent for the T&P in the early 20th century. On another side of the family I have Cotton Belt employees that were uncles, grandfathers, great-grandfathers going back to the early 20th century as well. I’m a firm believer that railroading can be found in the DNA of many model railroaders.
Where I miss the historical mark in being rigorius to details (no 1968 Camaros on my highways), which I do try to avoid, I just like to think I’m modeling the T&P not just as it was, but as it might have been. There is a Texas-type 2-10-4 in as delivered green/silver/red that occassionally shows up at the roundhouse in Fort Worth while the E-7 A/B Katy/Frisco Texas Special heads south to San Antonio.
Not likely that those two in their very showy liveries ever crossed paths, but wouldn’t it have been great if they had!
Mike
There are several ‘subsets’ of modelers, each of which is supposed to fit in a very specific pigeonhole:
- Prototype - models town X on the PD&Q as of (enter date of choice.) Won’t even consider using anything that doesn’t fit that straitjacket. Gets morose if he discovers that a certain car he just bought wasn’t running on his chosen date.
- Protolance - models railroad X, but not a specific time or place. His consists are (usually) time consistent - the ‘off-timers’ are off the layout or kept in hidden staging.
- Freelance - models an imagineered railroad which might have been, but never was. Could be anything from solidly engineered to entirely whimsical.
Of course, these are just three points on a very long spectrum. Each modeler chooses his preferred point on the spectrum. Friction sometimes occurs when someone tries to insist that someone else should move to HIS chosen point.
What’s my point on the spectrum? Actually, all of the above. I model a specific time and location, use prototypically accurate rolling stock which never burnished the rails of that location at that time and include a wholly imagineered, ‘never in that place,’ railroad that runs rolling stock that never existed in the full-scale world. In all of my modeling, I obey the golden rule: He who puts up the gold, makes the rules.
So what does that make me? A model railroader, thank you.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - more or less)
Ya freelancer is a little harder to pin down than some terms. At one time, most modellers had their own fictional railroad that they modelled. Partly this was because there weren’t enough accurate models out there to model one particular railroad, so you had kind of a hodge-podge of engines and such. By lettering them for a ‘pretend’ railroad, you could kind of fit them together better.
In recent times, as more products and better “proto” detailed and decorated engines have come along, and prototype info is easier to find, it’s become more common to model a real railroad. Still there are many of us who like creating our own railroad, designing a paint scheme for our diesels and passenger cars etc. and being able to use a mixture of prototype fidelity and imagination.
Some layouts are a mix, in that as noted many people model a free-lanced branch of a real railroad. Of course nowadays some people make up a railroad, but then claim it was bought by a larger railroad…so they call their line the “Utah Northern” but all the engines are Union Pacific. But no layout is 100% proto or 100% freelanced. Even the most prototype accurate model railroad has to make some compromises due to space limitations, and even the most wacky free-lance railroad (like the guy who had US, UK and European railroads running next to each other) has some basis on real railroad engineering practices.
My own “St.Paul Route” is generally free-lanced, but it’s technically what’s sometimes called a “what if” railroad. The real St.Paul and Duluth RR was bought by Northern Pacific in 1900, but my layout tries to answer the question of what might have happened had it stayed independent thru the 20th century. In my version of history, it merged with another real railroad, the Port Arthur Duluth and Western (who folded during the Great Depression) which built south from what is now Thunder Bay Ontario into northern Minnesota. They connected up and built a line u
Lattayards, we are some what from the neck in the woods. I grew up in Carmel Ind and was the Fisher Boy Scouts troop 109 for years. Back then Fishers down town only had a bar next to the rail road tracks, fire station, lumber yard, auto repair shop and around 50 homes. That was pretty much it.
Cuda Ken
I would not worry about n-names, I would classify your methods(which are great) and put you in the ‘’ MODEL RAILOADER’’ category.
As was mentioned earlier, “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right”. If someone tells you that you’re doing it wrong, and you are still having fun, YOU ARE DEFINITELY DOING IT RIGHT. [(-D]
That’s why they call it, “The Worlds Greatest Hobby”.
Blue Flamer.