Since i am new to model railroading i would like to know what it means when others are talking about when they say the only model in prototype?
Matt
Matt,
I think I know what you are asking but your sentence is a bit confusing. Simply put: The prototype is any original or 1:1 real world item that a model is based on.
Tom
Prototypical means they only play with there trains like the real Rail Roads did. In other words, they only run the same equipment that was used in a given time frame or area. They would not run a UP Big Boy if they model mid 1990’s UP.
Cuda Ken
Sorry about the confusing question. Yes this was what i am talking about. From reading other coments on the forum, i was thinking that this is what it meant. Thanks you .
There are modelers who exactly model a prototype, or come as close as space limitations allow. Every locomotive and car is an exact replica of one that operated through their town of choice on their chosen railroad, with a number they wrote down in the big black book while standing trackside.
There are others who, while not so fussy about the exactness of their rolling stock, insist on operating to their chosen railroad’s employee timetable and/or published schedule - and making all the moves, stops and inspections required in 1:1 scale operation.
Then there are those blythe spirits who build wild feats of model imagineering and operate in ways that would make a professional railroader cringe.
So, what am I? Since my Nihon Kokutetsu rolling stock all carries numbers I recorded ‘back when’ and is operated to the schedules I copied from the prototype’s, but my freelanced coal originator runs stock of no known parentage on a route that would scare a mountain goat, the only possible answer is - All of the above!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - JNR TTTO, Tomkawa Tani Tetsudo, Wheee!)
You’ve gotten some good answers, here. I’ll jump in, for what it’s worth.
Though this is not a hard and fast rule, there seems to be three basic types of model railroader; Prototype, Proto-lance and Free-lance.
Now, we’re not ABSOLUTELY unrelated, though a lot of times, we like to think we are, LOL!
A Prototype model railroader is one who models a section of an actual railroad with the motive power, rolling stock, setting and period that appeals to them. They usually try and be as accurate as humanly possible as to the particular operations of that railroad, which means that a great deal of the pleasure of the hobby is also spent in accurate research of that railroad’s operations during the period that they model. This usually results in some astonishingly beautiful and well-detailed layouts.
A Proto-lancer is one who might have a particular railroad that they love and models it as they think it SHOULD have been in a particular time period. They usually are as accurate as they can possibly be about motive power, rolling stock and period, yet their setting might be more ‘idealized’ than actual fact. I’m a Proto-lancer in that my favorite railroad–Rio Grande–is set in California, rather than the Colorado and Utah of the prototype road. Hence, my Yuba River Subdivision of the Rio Grande “California Extension.” Proto-lancers usually have a very good historical explanation for their particular layout. We like to use ‘fiction’ based on ‘fact’, as it were. And again, this can result in some extremely well-detailed layouts (and no, I’m not blowing my own horn, far from it, in fact).
A “Free-Lancer” usually picks a locale for their own layout. It can be a shortline, a connecting railroad or a major Trunk-line. They can let their imagination as far as settin
I’m protolancing. My White River Southern Railroad models a line abandoned in the 1980s, but built as if the State of New Hampshire purchased the line and leased it to my WRS to operate. The scenes are built from research photos I took along the route (now a bike trail) but the industries are freelanced since most of it would be new industry attracted during the days of the shortline - not from Guilford.
I study the heck out of the prototype.
Then I go home and look at the money and dream.
When I am rested again and firmly on the earth, there be a railroad created out of nothing. It has a purpose, operating rules, specific things to deal with and otherwise designed as a time consuming puzzle.
But is it Prototype? Nah. I dont have the room for that.
However in what little I did do, I made sure that the cattle car does not go next to the Icing platform LOL. Some of you will remember that old MR Article long ago about someone trying to operate with the big boys.
It is a little confusing because there are several terms we use in model railroading where our meaning isn’t the same as the traditional or dictionary definition of the word. Prototype really means “a first or original model”, something that is made to help in building a production run of something. “Ford introduced their prototype for a new type of automobile.”
In model railroading, as has been noted above, we mean it to be the “real” railroads that our model railroads are based on. “I sometimes run steam on that branchline, even though it’s not really prototypical for my railroad and era.”
If you drew a line with complete prototype fidelity on one end - modelling a specific railroad, time and place in precise detail, and complete freelance or made up railroading on the other end, you’d probably find that all of us are somewhere in between. Because of the limitations of space no one really has a model railroad that is 100% accurate, there always are a few compromises needed to get a model railroad up and running; and even someone running say all Thomas the Tank Engine equipment is still to a small extent running trains based on real UK engines and cars and buildings. It’s more a matter of how close we are to one extreme or the other.