On the theory of "good enough..."

I believe that one should look to Webster to understand the limits of the model-railroading hobby. It is defined as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.”

If you find pleasure and relaxation from your hobby nothing else matters.

I spent an extraordinary amount of time constructing bench work and building models. I bought locomotives for more money than I spent for my first car without any hesitation. I have wasted more time creating details on a scene that even a museum would do which no one but me would ever see.

Am I crazy? Sometimes my wife thinks so. I do it now because it relaxes me.

I will admit that many years ago when I was young I spent my time and money on cigarettes, whiskey and wild-wild women for relaxation but my tastes have changed for the better.

Don’t psychoanalyze your hobby just follow it as closely as any other source of pleasure and relaxation “if it feels good do it.”

Doc

One could factor in time by drawing four planes in perspective one above the other with the sun in the center and the orbit of the earth around it. Mark off the position of the earth for each season. Then superimpose the sweet spot on each plane and connect the dots. One will quickly realize that the sweet spot is seriously warped by the the curvature of space.

Peter Smith, Memphis

Dave V wrote-I have a ton of soap-box issues on model railroading, so rather than smack you guys around with them on the forums (as much), I’d put them all in one place.

[?]

Ah, yes, but I have not shared all of my blog nuggets here (see the paranethetical passage above)![swg]

I do also want to point out, as some may have missed, that this concept is on a “per modeler” basis, i.e., “good enough” is defined by the individual modeler’s “sweet spot” and not by a larger group consensus.

Unless one is actually building models for other people (such as a custom builder might), one should always define “good enough” based on one’s own standards. Building your own models to please someone else often leads to frustration and disappointment.

Remember, it’s about fun.

Dave;

Just change fun to reward and work to cost and you can roll all the other variables into them…

And its just as relevant.

Jack W

I have been a long time subscriber to the “good enough” theory of modeling.

Case in point, visually, I need my models to, at first glance, to be what they are supposed to represent. That means a GP-35, for example, has to have 3 fantowers 2 large, one small, the spartian cab, no anti-climbers, symmetric dynamic brake blisters blah blah blah. I’m not too worried about a few scale inches here or there, but, a real deal breaker for me is bad mechanical soundness.

Jerky motion, grinding gears, high starting amperage, too high speed, either low end, or top end, is a no-no! I demand smooth operation, standardized gear ratios (for MU use) and NMRA standard gauge and wheel profiles!

To me nothing is more frustrating that a locomotive or car that is always derailing, hard starting, bad rolling, or just plain badly engineered no matter how well scaled and detailed it is.

I have had a few cars that fall into that catagory. They became kitbash fodder real quick!

I feel that model railroading is about building a mini world, where everything “plays well” together, and not sweat the small details. I (like many) have a job where small details are the difference between right and wrong, (and in my former career, life and death! see my screenname for the why of this concept)

Embrace “good enough”! Like the loop, an occasional “fantasy” paint scheme, or the old standby, a dinosaur as a log skidder, and enjoy a hobby.

Now, where did I put that bottle of O scale fly droppings? I need to put them on the windshield of that custom made WM F-7 to date it for exactly 9:26 a.m. Friday, August 14 1968.

Good idea, Doc. Mine is when I can finally say “I can’t do any better, that looks about right.” Of course, I’ll take a break if it’s tedious work. But yeah, if it ain’t fun, do something else.

And a tangent (had to throw in trig right) to that is the highly detailed model. It is so well done that it causes one great stress to run it on the layout. What would happen if it derail, run into something, get clipped by another train, or even just be picked up wrong and have one of those details get folded, bent, spindled, or mutilated!

TZ … I’m gald you brought this thread back to the top. It was thought provoking. I like your latest post and all the others. The earler remark on “economy of scale” made me laugh loudly. …I expect some quadratic equations from the mathmaticians.

