The "Good Enough" Rule

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’ve had a recent change of heart as I’ve been steadily drifting into “rivet-counting.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m still trying to be accurate and true to 1956 Pennsy, but maybe not as hard as I used to be…

Building an N-scale PRR H10s 2-8-0 was the tipping point. After getting the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 I was planning to use, I realized it had Southern valve gear (as opposed to Walschaerts, per PRR practice). Nevertheless, I used the Bachmann mechanism and then hacked up a Minitrix K4 and B6 to come up with the right boiler, cab, and firebox. Some details here and there, and it became presentable. But that valve gear bothered me. That, and the rivet rows on the tender weren’t quite right.

Then I read the MRP 2007 article about Neal Schorr’s 3-rail PRR Middle Division. It looked awesome! It reeked of Pennsy. I realized, if he could be happy with an extra rail down the center of the track, I shouldn’t worry about a few rivets and the valve gear. And his layout really looked and felt like the prototype anyway.

I stood back and watched my layout again, and realized that even from one foot away, I couldn’t really see the rivets, and the valve gear didn’t bother me. Neither did the Code 80 rail I used, and had been starting to regret. It all works well, and still captures the feel.

So what if my Intermountain PRR X37 boxcar has one too few rivet lines? Darn, in N it looks good enough! That’s not to say prototype perfection has no place on my layout anymore, but let’s just say I think my days of fretting over rivets are numbered.

To you Jack Burgesses who model your prototype to every bush and spike, hurrah! I admire you. But I’m finding out for me there’s a limit on how far in that direction I can go before the kid-like fun stops and it starts to feel like work.

Good enough for me!!!

2

It is quickly losing its value due to its recent cachet, but isn’t transformation loverly? When we can look at something in an entirely different light and see something that we didn’t see before, that is transformative.

I am glad, for your sanity’s sake, Dave, that it has happened for you. You can always revert, here and there when you get a strong hankering, to being the rivet counter, but it is nice to step back and find true contentment with what you have at any time.

-Crandell

Edit-oops a typo

3

More often than not impressionists convey reality better than the realists do.

Peter Smith, Memphis

4

I recently got a set of close-up rings for my camera. Now I can photo an aomeba sliding down an ant’s butt.

So I’ve been painting figures and when I take the photos I look at them and see the spots where the paint didn’t cover and lament how lousy a job I did.

Last night I looked at the guys sitting on the rail. The closest I could get to them was 18". I could barely tell where the blue pants met the brown shirt.

They looked good from where I stood.

5

I had the last session of my FM&P last weekend and it was about 95% complete. I was able to build it myself over 5 year period. Many people who have seen it have commented on how detailed and accurate it appeared. Most people felt I captured Morgantown WV in 1950. In reality I cut corners all over the place. The backs of all the buildings were completely unfunished. I didn’t worry about rivets, I didn’t worry about using kits to represent buildings in Morgantown, even though they weren’t perfect matches. The depot was a B&O kit that happened to resemble the Morgantown depot, in reality it wasn’t close. I followed the “good enough” rule. If I had scratch built everything it would have taken me 20 years. It was a fun layout and I was very pleased with how it turned out. This weekend I am tearing it down. Oh well!

I say, do the best that you can to acheive that goals that you set out for your model railroad and not worry about anything else! - Nevin

6

Maybe I’ll become a rivet counter when I have more disposable income and/or more time to do the necessary work. For today however, the 3-foot rule suits me just just fine.

7

I’ve always kind of done that. My HO CNW SD18 is going to be a stock atlas SD24 with the Turbo Blowerer chopped off. The prototype SD18s had grills right where the turbo went. I fudged alot when I modeled CNW. I had an ALCo C628 running around even though it had been long sinced retired and even then it would be in Michigans Upper Penninsula not Northwestern Wisconsin.

8

[quote user=“Dave Vollmer”]

I’ve had a recent change of heart as I’ve been steadily drifting into “rivet-counting.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m still trying to be accurate and true to 1956 Pennsy, but maybe not as hard as I used to be…

Building an N-scale PRR H10s 2-8-0 was the tipping point. After getting the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 I was planning to use, I realized it had Southern valve gear (as opposed to Walschaerts, per PRR practice). Nevertheless, I used the Bachmann mechanism and then hacked up a Minitrix K4 and B6 to come up with the right boiler, cab, and firebox. Some details here and there, and it became presentable. But that valve gear bothered me. That, and the rivet rows on the tender weren’t quite right.

Then I read the MRP 2007 article about Neal Schorr’s 3-rail PRR Middle Division. It looked awesome! It reeked of Pennsy. I realized, if he could be happy with an extra rail down the center of the track, I shouldn’t worry about a few rivets and the valve gear. And his layout really looked and felt like the prototype anyway.

