I was reading through the current September issue of MR the other day about Eric Brooman’s Utah Belt layout. Even though Eric’s prototype line (and featured layout) no longer exist, Eric has chosen to create a freelance layout that operates always in the present day here and now. (Hence, his need to dismantle and create a new layout every so often.) I thought this was an interesting approach to modeling.
That got me to thinking. With the proliferation of MRRing products that are on the market these days, as well as the amount of accessible prototype information on the Internet for the modeler, is it still “easier” and cheaper to create and model a more modern layout (i.e. 80s - present) than it is a Fallen Flag?
I think it’s easier and cheaper to do modern/semi modern. With the exception of old rolling stock, you can use almost anything older on a newer era. (antique autos, old buildings)
Older eras can lock you into expensive craftsman kits and hard to find locos and rolling stock. Old autos are a LOT more expensive than Fresh Cherries at Wally World.
If you weren’t around in the olden days, it makes for a lot more research to get everything correct.[2c]
Honestly, I would say that curently it is just a little harder to model the past then the present. with the internet it is becomeing easer to find Ex-engneers, and other people who knew the road you are trying to model, modeling the past becomes very hard though when you do not let any give to your layout and want to model everything to an exsact.
To me, the biggest drawback of modern modelling is the length of the equipment. Today’s front-line diesels are way bigger than those of the Transition Era, and you see 50-foot everything, unless it’s much longer.
Train rooms, on the other hand, have not kept pace. Our layouts are still crowded into that small “spare” room, or down in the corner of the basement. So, we still need to use relatively tight-radius curves. If that big modern stuff runs on these curves at all, it doesn’t look quite right. So, for an HO modeller, your choice is to switch to N-gauge, or set the Wayback Machine for the Transition Era.
And when you get there, Mr. Peabody, Sherman and I will welcome you…
How “fallen” a flag are we talking about? Finding info on 19th Century railroads in Oregon like the Oregon Pacific or Oregon & California seems to be like panning for gold. Once in a lifetime maybe you get lucky and get a decent-size nugget or two. The rest is fools gold and dirt. And given the non-arid climate any traces are generally gone.
Colorado narrow gauge is a different story. It was still operational in the 1950s when the researchers and writers and photographers descended upon it to document the way things were (in the 1930s to 1950s!).
My conjecture would be at the present time there are enough living witnesses who worked on or understood the railroads as early as the 1960s to make sufficient information reasonably available. Earlier than that - memories are starting to fade, and pictures and understanding are being lost on a daily basis.
Research is probably much easier, however, running modern trains will often require more available space. Those long cars need wide radius turns to track properly and look decent.
Modern short lines are probably the easiest to model, but perhaps a bit harder to find info about.
There certainly seems to be more people interested in modern railroads compared to 20 years ago, and manufacturers are keeping pace with some really good models.
But who says your model railroad has to be a fallen flag? You can pretend it never happened or that history turned out to be different. I am doing that with my model railroad. I model Conrail and I’ve made the assumption that Congress turned it into government independant corporation that was sold to stockholders on the stock market instead of to CSX and NS.
Given the current cost of oil and other fuels, the railroads are actually making money, something the government doesn’t know how to do without using a printing press. To bad that Congress isn’t funding Amtrak the way they should or it would not only be making money but also restoring service in certain places at a cost that would be much cheaper to the public than supporting unprofitable airlines and subsidizing certain sirports.
Depends on what you mean by “easier”… If you like class ones, it’s pretty easy, because you only have a handful to choose from. I chose the late 60’s/early 70’s because there’s a fair amount of stuff available, I have dim memories of that time, and there was a wide variety of railroading going on. For me that’s easier, because it offers more options. It’s also familiar enough that I can capture the flavor of what I remember, but just hazy enough that I don’t lose sleep over minor inaccuracies.
The other day on another forum, a guy posted great pictures of a modern diesel he’d painted. Within minutes, there were a half dozen pictures of the prototype from all angles posted that pointed out all the details he got wrong. Too much information.
