This layout is silly. I know everyone has their own tastes but I prefer the more serious protype.
It may not be serious or based on a specific prototype, but come on, you have to admit Malcom’s a talented modeler and definately created a specific mood with this layout. I model the Maine waterfront, I’ve got no interest in southwestern railroading, but I was impressed with the overall feel of the layout. It’s not my taste, it’s highly fictional, definately for fun, and beautifully done. I’m sure Malcom had a blast building it… isn’t that all that matters?
Who are you? What great masterpiece do you have to your credit to be openly criticizing someonelse’s hard work? Post your URL or your magazine articles and we will check out your great work and post on it!
Are you refering to a recent article?
I’m in the planning stages of my own wild west layout. I find the history fascinating. This is an era when anything could happen. Railroads popped up like weeds and survival was tough with all kinds of challenges.
I’m going to model an 1870s-1880s Kansas cow town. Though I haven’t made up my mind which one. Abilene would be perfect for the Kansas Pacific (my favorite railroad), but I live in Wichita and know the history throughly. I think I’m gonna have to rewrite history [;)]
Besides, I like those 4-4-0 engines.
[:(!]
[:(!]
Jeezuz Buddy lighten up before your arteries harden!
Malcomn’s layout is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time. SO WHAT if it’s fictional, BFD! The amount of imagination and creative force to do this is a 100 fold over what most modelers are willing to invest. By the way EVERYONE’S model railroad is fictional unless your modeling 1:1 or have every single mile of your “prototype” scaled on your layout (of course then it would be several ACTUAL miles long…you must have a BIG basement). [:(!]
Modelers like Malcomn, Joel Crea and Lane Stewart are my hero’s [:D] and one of the biggest reasons I got into model RR in the first place. They show the immense creativity that can be achieved with the hobby. It was uptight rivit counters like YOU that discouraged me and I’m sure a lot of other modelers to either not got into the hobby or like me to work “lone wolf” because we didnt want to hear the whiny elitist “its-not-based-on-any -prototype-therefore-its worthless” ATTITUDE that rivit counting are famous for.[V]
The only one looking SILLY is you…[xx(] So Chill buddy, and dont be so serious.[;)]
for vsmith: LOL
to each his own, is all i say. someone could build a looney tunes layout for all i care and i’d still enjoy it!
Hmmm… A Looney Tunes Themed Layout, that could be REAL interesting! Imagine the fun if Daffy Duck is in charge…LOL
my very first layout was a 4*6 layout and it was a logging industy layout. Now there is no way that i could…“to scale” have put all the things in there that made the railroad fun without cutting some corners and realism. Though I would rather build something with more realism (I am working on a bigger space now to do so). I think it is wrong to down someone else on the creation they have created. This is already a hard enough hobby to keep people in. We dont need people at the gate screaming at people that they can only model 1 way…cause honestly there is no 1 way. There a thousands. So please…“dont say that anything is awful” Maybe you see something that could be improved apon and that may be true…but everyone has their own ideas. I will leave it at that.
Yes, we each do what we like because it is FUN for us. And we do it for our own pleasure, not to satisfy the ideals of someone else. No matter what is modelled, this art takes a lot of time and effort and creativity and skill. And above all - it’s YOUR railroad.
Dumb off topic question: am new to forums and have fun deciphering the many acronyms used. Some are easy to figure from context, such as BTW, IMHO, and BFD(!), but 2 postings above have used the acronym ‘LOL’ and there are 20 definitions in the online acronym listings. Have seen this one many times b4, could someone please explain what this stands for? Thanx
LOL = Laugh Out Loud
Like a few of the others, I wasn’t that impressed with the cartoon nature of the layout. However, I don’t rule the world, so I think its great that someone expresses his artistic talent this way. I wish I had his talent, even if I would use it a different way in modelling.
In all fairness to David77’s opinion, I have to say that this is the one and only website of the many I visit that has elicited supportive posts for Malcolm Furlow’s latest layout article. Elsewhere comments seem to be running about 90% against the need for it to have appearred in a mainstream modeling magazine, rather than some publication like A.W.N.U.T.S., which is far more tongue-in-cheek. Admittedly, it is the closest thing to pure fantasy to appear in the pages of my 60 year collection of MR magazine.
I note that a similar article on this very same layout was presented in one of the more serious model railroading magazines (I think it was the Shortline & Narrow Guage Gazette) just a month or two ago and commentary by their subscribers was pretty much just short of hoots and cat-calls!
Without question, Furlow is an outstanding modeler and we each have the right to model in any fashion we so choose. However, I think that most readers of MR and the other model railroading magazines purchase them to glean ideas for their own layouts. I fully enjoyed Furlow’s articles on the San Jaun Central, the Carbondale Central, and some others, finding them very useful, but this latest layout is so Disneyesque and outside the mainstream of model railroading that personally I found nothing of value in it.
JB
In the spirit of Work Dinos,
Caudate people.
and dragons in tunnels with glowing eyes.
Where have I read, “Model Railroading is FUN!”
To look at this layout is to smile,
but even a circle of track on the carpet is to smile…
Doug, in Utah
I’m very impressed with the 3-D sculpture Malcolm did. I guess you have to have some fun now and then but for that 'mode’l to garner several pages in a well respected source of modeling is well, using the pages of that magazine to pay off a bet or ‘someting’.
Malcolm is a very well respected Modeler and I think he was just having some fun. I would have enjoyed it more had it appeared in the April issue.
The Furlow G layout is whimsical, but well done. I kind of liked it. It’s not the first whimsical layout featured in MR by any means.
Not that long ago, Northlandz was featured, with mixed responses from readers.Interesting? Yes it was, at least to me, even with its’ separate loops of track and impossible bridges.
Just this year, the new Chicago Museum layout was featured…that enormous steel bridge in the foldout would never have been built by any railroad in such a location, so it was just there for the sheer fun of having it, so it is really whimsy.
Many think (especially recently ), that John Allen’s masterpiece G & D was a caricature…I think it was the most inspirational layout in history.
Many ,many years ago, MR did a feature on a “space-age” moon surface railroad, with futuristic equipment…just for fun.
Fun is ok. Really.
regards
Mike in Meaford.
Mike posts -
“Many, many years ago, MR did a feature on a ‘space-age’ moon surface railroad, with futuristic equipment…just for fun.”
The MR moon layout was intentionally an April Fool’s issue article. Perhaps Furlow’s piece should have been similarly positioned.
CNJ831
As I said in my earlier post, its the rivit counters with no sense of humor that ruin this hobby.
So what if its a flight of whimsy, There is MORE and BETTER detailing in this one finished section than in a whole heck of a lot of layouts I’ve seen published. What scare me is how good will the rest of the layout be when its finished. I really think theres alot of bashing of this layout out of pure spite and envy and jealousy. Most modelers would kill for Furlow’s skills and imagination but too conservative to really go out on a limb for something they like. Furlow’s discovered the true freedom that this hobby affords, if it didnt ever exist in reality, who cares? it can in your mind and you can model it.
Again, Lighten up before your arteries harden.
P.S. The photos in the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette were FAR better quality than MR.
Wow, what a way to start out on this forum! [:0]
That layout was not exactly what I would do, but I have to admit that it was very well crafted.
There is already a forum catering heavily to the rivet counters, grinches, and assorted malcontents, whose main contribution to the hobby is to make nasty comments about what they don’t like in other peoples’ modeling…it’s the Atlas forum.
There’s no need for this forum to become like that one.
regards
Mike