Never mind that. I’m behind building my fleet of F3’s for the Burlington, and I’ve got work to do…until I get the same number the CB&Q had in it’s fleet, I ain’t prototypical…

All of my models are very highly detailed, but they cause me no stress when they get run. Why should they?

What would happen is they would get repaired. If they were damaged by derailment or collision then I’d take steps to prevent that happening again. If they got picked up wrong I’d tell whoever not to do it that way again!

I can’t decide if you’re being facetious, but if you aren’t, presumably you’d be an advocate of models having little or no detail? Litho’ed tinplate might be go for you…

Mark.

I think he was being facetious.

Man…for a few minutes there I was having flash backs to the ole college calculus days! [banghead]

Tongue and cheek aside, I cannot fathom how you can measure “level of fun”, “work expended”, “and money spent”, and “ribbits” with mathematics or quantum mechanics, but whatever floats your boat or fuels your spacecraft. [alien]

In any case, please do not start adding any statistics to this thread, because I will be lost in the explanations between the median, mean and the mode! [X-)]

I have two scales of good enough. Mostly I can make models look really good to the naked eye–at least my naked eye.

Then I take a picture and it looks like a model again.

I think I need to buy a cheaper camera.

DV:

I believe you have done a great service to the hobby with this “quantitative” analysis of a difficult subject. However, based on my experience in reading steam tables etc. I believe that this chart could be improved to the point of utter incomprehensibility with further reasearch. For instance, here is a start:

As you can see, the isobars make it much harder to read, especially once you spill that cup of coffee on it. With careful work, a chart can obscure complicated data in ways that would take many more pages with a table of values.

There is as story about how Cliff Grandt scratchbuilt a locomotive (I think it was a Heisler) and sent it to John Allen for his appraisal. John (who was a professional photographer) took photos of the loco and sent the photos and the loco back to Cliff.

Cliff imediately rebuilt the locomotive to fix all of the errors that showed up in John’s photos.

-George

Hi Dave: This is an interesting thread, also love your blog! IMHO, there are a few aspects of this hobby where “good enough” doesn’t apply. Wiring would be a prime example. Use a color code, proper ga., good connections, neatness counts, etc. Don’t take short cuts, they’ll come back to bite you in the butt, everytime. In other facets, I’ve found that your personal “good enough” can also change as you gain experience and skill. But, you do reach a point where you just say to your self, “I’m satisfied with this result” and move on.

Well done, sir!

Add to it the fact that as we improve our skills even for the same set of initial conditions our definition of good enough keeps migrating to the right, and we will have achieved complete incomprehensibility.

Autobus

Nice Graph. Couldn’t find the triple point, though

Jack W

If you want to take a probablistic view of the “good enough” concept you could define it as a series of yes-no questions about each facet of model building, ranging from the more general (is it the right scale?) to the more specific (are the rivet patterns correct?). You could ask the modelers the questions in order and record the answers as binary patterns, then graph those answers on a continuum between the lowest number (00000000000000000) and the highest number (11111111111111111111111). Graphing it would probably produce “clouds” different interest levels.

But all that would tell you is the most common amounts of compromise modelers are willing to make. But other than that this whole excercise is a moving target. I might have a different level of “good enough” for track than cars.

The level of “good enough” might also depend on the era or scale you model in. A 50’s modeler might be able to achieve a high level of “good enough” because there are literally hundreds if not thousands of choices for rail cars. It is way easier to achieve a higher degree of fidelity because there is more variety. I model the TOC (turnof the century) and there are very few models available so my level of “good enough” is forced to be lower. While a 50’s modeler may have 50 or 60 varieties of coal car to choose from, the TOC modeler has but 3 (6 if you include steel hoppers). So while my preferred level of “good enough” may be higher, the market forces me to compromise down.

The concept of “good enough” was formed back when the “average” boxcar was a an Athearn blue box. One also has to consider that since the concept was first put forward, the availability and variety of models has skyrocketed. So what was “good enough” in 1975 might be totally unacceptable today.

Dave H.