What are you modeling?
I model the Canadian National. Some of this freelance stuff is preety good though. When you model a protoype you don’t have to repaint your trains.
Shaun CN
My Erie,St.Paul and Pacific is the product of a fictional merger.The Fiddletown & Copperopolis branchline only existed in a cartoon book.
My layout is a wierd mixture of prototype and fantasy. My engines and rolling stock are strictly proto… But MY little piece of Monon has the Bates Motel and Mansion all modeled from movie stills…Will have the Addams Family house as well as the Munsters’ 1313 Mockingbird lane home also, eventually… Part of the layout is representative of the Monons’ I&L branch also…If you can’t have fun with it whats the point? Some of the best railroads in MRR are also the most boring. Most layouts are nothing but the same buildings and structures seen on most other layouts.A show case for Walthers products. When im done, none of my layout will look like anyone elses layout. I hate cookie cutter layouts. Come on…Use some Imagination! Dare to be different. I enjoy building prototype models. Even my fantasy stuff is from prototypes. But if its not fun to me…It don’t make it to the layout.
Well, I model the historical northwestern line called the Vancouver Seattle & Portland Railway (even though it never existed). It’s made up of bits and pieces from my favorite railroads, e.g. steamers with characteristic AT&SF looks, streamliners a la UP, a few cars reminiscent of RF&P boxcars (the blue ones with a map of virginia), others that resemble SP rolling stock, BUT, It has it’s own characteristic herald and lettering.
By the way, as soon as I brush up on my scratchbuilding skills, there will be not much of “out of the box” walthers and DPM structures, believe me, you might see it in the pages of MR sooner or later (but most probably later ;))
I have a freelance logging line.
I model the Sacramento Northern, with a little bit of Central California Traction. Eventually (if I find room to expand) the layout will include little bits of SP and WP, as all of those lines rolled around downtown Sacramento, CA (the city where I live, and model.)
I think even the most prototype-oriented layout involves some divergence from reality–if only in the obvious fact that no model rail has enough room to precisely model their chosen prototype. The difference, I guess, is in degree–several excellent editorials in MR have been written about this subject.
Because I enjoy the historical research aspects as much as the modeling, I’m trying to maintain a close relation to reality, but I am making one “freelance”-ish concession–in real life, Sacramento’s trolley lines (SN, CCT and PG&E) were taken over by the dreaded National Clty Lines in 1944 and shut down by 1946. Since I want to model the 1946-1950 period, I’m conveniently ignoring that bit of historical injustice so I can have Birney trolleys trundling around downtown Sacramento as SN electrics and 44-ton GE diesels rumble around the city belt line. But, in a sense, I’m still trying to make it realistic by using the trolley cars that those lines had on hand, or at least converted models thereof.
“Proto-lanced” - I use real world equipment (Canadian National) in a fictional that incorporates the feeling or atmosphere of eastern / southern Ontario in the 1920s and 30s.
Andrew
I guess I have to say I’m in the same page as Andrew. Protolanced here.
I’m modeling the CPR’s D&H mainline inbetween Montreal & New York with an interchange with the MEC. No particular era. Just what I want to run. Steam with diesel.
This allows me a varied mix of other railroads that I can interchange with as well
Gordon.
I’m modelling a museum line, which allows me to run pretty much anything I like the look of. Not sure if this counts as freelance or prototype - the locos and stock are prototype, but the location and track plan are freelance.
Freelanced.
My layout is the Borracho Springs Railroad, a small 42" gauge shortline set in the desert southwest straddling the Mexican border.
Every freelanced railroad should have a backstory to guide its development,
Here’s the back story:
It was originally built in the early 1900’s to service two mines, the Ferrous Underground Boring And Reclaimation Company, a.k.a. F.U.B.A. R. (an Iron mining co. trying trying their hand at Gold mining) and the Silver King, another competing mine who when they say the FUBAR sign posted over above the new mine, jokingly renamed thiers SNAFU just to egg them. But mines only last so long and can only dig so far, so by 1937 it looked like the end for the mines and the little town of Purgitory that served the miners.
