I've got a huge graffiti decal to put on a 50' car. I just have to decide which one. It's a toss-up between a tank car and a canadian grain hopper.
Be careful JW! Keep an eye out for the "Weed Weasels" when you 'tag' that car! Best to do it at night, in the dark, take the paint can with you then run like crazy! You can always sneak back to take a photo the next morning, but change clothes first! The only way you can stay out of jail, will be to post a photo of it here so we can be witnesses to testify that you are innocent as the driven snow!
So .. the guy that started the thread says .. I don't like pre-weathered cars .. they take the fun out of it .. or words to that effect .. I happen to agree with him. MODEL RAILROADING is what it is. A hobby. It is a hobby that is supposed to remove you from regular life for a little while. It should also stimulate the artistic side of your brain. I don't really care how you do your version of "playing with trains" , but if it don't remove you from your regular life for a while, its not worth doing.
Most forms of entertainment remove us from everyday life. Its not only trains that do that. Getting away from reality is often achieved by drunks, hunters, base jumpers, patrons in the strip clubs, and when driving on ice. I don't drink, can't hit the broad side of a barn from inside, am afraid of heights, have forgotten what it is to see at the clubs, slip and slide on ice, so there is only one thing left at my age: Driving a steam engine!
I think the best, enjoyable time I've had with the hobby ... as far as rolling stock is concerned was building an old Mantua 2-8-8-2 from a kit. It even had tiny rivits for constructing the valve linkage. It was a great challange. I guess they are not available any longer. What a shame.
I still have some of those tiny rivets, and shoulder screws as well as a set of that old valve gear left! I was lucky to have a Dad who took an interest in teaching me how to assemble those old engines, and how to make my own parts from scrap too. It is still a thrill to watch one of them run with all that 'monkey' motion working, that is over 50 years old! He helped me assemble my first scale HO engine when I was 7, back in 1937. Been at it ever since too. Someday I may get good at it. So far I am like a Doctor, I'm 'practicing'!
Not too far back in time - before the internet and cell phones - I used to spend a lot of time just reading up on the hobby and the history of railroads; I used to build some of the Roundhouse locomotive kits like the 2-8-0 and 2-6-0 and had a great sense of accomplishment building and detailing them - and just like Watash said, I had to make some of my parts from scratch. I found an old Mantua Pacific on sale at the local hobby shop and busied myself picking up detail parts from Cal-Scale to get it looking better. I used to build Silver Streak kits - like the excellent B&O caboose. My dad and I would scratch build trestles for my layout, buildings, you name it. Now I find that due to health issues and the meds I need to take, I just can't do the things that I used to. I just can't imagine why in the world we have this - and please, I'm not picking on anyone - "snobbish" attitude that if you don't build your locomotive from metal you cast and milled yourself that somehow you don't qualify to be a "model railroader". Years ago when I lived in Connecticut, I was thinking about joining a club - but the more time I spent with these guys, the less fun model railroading was. These guys were real rivet counters, and were very critical and sarcastic - especially to some of the teenagers that were in the group. I would often help these younger guys out and would always encourage them and try to help them feel some sense of accomplishment, even if there was some glue showing on a seam, or something not quite straight. I tip my hat to the guys and gals out there that are "master" modelers - they give the rest of us something to aspire to achieve. When I see pics from layouts that bring everything together from scratch built structures to super detailed locos operating on flawless hand laid track through scenery that you just can't imagine is actually a model - it is just amazing and inspiring. And I particularly am amazed by some of the more "senior" model railroaders out there because years ago there was no choice but to be creative and make what you needed yourself. I think that I see some people taking the hobby very, very seriously - and I can understand it to an extent. But a lot of us just like to be involved in the hobby to the extent that we can. And everyone has different skill and comfort levels. I think that when we loose the ability to have fun, relax, and to help out those who want to get involved in the hobby, it will have a negative effect on the entire hobby and industry.
I'm with Watash and co. But whichever side of the fence you are on stop arguing and enjoy it while you can - once the religious fundamentalists are in power (whichever flavour) ALL fun will be banned
I like to have my layout as MY layout including freight cars, locos, weathering and scenery. While I can't argue with the manufacturers making more money catering to this segment of the hobby and thus benefitting the rest of us, it's a shame. I am most impressed with layouts that have the whole package and it motivates me to achieve the "real" thing. There is a certain amount of pleasure in a hand done, finely weathered freight car.... I suppose this is the modelling part of our hobby as opposed to the railroading part... Hobbies are supposed to be fun so I guess we should all enjoy it in our own way. Different strokes (no pun intended) for different folks.
For some people, time is a factor (does that sound familiar?). For others, it's a matter of skill. Nowadays, there's more of a tendency everywhere to substitute money for time -- I'll hire someone to mow my pasture for $10/hour and spend that time on my business, where I make $125/hour. I lose out on the "joy" of mowing, but I'd rather spend my limited lifetime engaing my skills than doing something I'm not that good at. Same thing applies to railroad modeling. Example: I'm a "handydork" when it comes to carpentry, so I use Sievers benchwork without apology.
If I had the money, I'd support Sievers simply because I know the guys. Not personally, but my parent's own a cottage in Washington Island Township. I've been to their store many a time. They do classes on other "fiber arts." Neat place for the entire "crafty" family.
To each their own. Time, skill, patience, resourcefulness, access to resources, marginal utility of weathering, etc., are just a few of the considerations for why someone would / would never buy a "pre-weathered" car/engine (or structure). To the extent vendors can come up with pre-built, highly detailed/weathered rolling stock/engines and structures at a reasonable price, I'm willing to pay for "instant gratification" (and so, apparently, are others). Why? The most important reason is I would rather spend time running trains than working on other aspects of the hobby. Another reason is because I don't profess to have expert scratch building / detailing skills at all. No hand-laid track or scratch built structures on my layout. Nor do I have the ability to create highly realistic scenery out of cotton balls, toothpicks, white glue, and crayons like many trainboard.com readers undoubtedly can. