Tyler’s post here, made me ponder Modeler’s License use on RR layouts all over the world. Just the term freelance is Modeler’s License at it’s best! This could be something like I intend: Small, shoestring freelance**,** early 60s switching line, thru northern ME, NH, VT, using any surplus motive power that was available and affordable. So my Erie HH600, PRR 44 tonner & CV S4 [all weathered well] will run happily together, with AR over-print on cabs [for Abenaqui River shortline RR] & w/new cab numbers. One might have locos on their pikes, which would never have run on a specific 1:1 RR, industries which are entirely fictional [like an Unobtainium mine and Frank Ellison of 1940’s fame, had a post-hole manufacturing plant on his famous, O scale Delta Lines steam layout] & a host of other unusual or humorous scenarios, which go to prove that Model Railroading is FUN! A very prestigious, 25+ yr.-old HO modular club here in NH [The Boomers] always have some tongue-in-cheek items on their layout at annual train shows, to help entertain all the youngesters [and oldsters] who attend. They have a module with small pond and a dragon, swimming in it [three parts: head, middle hump, tail, glued to ‘water’ surface]. It’s a HOOT, very popular and folks always look for it, year after year. Maybe you modelers could list some Modeler’s License items YOU have used on your layouts, to let all Newbies here know that NOT everyone is a confirmed ‘rivet counter’, LOL! TTFN…Old Tom aka papasmurf in NH
Well, many of us still operate beer reefers well past their official demise in revenue service, but that’s one of those things that only those well-steeped in railroad lore are really aware of.
Besides the usual step of naming business and places after family members (the subway stop at Penny Lane serves a dual purpose for this old Beatles fan) and the somewhat common law offices of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, I’ve placed cutouts of Burns and Smithers inside the Burns Coal and Oil company and made up signs for Sal Monella’s Ice House, Mom’s Robot Oil, Leo Da Vinci’s Painters and a few others.
The real Andrea Gail sailed out of Marblehead and Gloucester, Mass. She was a fishing boat, not a lobster boat. And what’s a lobster boat doing around all those Milwaukee Road engines on my layout, anyway.
Like all good maritime legends, it’s hard to get a solid, in-focus picture of one, but what’s that in the lower right corner? Could it be…a…mermaid?
i always though of modelers’ license as the use of a six rung ladder when the prototype had 7 or perhaps a gp-9 when a gp-7 wasn’t available. these are things the nit pickers will jump right on while they keep their mouths shut about my mutant animal petting zoo next door to the apocalypse chemical plant.
whimsical dragons in the pond or lions feasing on a car load of sheep would be an entrely different matter. you can’t even imagine some of the sick ideas i have yet to impliment on my model rairoad, but modelers’ license? naw i don’t think that is the term i would use.
grizlump
Old Tom,
I don’t know if I would consider the things you mention as examples of modeler’s license. I’ve always understood modeler’s license to involve things like:
- selective compression
- fudging dimensions for operational reliability or appearance
- using equipment out of era/region/prototype
- using stand-ins to represent things not directly modeled from the prototype
Please understand, I’m not criticizing the use of humor or sight gags on model railroads, I’m just questioning if “modeler’s license” is the right heading under which to file such things.
Just be careful you don’t freelance past a plausibility checkpoint and get busted by the prototype police… you might get your Modeler’s License revoked!
[swg]
John
My Model Railorader License contains fine print permitting whimiscal creativity to add interest for visiting grand children and others. … Remember, the hobby is for fun.
Also, it is just not feasible to have perfect, working models of the prototype., and you will always make exceptions to accomodate your resources. Therefore, we follow the “close enough rule” to attain plausible realism.
AWWW!! Now we have to have a “license”? Is that how all these state governments are going to balance their budgets? [(-D]
My modeler´s license is running a steam train over a tram-type line in Japan. Actually, that is not that far off - we have steam excursion trains on the street car system in the German town of Karlsruhe.
What if you are the tongue-in-cheek item? I’m short and under 5’6" – So, CR&T is N Scale.
I suppose that my ‘modeler’s license’ consists of running just about every wheel arrangement of steam locomotive possible on my subdivision, when in reality, the two prototype railroads that I model generally ran SPECIFIC types of steamers on SPECIFIC divisions.
But I don’t think I’m alone in that, am I?
But hey, it’s fun!
Tom
How about running stock cars on an 80’s short line RR? I
Since I apparently inspired this thread, I guess I’ll chime in. I used modeler’s license liberally on my previous layout, the White River Southern, resurrecting the abandoned B&M Northern Division and freelancing every single industry, another shortline to interchange with, and several towns. I was in the process of making it more accurate to the area when I tore it down to rebuild.