That was until a shady character came to town with a couple of very odd looking plants, and stating that the climate was “perfect”, he set up a farm growing and cultivating and spreading the odd yucca like plants, they were Blue Agave’s smuggled out of Mexico. Within a couple of years he bought many remote farms, an old warehouse, brought in a lot of distillery equipment and announced plans to open a tequila distillery, the only one in the US. When he asked for name suggestions an old man in the crowd said the town was already full of “borracho’s”, the name stuck and the Borracho Distillery went into business July 4, 1940. The business grew, and within a short time the railroad built a spur to the distillery.
Dec. 7, 1941 saw the business change to making alcohol for medical use and the mines picking up work. During the post WWII years (the current setting) , The town renamed itself after the distillery, Borracho Springs, which also took over controling interest in the RR, and the distillery went back into full production, so did the mines thanks to new WWII vein discoverys, and the little trains keep chugging along.
Equipment consists of whatever the owners can get thier hands on.
My layout is a model of my favorite prototype, the Santa Fe’s line over Cajon Pass in Southern California as it was in 1947. The prototype picked me rather than the other way around. I was already modeling Santa Fe equipment when I first saw it, but when I visited the pass in 1971 I decided that this was what I wanted in a model railroad. How I settled on 1947 is a longer story, but suffice to say that I’ve found plenty of good reasons for sticking with that date.
I like freelance layouts too, and I go to operate Bill Darnaby’s Maumee route and Jack Ozanich’s Atlantic Great Eastern as often as I can. I am totally awed by Eric Brooman’s new Utah Belt, and looking forward to Allen McClelland’s new Virginian & Ohio. But for myself, I doubt that I could imagine a railroad more stimulatting to my imagination than the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe in what I consider its golden age.
So long,
Andy
my layout is a si-fi where everything from diffrent times has been sucked into a nother demention where i have a castle and nights as well as monsters and dinosours
Following the tuteledge (sp?) in MR Mag, I have followed Tony Koester’s lead in trying to recreate a specific section of railroad as closely as possible, in terms of real estate, traffic patterns, and equipment. I have found the research very rewarding, and I have learned so much about these businesses we emulate for fun. If you see this sect of our hobby limiting, may I make a suggestion you try it, but also join, or even form a club, and find other modelers to “round robin” between layout locations. This will give you flavors for other eras, railroads, and locales. I have done modeling for two friends plus my club and it’s a nice way to “get away from the rules”. Another option is to model a “merged railroad”. I currently have locomotives in about 20 paint schemes, and they are all accurate and correct for the time and location. Whatever you do, prototype of freelance, HAVE FUN!!!
For the record, I model the Burlington Northern in the mid-late 1970’s in North Dakota, between Fargo and Bismarck. It’s a great area for trios of SD40-2’s lugging Wyoming and ND coal while mixing in an NW5 on weed-grown branchlines, and SD45’s and U-Boats for heavy freight. How’s that for structure?
Geez, who thunk up this pole? It completely ignores those of us who proto-freelance. Therefore, I can’t vote. Better rethink this one!
My layout is a prototype-freelance modern regional railroad called the Allentown Scranton & Northern that runs from Allentown, PA to Buffalo, NY, the modeled part of the AS&N also has trackage rights on the Reading & Northern. I model the Allentown to Scranton line.
Prototype equiptment, freelanced line.
Proto-Freelance…IT REALLY COULD HAVE BEEN!!! well had i been alive in 1892 when it started LOL
My Columbus & Hocking Valley Ry is a freelance short line.It is set in 1978/79 and serves the industries the Hocking Valley of Ohio.it runs from Columbus Oh to Parkersburg WVa with branch line to Jackson and Newark…The C&HV is one of seven short lines owned by the CDB Industries.
Commodities haul: Grain,Lumber,coal,coke,steel,fly-ash,food stuffs,sand,glass,corn sweetener,corn starch,vegetable oils,scrap,pipe,chemicals,paints,news print,pulpwood,wood chips and other general freight.Total cars handle 32,584 a year.
My layout, still under construction, is based on the ATSF line that follows Route 66 in northern AZ - circa early '50s. Although I will be using ATSF engines and I model the early 50’s structures of Route 66 the track layout and scenery is freelance.