Sitting at a crossing the other day as an Amtrak went by, I was almost put to sleep with boredom from the unpleasing looking, featureless trucks under the coaches as they passed by, followed by the dingey corrugated auto hauling monoliths bringing up the rear. Ho hum, more of the same.
Some of us modelers like the smaller locos of yesteryear pulling just a few cars showing arch bar or early bettendorf trucks. Flat cars, whose wooden stakes and floors are in need of an overhaul due to heavy, use and are weather worn. We like Wooden box cars that need a little paint, tank cars with drool from their filling towers, gondolas bent and hammereds, if metal or scalloped wooden top planks from years of abuse. We musn’t forget that old wood caboose with the illuminated marker lights from kerosene Handlans.
I can’t quite put my finger on why a dingey monlithic autotrain car would be far less exciting to me than a slightly sway backed, 36 foot, truss rod box. They are both not attractive to most folks.
There are others who go out of their way to kit bash a nice looking car or an expensive R-T-R car into something that is extremely “shop worn”. Why do you do it?..If you do it at all. What draws you to it? Got any pix of one of your favorites?
For me a new, clean freight car is far less exciting than an older weathered car. My time frame is general and my rolling stock ranges from the 50’s to the 80’s in most cases with the older cars being somewhat more weathered than the newer ones but all my cars have weathering to some degree.
Trains, Planes, Ships, Trucks and other things that are really showing their age are like people. I have friends that have done so little living in their lives they haven’t even learned to swim. The friends I most enjoy spending time with are the ones that are alot like myself, “pretty beat up”. When I look at a rail car going by that is getting long in the tooth I just wonder about all the places it has been, the goods it has carried, the trauma it may have suffered, all the weather it has been through and on and on. We call ships “she”. Some could tell a lot of stories if they were indeed alive and able to. Maybe when we see dilapidation rolling by at a level crossing we see ourselves and have an appreciation of what is before our eye’s. A life well lived.
Hows that for being philosophical? And it’s not even Friday![(-D]
Feel the power and the viberation of the ground as one of these mammoths powers up from a stand still and maybe you will understand the force behind some of us…
The ambiance of any model railroad is a window into the mind of the modeller. Some folks like everything modern. Others like the atmosphere of days gone by, especially steam! Some like their model world to be neat and tidy, like they wished the real world would be. Others like dilapidation, junk, litter and overgrown weed patches which to them imparts “character” and “realism” to their modelling. There’s room in the hobby for everyone. By the way, If you want to see the junky look carried to extremes, just go to any finescale modellers show.
My PFE fleet is probably too prestine, might have to do a few “good morning” reefers as shopman called these beaters as the sheathing was so loose from the frame the wooden carbody swayed back and forth for several minutes as if waiving at you. Obviously such a condition was not to be tolerated and if enecomically fiesible they would be subject to complete rebuilding.
I like the memories of the 50s and 60s, but I’ve also got a fondness for steam, so I’ve dual-era’d my layout. Like any era, though, there is some equipment that’s new and some that’s almost reached its limit.
Lately, I’ve been building a tannery, and one element is the cars they used to get hides from the slaughterhouse to the tannery. Once used for hides, you’d never want to put anything else into a boxcar, so they used cars at the end of their careers, and marked them appropriately - Hide Service Only.
This is a Tichy single-sheathed car kit I found at my LHS. From what I found in the box, I was not the first owner. There were a couple of sprues with warped parts, but there were also duplicates of those parts, so I’d imagine someone bought the kit, ordered replacement parts and then decided all the grabs and drilling and brake parts were too much. Anyway, I gave it a back story of being an old car that the Empire Tanning Company bought, and added the sign.
Railroads, too, could find a home for old cars. MOW is necessary, and the cars don’t have to look great or travel at high speed, just be serviceable.
This was one of the first cars I did with a product called Instant Rust. I laid it on heavy, but for this one, I think that was the right thing to do.
That is totally foreign to me. I dislike beat up old rolling stock. What looks the best to me, and the most REALISTIC, is mildly weathered rolling stock.
I didn’t weather these but man, now this is the cat’s meow, not that AWFUL overly done yuk. Feast your eyes on these:
There was someone on this forum, I can’t remember who it was that didn’t believe some of the weathered freight cars I had shown could possibly have a prototype. He was down in this area on business not long after when he had to wait at a railroad crossing. What he was seeing was a bunch of beat-up rusted cars that looked just like the ones I had been showing. Everything has a prototype.
Certainly examples of beat up and severly weathered freight cars exist. They have always existed. Same goes for cars, houses and plenty of other things which have worn down over time and not be scrapped. Generally people don’t find worn out things appealling, I know I don’t.
What I liked about mainline RR’s I used to see out west in the 80’s were they looked better to me than today - almost no graffiti, no huge patch jobs, no conspicuity striping. I realize some like this kind of thing, and it does take talent to make a model look like a real worn out car and do it well. I recognize such talent for what it is, a type of artistic skill. I have noticed at train shows that it seems popular to over weather cars, but what really looks awesome is when people use restraint and do more sublte weathering - less common and might even require as much or more talent than the really messed up cars.
I live a block off a CSX mainline (well, the railroad was there long before my subdivision was built!) and every night, there are 2 trains coming through- which I can feel the vibrations of through the foundation slab under the flooring. The muted click-clack of the freight car wheels, the faint sound of the engine’s horn sounding distantly as it approaches and then recedes as it passes is refreshing and somehow, strangely comforting to me. That’s “mechanical poetry”, the way I see it! And if I happen to be working on a railroad model at my desk as I hear a train, those sounds become a hymn to our hobby!
Cedarwoodron,I know exactly what you are saying…I’m fortunate enough to live along NS Sandusky line (around 40 trains a day.) and I can railfan from my front porch,patio or my kitchen bar next to the patio doors.
I live around 150’ from the track.Might be to close for some folks but,I like it. [:D]
[:D] You think you guys got it bad, or good. I can’t even get a good, day or nights sleep, unless there is a motor running nearby. Even when it is not needed, I have a box fan very near my bed, that I will turn on when I go to bed, just so I can fall asleep. Something about the hum of a motor, puts me to sleep. Some say rain puts them to sleep. I gotta have a motor. [(-D]
You tink, driving a truck over the road and sleeping in it for 45yrs, had any thing to do with it?
