The most common argument I hear about not producing pre 1900’s equipment is that everyone who grew up then is dead. True and not true.
Many of us grew up in a time whne the most viewed trains were Americans and Moguls. They were the ones on TV, on the westerns. It was the old timers that were getting robbed, and that John Wayne rode and protected. That’s why they are so dear to our hearts.
Show me a kid who grew up with the Lone Ranger and I’ll show you a model railroader who has a least considered modeling the Old West.
I think it’s just a matter of what you like… Myself I’m not too much into the early 1900s I Have a couple of Moguls, but refer modeling the 50’s plus or minus a decade… Alot of the new equipment is really cool. I have a AC4400 and really like the 70macs and others. Now I do beleive there is a market for the the era your talking about and we would like to see everyone happy. But you know and I know they will sell what sells. Just my opinion.
I grew up with the Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid, Kit Carson, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and others. Modeling the old west never ocurred to me, ever. I guess it might be fun, but I prefer either the railroading I grew up with or the railroading going on down by the tracks today.
Hey Chip! Yeh, all those old “very cool” locos were what we used to see in the old westerns. There is something about they way they would always spin the drivers at least once when they started with 3 cars. LOL I used to think that there was some reason that had to be done for the train to start. I agree that the romanticism of those old timers would be a good selling point. Many people (certainly not all) who use much more modern steam (and Diseasals) would want one or two just to have them around. If they could only get them to run correctly and pull a decent period string of cars… I am very excited about the “modern” 4-4-0 Bachmann is coming out with. I have debated preordering one, but I usually like to see how they run before commiting.
I was always under the impression that there was a huge subgroup of pre-turn of the last-century modelers - the modelers of the Colorado narrow gauge roads. Now granted, in the 1970s MR photo-tours there was sure to be a Jordan Model T parked somewhere if it was an HO layout (thereby pushing the layout at least into 1910+ terrority) but most I have seen I believe are set pre-WW I, mostly 1880-1890s.
Beauty is…yadda. I don’t happen to find much appeal in the older pan-head cylinders, the inverted triangular stacks, and the long, pole-supported cowcatchers. They just don’t do it for me. The lines of a K-4 or Challenger are very appealing for my tastes.
Maybe there just isn’t enough of a “concerted” voice rising to inform them of the need or demand. I wish you great success, though, because I know how important it is to YOU.
I beg to differ. Most of the Colorado narrow gaugers I know model the 1930’s … it’s just that the Depression and the west make things look that way! The last “regular season” of the D&RGW was 1963, hardly the turn of the last century! Anyway … I’d like to see some of the older stuff, too!
Chip, that’s exactly what I was thinking last time the topic came up - a massive number of people grew up watching Westerns, many if not most of which would have had trains of that era. The potential market should be huge. It amazes me that the 4-4-0 is such a symbol of American railroading but there’s no good RTR plastic model available.
There has never been a big market for nineteenth century models. Paul Larson’s Model Railroader period as editor(1960’s) had a great deal of this era in print. It wasn’t a big market even then, now there are forty more years of railroading to cover.
It is all a matter of what you want. I model the 1870’s, growing up reading Larson, Reschenburg and Odegard’s turn of the nineteenth century modeling articles. I went further back because I like big stacks
Perhaps it’s the “Golden Age” to you, but probably not to the rest of the modelers?
If there was a demand, there would be more products from the turn of the century.
My personal interests are all over the place, from Shays, Climaxes, Heislers to the latest 6000HP diesels. I have the intent to build an “operating diorama” in On30, using my older steam engines. Not because I’m particularly interested in the age when they ran, but because I find the old time woodsy scenes very interesting and “funky”.
Well, let’s not be blindered here. There is one place that offers scads of this type of equipment: G-scale. I’d have to put 75% of the product offered there into this time period. I’m not saying it’s tremendously prototypical, but a trip to your LHS should reveal a far, far higher profusion of it than in smaller scales.
Having said that, I’m not into the era for two reasons:
Aesthetic. Like some others here, the rolling stock (and structures, etc.) of the era just don’t do anything for me. Has nothing to do with being alive (I wasn’t alive for the period I model now, either) or with what I watched as a kid. Just doesn’t have any “wow” factor for me. And size does play a factor here. I think the pre-1900 equipment often fails to satisfy simply for not having enough “heft”… Which may explain why it shows up in larger scales more - where it’s smaller size plays to advantage for most.
Size Again. Not aesthetically this time, but physically. Even with the latest technology, the physical size of the equipment imposes limitations. Until not-that-long-ago, a lot of the locos from that period would have had tender-drive… not appealing. Even today as technology grows smaller, I think you’d be hard pressed to fit a decent drive chain, and a decoder into an old-timer 4-4-0 (not to mention sound). For me, at least, DCC has become a prerequisite.
I model 1925 logging, that way if I want a FSM engine house that’s OK or if I want to slap a bunch of scrap wood and tin together that’s fine too. You have to love that rusty equipment and weathered buildings.Just my thoughts.
I shouldnt offer this but Bachmann sells an unbelievable “Golden Age” 4-4-0 and 2-6-0 in large scale, there modeled after narrow gauge but given the difference between standard gauge and narrow gauge at the time was that they simply built the same loco only reduced in scale 35% I’d say they’d make quite the nice standard guage lokies too with the right scaled figures used to give the scale reference.
One of the more fun layouts I made was a simple twice around modified figure eight on a 4x8 that had the Virginian & Truckee steamer and the Roundhouse passenger cars that looked a lot like the thread above me.
It was a lot of fun and complete with scenery and I gave it to a woman at work for her kid.
I have another set still in boxes and hope to run it on a modern era as a tourist train.
Poll, after poll, after poll has demonstrate that their is very little interest among HO modelers for the pre-1900 era. Generally less than 5% of those polled express any interest in modeling this period. Not only is it dramatically removed in time from the present but personal knowledge and reference material regarding what was “typical” of the period is hard to come by.
Incidentally, I and many of my hobby friends did grow up in the era of the Lone Ranger, Bonanza, and the Cisco Kid TV shows and were avid fans but none of us has ever expressed any interest in modeling that era.
i think of it as a challenge to model the pre-USRA period . i feel sure that more locos will be coming , if they can build a 2-8-0 or a shay in N i’m sure they can build a small 2-6-0 in HO that will accept a dcc decoder , hopefully with sound .
i’m working on an MDC old-timer 2-6-0 kit . lots of work to get it running at all , making it dcc-ready is just an extra challenge . i also just bought an old tyco 4-8-0 kit that i’m going to try to bash into a 4-6-0 . if it works it will look cool .
i don’t see G as a likely possibility for me . canadian winters plus my dislike for yardwork equals not going to happen .
Turn of the century information can’t be that hard to come by, I have at least a half dozen books on the era and four 3" binders of photocopied information. You just have to look for it. I have found rule books on E-Bay, reprints of Official Railway Guides, Westerfield sells ORER’s on CD. I should get my 10th pre-1911 rule book in the next week, The oldest rule book I have found for my railroad on E-bay was 1876.
Also I don’t model the “wild west”. In the pre-1900’s probably 90% of the railroad mileage in the US was east of the Mississippi.
As far as the % of modelers, there are probably fewer On3 or traction modelers and they have 50-100 times more products than the pre-1911 modeler. For the company that offers a full product line in that era, they can be the 800 lb gorilla in that market.
We cheated a bit. When we created the Grimy Gulch Scenic Railway, we built it as a tourist recreation of an old west town. That way we get to have the old locomotives and rolling stock, horses, covered wagons, saloons as well as people in modern clothing and cars and trucks.