I’ll stick to my nice fuzzy vision of the past, thank you…
In my case, it’s a toss-up. I model the WWII era and pretty strictly steam. Okay, there’s a lot of steam out there to choose from, one would think–right? Well, I model Rio Grande and Southern Pacific steam, and those two railroads hardly knew what a USRA loco looked like, let alone bought any, if at all. So there’s NOT a lot of Southern Pacific steam aside from the ubiqutous GS and one or two AC’s, and hardly ANY Rio Grande, unless you choose to go brass and do a lot of hunting at swap meets or MR shows or companies that have a lot of used brass in the prototypes you’re looking for. So THAT part of it is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
As to the rolling stock–it’s pretty easy. There is a lot of steam-era rolling stock out there. Buildings are no problem, scale autos of the period are getting a little easier to find.
Friends of mine say, “Why don’t you go diesel? There’s a LOT of SP and Rio Grande diesels out there.” True, I could.
But I just don’t wanna. Yes, sometimes it’s difficult to do my particular period in railroading, but for me, it’s also equally satisfying despite the difficulty.
That’s the reason I chose a 1930s version of a local railroad, because the transition era gets modelled often enough without me piling on as well, and the 1930s were busier and more varied in my region, yet still had enough road vehicles to logically include some interesting examples of them in some scenes.
Research is proving to be somewhat difficult so far.
In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the easiest era to model is the one that saw YOU taking pictures, sketching track arrangements and building plans and acquiring topo maps that showed exactly how the railroad squirmed and wiggled its way up that canyon. Then add in that the locomotives, passenger cars (including DMU and EMU) and freight cars were readily available at reasonable prices, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer allowed purchases to be made ‘against the day.’
When I was doing that, neither I nor my wife realized that ‘the day’ was still forty years in the future!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - from my own notes and photos)
Actually basic knowledge of modern railroading will show you that you don’t need long wheel base engines and cars if one gets pass what I call the model railroad mind set of not looking at the big picture and not fully understanding modern railroads…
Have a 4x8? Why not model a urban industrial branch,branch line(yes they still exist) or short line then you will see the 4 axle locomotives still play a large part in modern railroads.Bigger isn’t always better.
I do the late 60’s through 80’s rolling stock. It keeps everything simple.
I do fight and scratch to get steam era rolling stock such as Reefers which come out once every two years for me. A set just arrived at the hobby shop having been on order for like 18 months.
So I do both steam and modern era. Whatever is on the track is the era. Now the vehicles are kept in the steam era because it is more acceptable to have older vehicles in the late 60’s No need to buy a gazillion of them at 12 dollars each.
Just another thought from my end about vehicles. Modeling the Sierra Nevada mining country in the '40’s–or almost any other area during that era–really gives you a chance to use a lot of earlier vehicles from the 'twenties and 'thirties, because this was ‘working-class’ country, and only the well-to-do few were able to afford newer cars–the rest of the population just kept their old Model A’s and such in good running condition. In fact, I bought a couple of '48 Ford ragtops in the WS auto collection, and I was almost shocked at how ‘streamlined’ they were, LOL! And there are some fine Jordan kits for that era that shouldn’t be overlooked, either. It doesn’t all have to be RTR for the era.
In fact, this was pretty much before the ‘disposable’ era, where you had to have the latest model car every year or so.
Hello Hey Tom if you what easy I would say to freelance you can get a way with a lot more. I started out that way but now I find myself getting more into the mid 30-40s . And now it is getting harder to find stuff and there is more research. So I would say its as hard as you make it. But I think most of us in the hobby are not afraid of a challenge or hard work. Have a nice day Frank
It is much more easy to go out and watch a real train and observe track and structures than it is to try to remember what they looked like, or worse try to visualize what they looked like from 3rd hand books and pictures. If a detail is missed it can be re-observed. If a detail is missing from memory or from the reference material it is just lost.
Easy as far as fitting into available space? - modern equipment is huge and needs much more space. I’ll take a good old 40’ box car of the pre-modern eras over todays “standard” 60 footer.
I agree with most on here. Its rather hard to do the past years. Well at my age of 28. I would have to look at photos for ideas to model a later era, rather than go out the front door and see whats happen in the era I model. I model the 80s-now. To me thats what I remember. Thats what is easier for me.