I stood back and watched my layout again, and realized that even from one foot away, I couldn’t really see the rivets, and the valve gear didn’t bother me. Neither did the Code 80 rail I used, and had been starting to regret. It all works well, and still captures the feel.

So what if my Intermountain PRR X37 boxcar has one too few rivet lines? Darn, in N it looks good enough! That’s not to say prototype perfection has no place on my layout anymore, but let’s just say I think my days of fretting over rivets are numbered.

To you Jack Burgesses who model your prototype to every bush and spike, hurrah! I admire you. But I’m finding out for me there’s a limit on how far in that direction I can go before the kid-like fun stops and it starts to feel like work.

Good enough

9

Peter–

Ain’t that the truth, as they say! As a classical musician, I was taught that the Impressionists gave one a ‘keyhole’ impression of life. Something seen (or heard) at the Moment, and then it was gone, but still leaving an ‘impression’ on your senses.

Look at a Renoir or a Matisse, listen to Debussy or Ravel. It’s there, then gone. It leaves a ‘sense’ behind, but not a photographic memory on your eyes or your ears. It has its own sense of ‘reality’, and if done right, can leave you blinking in admiration.

I view my model railroad through my eyes, not a camera lens. Of course, I still try for as much detail as I think fit for what I am doing, but I still observe my miniature world through a ‘keyhole’. Now it doesn’t work for everyone, and thank God we’re not all alike, but it works for me and I’m pretty generally a happy camper about it.

As a musician, if I want excruciating detail, I’ll play Bach. But frankly, Bach inhibits me artistically. The Romantics and the Impressionists don’t. Just my makeup. I feel more comfortable uninhibited. Same thing with my Yuba River Sub.

(“It doesn’t look really REAL!” “Well, it does to me, and I’m the one running it.”)

Tom

10

I can get sucked into the details pretty EZ. You can mess with something over and over till you get to the point where you say good enough. Who’s going to notice. Then I catch my eye always going back to that detail because it’s not 100%. Then I’ll get a reality check when a relative is looking at the layout and completely ignores the things you and I spend hours on but starts poking their finger into the pre made plastic tree that I’m embarrassed to have on my layout and says “that’s a cute orange tree”.

I realized most people can’t appreciate the differance between a Tyco F7 and a brass Big Boy. That’s when I adopted the good enough rule and stopped driving myself crazy.

11

Agreed… my early stuff was impressionistic… I like it best.

12

Dave,

Not to be too rivety or anything, but the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 comes with short hanger BAKER valve gear, not Southern. It’s pretty close to the short hanger Walschaerts gear on the H-9/H-10 engines.

As for getting yourself in too deep with rivet counting, don’t worry about it: most of the best prototype modelers I know are actually freelancers. In fact, you’d be surprised at how many of those fancy resin freight car kits on the market are SWAG’ed to a large degree. Count the rivets on a couple, and you’ll realize that even the best in the hobby have to punt or take shortcuts once in awhile!

I consider myself to be a fairly dedicated proto modeler, but I don’t let it get in the way of me having a good time. I’m working on a resin master for a double sheathed TP&W boxcar right now, and ALL I have to work with is a single (good) broadside of the car and a decent working knowedge of freight car construction practices. Will the ensuing model be 97.3% accurate? Nope, but it’ll be as close as anyone else will ever get for this (obscure) car, and that’ll be more than good enough for the few who will end up with a copy.

As Linus said, it’s not the best pumpkin patches that get the attention, but the ones that are the most sincere!

13

While I’m not that successful trying to find a way to get my wife involved in the hobby, we do work well together, on other “projects.” By that, I mean something SHE has decided would be “FUN” for us to do together on a weekend, like remake the headboard we put together last year, in the master bedroom, as its now out of style.

Anyway, quite often we’ll notice a very small “faux pas” on one of these projects. She’ll ask me if I think anyone who’d come to visit us, would ever notice something so tiny.

I think about how long its going to take us to undo everything, just to mend that miniscule muckup, then have a moment from a movie called “Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” pop into my head. A bunch of the crazy people in that movie are digging a hole, looking for a buried treasure, and one of them asks in speculation, “What do we do if someone comes along and sees us doing this?” After a moment of silence, the most insane character of them all, played by Dick Shawn, mimics how he’s bashing the head of his father-in-law with his shovel, and yells: “WE’LL TELL’EM TO HIT THE ROAD, MAN!”

Needless to say, I use that in such moments, when asked how some “rivet counter” may react to a less than perfect item, by smacking my fist into my open palm, and gritting that Dick Shawn expression through my teeth.

Like someone back a few posts in this thread observed: its such a sad thing, that MOST of what we sweat over, is never really noticed. I was awestruck over a giant layout with a myriad of moving things, and lights everywhere, under the Empress Hotel, in Victoria, B.C. I could see there were about a million man hours of effort put in, to get it looking that good. The saddest thing, is that it is the LAST thing you see, on the tour of miniatures. Meaning your feet are starting to hurt, and you’ve seen just TOO many nifty tiny things, by then, so people

14

My own variant of the three foot rule is the 100 meter rule - 100 meters being about as close as most people will ever get to the prototype. In HOj, that’s a tad under 50 inches. If it looks good at that range, it’s good enough.

