Anybody remember the “Classic Model Railroading” thread of about 4 1/2 years ago? http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/114821.aspx?sort=ASC I had forgotten about it until I had a stray thought about some of Dave Vollmers faux magazine covers and went looking to see if I could find them.
God, that was a lot of fun. It’s too bad Dave Vollmer’s hilarious magazine cover images are no longer linked in.
Here’s some updated ideas for model railroading shows, articles and perhaps even whole publications.
Layout Hunters - Model Railroaders get to choose which of three layouts they would prefer to operate on. Listen to all the complaining about this layout’s scenery not being quite up to par, or that layout still being stuck in the DC stone age or the other layout being too small. Try to figure out which layout will be the one chosen despite all the negative comments.
Income Layouts - The host shows how to spruce up your home layout so that it can earn revenue by being rented out to those without layouts and who are so desperate to run trains they’ll pay for the privilege.
Anger Management - Charlie Sheen acts as counselor to a therapy group consisting of DCC/Sound advocates and the proponents of DC. Obviously the two groups hate each other’s guts and the laughs come as Charlie tries to prevent full scale war breaking out. Things get even more hilarious when the advocates of clockwork trains join the group. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6jOp8vp8wI
HO in Cleveland - (Elka) Betty White, Victoria (Wendy Malick), Joy (Jane Leeves) and Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli) build a layout in the basement of a Cleveland Victorian. Show chronicles all their screw ups as they try to buld a 4x8 because it’s the only size layout that will fit. It seems that when Melanie, Joy and Victoria moved into the house, Elka had a stash of 10,000 Athea
I must have missed all that. I didn’t realize MR had a forums until a couple years ago or so. Prior to that I was mainly in Atlas Forums since 1994 around the time it was launched. Sadly Atlas closed there forums down last year so I now have this one, and a couple others including the Atlas Resue Forum which was raised up by and Atlas forum member as a place for the refugee’s to go!
I remember Dave’s mag covers, one in particular had the “day with Thomas” loco at Strasburg with a very angry face. I don’t recall the caption though…
Layout Wars: Buyers meet a storage lockers to bid on unmarked boxes full of model railroad stuff. Some good, some bad. Watch the Bubba and Ricky go into a tizzy when they overpay for a locker believed to be full of brass OMI locos only top find a spray painted N scale Little Joe trainset with rusty HO steel track & fiber ties.
As The Swap Meet Turns- modelers attend a monthly flea market and confront a different table vendor each time about the fact that all his junk for sale is non- repairable and worthless; what’s more- most of it comes from children’s train sets picked up at garage sales after each Christmas! They then turn other vendors who have new-in-box merchandise priced at current retail values or higher! Cedarwoodron
Host Mike Holmes and crew descend on newbies layouts to rescue it from a bad DIY’er. They beef up the benchwork, bring the electrical up to code, and install a hepa filter in the HVAC to cut down on dust on the layout.
Club members form two tribes known as the “Roundy Rounds”, and The “Operations”, in an effort to win the right to pick the next layout addition. Alliances are formed and plans made.
Last week: Waldo was voted out of his tribe for using horn hook couplers in “the longest train competition.”
And this week on survivor:
Wyat, an electrical engineer in tribe “Operations”, is yelling how hard it is to work in these conditions and tries to derail everyones plans by introducing DCC to the layout. This creates a division within his own tribe.
Meanwhile at tribe Roundy Round, Willy the tribe leader is trying to rein in the use of tribe resources. “That layout dirt just doesn’t grow everywhere for free.” he said to the younger tribe members.
And this weeks challenge: Who will manage to grab the last operating throttle? Will it be tribe roundy round, or tribe operations?
MR is still fun, I just ignore all the borderline oddities, and carry on, the great thing about today is being able to buy brass locomotives for as little as $125, when I was interested in MR only the wealthy could afford brass( sort of still the way) I can choose from beautiful large locomotives from railroads that are not the “in” railroads, keep that new old brass coming, especially the not too well known roads,
How about “Love It Or List It (On eBay)”, the show to determine whether or not your model can be upgraded sufficiently for you to keep it or give it up as a bad job and try to entice some sucker to take it off your hands for big bucks by selling it on eBay.
I’d suggest “1,000 Ways To Dye Lichen”, but the show would be lucky to air one episode seeing’s how NOBODY uses lichen anymore.
In this series, John spends his time walking down the local Class 1 RR tracks to get that perfect shot with his camera, but has perpetual confrontations with the local RR Bulls! He feels he must press on to get the pictures so he’ll finally be published in Trains!