My new layout, the Central Massachusetts Railway, is more “proto-lanced.” CSX, in it’s never-ending quest to rid itself of the marginally-profitable half of Massachusetts east of Worcester, wants to sell the Agricultural Branch, a former NH branch line that runs from Framingham north-west through Northborough, Clinton, and Leominster before ending a few miles short of the abandoned connection to the B&M-Guilford-Pan Am at Fitchburg. The one train is a turn that runs from Framingham Yard to Leominster or Clinton and back, switching a bunch of industries including Ken’s Foods in Marlborough, Massachusetts Container Corp in Marlborough (which I just found out is the industry I was asking about in my original post) Reisner Scrap in Clinton (served via a switchback!), a lumberyard in Sterling, and a plastics plant in Leominster.
That’s real life. Using modeler’s license, I had CSX sell the branch line to the state who contracted the Central Massachusetts Railway (named after a B&M predecessor that ran through the area as well as my hometown) to operate the line. With CSX’s GP40-2s gone, the only logical option for my first sound-equipped locomotive is an Alco! Ken’s Foods, MCC, and Reisner Scrap are all modeled with no changes except for selective compression so they’ll fit in my basement, and I added a commercial bakery in Northborough in a building currently occupied by Iron Mountain and a lumberyard in West Berlin where an unidentified small company is now. The only other changes are the addition of a siding/runaround track at Northborough and the u
papasmurf again. Hey, CR&T, am almost 74 and only 5’ 61/2’’ now [proving that gravity works, LOL]. But that doesn’t stop me from driving my old Honda Goldwing sidecar rig every riding season! And my old HO modular club [ was member for 6 yrs.] always used Modeler’s License as the reason we’d veer from the 1:1 whenever we wanted; whether it was serious or humorous. Like members running modern diesel power & cars on our late '40s short line with very light rail. And I never mentioned RURAL FLAVOR, which was our own term for layout oddities. Two examples: a leaning HO water tower [ which actually existed on local short line ] and the gentle moguls which developed in our HO module trackage [ in Homasote/plywood, wherever cross bracing was insufficient] and all were left in place, as everyone liked them. And we were going to do our version of an Unobtanium mine, when the club finally dis-banded, due to member’s having too many outside interests. TTFN…papa
At one time the Athearn F7 was the only F unit available outside of brass, and many people painted and lettered them as stand-ins for everything from late F3s to F9s. That’s kinda more what I think of when I hear “modeller’s license”. On my layout I built a Walthers “background building” commissary kit and decorated similar to the old NP commissary that was in St.Paul Minnesota. It’s not exactly like the real one was, but it catches a lot of the “feel” of the old building.
My tastes are more in the quaint/cute direction than the grimey/gritty realistic direction, so I tend toward a sort of “Disney” flavored layout. I try to keep it plausible, but dead-on realism is just not fun for me. I feel that these pictures sort of capture the semi-playful character of my layout:
My locomotives all look like their ancestry includes an espresso machine, and my structures look like they were designed for Hooterville (Petticoat Junction). I left the roof off of my water tower to allow me to represent a famous scene from the Petticoat Junction opening - the Bradley sisters swimming (skinny-dipping?) in the railroad water tank.
For me it’s about fun - I gave up my modeler’s license and got a freelancer’s certificate.
I am still on my modellers permit. I just can’t seem to pass the darn test to get the full-blown license. [:S]
I had a proper 1:80 scale modeler’s license - but I couldn’t find it when I dropped it on the carpeted floor of my office/workroom. I guess my wife vacuumed it up…
My coal-originating shortline runs articulated hopper cars with six or seven axles (and I’m considering an 8-axle, 3-carbody experiment.) and hopper-brakes that don’t resemble anything that ever burnished 1:1 scale rails anywhere in the known universe. OTOH, I absolutely insist that my JNR prototype cars have to carry numbers that I personally recorded in my field notes almost half a century ago…
Consistency is for followers. I prefer to lead (marching to my own drummer, as usual.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - tongue in cheek)
Every layout uses modelers license.
We are boys playing with toys.
Rich
I want my trains to resemble real trains of a particular railroad, time and place as much as possible. But I occasionally used my license.
For instance, I had a logging shortline railroad connecting with my East Texas Santa Fe line. It was loosely based partly on Texas South-Eastern, which actually connected with Southern Pacific. The real T-SE had an ex-Southern Pacific wood caboose. I used a Kadee N-scale (before MTL divestiture) Southern Pacific caboose as the basis for a model. The shortline on my layout connected at the fictitious town of Johnston, named for a long-deceased modeler friend, and the shortline got the name Johnston and East Texas, abbreviated J.E.T. which was incongrous because it was so slow.
So the caboose, the shortline, and its general regional location had some basis in fact, but modeler’s license allowed changing the trunkline connection, the roadname… and allowed the whimsy of the conductor assigning the job of assistant to his dog.
The
Or if you’re lucky, just a written warning… [;)]