OTOH, when it comes to things that impact on good operation, my ‘good enough’ standard is a close approximation of 100% reliability. I don’t care if the loco looks perfect - at 100 meters or under a microscope - but if the pilot truck keeps derailing, that calls for careful investigation - and, possibly, major surgery.

I have known people who obsessed over every tree. I’m satisfied if the result resembles a forest.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

15

Thanks for the valve gear clarification! It actually does make me feel better.

I’ve been thinking about some general subrules for the “Good Enough” Rule as it applies to me:

  1. All steam locomotives will be of a wheel arrangement used by Pennsy, and will have a Belpaire firebox (except for J1 and HH2 classes) and Pennsy number plate. Individual details are less important than the “feel” of Pennsy steam.

  2. All diesels will be of a type owned by Pennsy, and will, when appropriate, receive Trainphone antennas.

  3. Cabin cars will be of the Pennsy N class only, and will have, when appropriate, Trainphone antennas.

  4. Passenger cars will either be direct PRR prototype, or of a class and type similar to PRR practice (some leeway here). The exception are P85br, P70 variants, and B-series baggage cars (too distinctive to “flub”).

  5. Freight cars lettered for Pennsy will be of a length and type similar to that owned by Pennsy as of 1956. That means I’m OK with a USRA 40’ rebuild standing in as an X29A/B/D rebuild. X29s as-built, though, will be of prototype design, since they’re so uniquely Pennsy. When possible, Pennsy-specific hoppers (H21, GLa, etc.) will be used (available from Bowser).

  6. Structures will be close to Pennsy design. Where Pennsy-specific kits are available, or structures can be scratchbuilt or kitbashed w

16

Save the rivet counting quality models for the NMRA contests. Running trains is where it’s at, especially when you have kids…from a former scale-fidelist…

17

Ken,IMHO there is NO such thing as a 3 foot rule…To my mind its either acceptable or unacceptable to the modeler and that varies as widely as there are modelers.

I will not apologize for being a close enough/good enough modeler by quoting the nonexistent 3 foot rule…You see that is MY style of modeling and has been since 1980 and more so the late 90s.[:D]

18

[quote user=“Dave Vollmer”]

I’ve had a recent change of heart as I’ve been steadily drifting into “rivet-counting.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m still trying to be accurate and true to 1956 Pennsy, but maybe not as hard as I used to be…

Building an N-scale PRR H10s 2-8-0 was the tipping point. After getting the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 I was planning to use, I realized it had Southern valve gear (as opposed to Walschaerts, per PRR practice). Nevertheless, I used the Bachmann mechanism and then hacked up a Minitrix K4 and B6 to come up with the right boiler, cab, and firebox. Some details here and there, and it became presentable. But that valve gear bothered me. That, and the rivet rows on the tender weren’t quite right.

Then I read the MRP 2007 article about Neal Schorr’s 3-rail PRR Middle Division. It looked awesome! It reeked of Pennsy. I realized, if he could be happy with an extra rail down the center of the track, I shouldn’t worry about a few rivets and the valve gear. And his layout really looked and felt like the prototype anyway.

I stood back and watched my layout again, and realized that even from one foot away, I couldn’t really see the rivets, and the valve gear didn’t bother me. Neither did the Code 80 rail I used, and had been starting to regret. It all works well, and still captures the feel.

So what if my Intermountain PRR X37 boxcar has one too few rivet lines? Darn, in N it looks good enough! That’s not to say prototype perfection has no place on my layout anymore, but let’s just say I think my days of fretting over rivets are numbered.

To you Jack Burgesses who model your prototype to every bush and spike, hurrah! I admire you. But I’m finding out for me there’s a limit on how far in that direction I can go before the kid-like fun stops and it starts to feel like work.

Good enough

19

Dave,I use to worry about minute details and such like…However,back in 1980 I decided good enough/close enough works for me under the operation viewing.In other words if I can’t see the details while operating I no longer worry about those details.As far as freight cars I am not concerned if the Hooting Hollow & Western never owned a 5344 boxcar or a PS cover hopper.You see I can’t tell you the difference between a PS door or a Youngstown door a 5344 from a 5347 cubic foot boxcar…Does that bother me or make me less of a modeler? Not hardly…I just never found a need to study freight cars that close to enjoy operating with waybills and car cards.

20

Another rule I do follow for now is the “no build or repaint dates after July 1956.”

I’m thinking about relaxing this rule too, and expanding my era to include the early 1960s. I like second-generation diesels too, and there’s something cool about Pennsy’s “Focal Orange” cabin car scheme from the mid-60s.

Here’s the project that started it all: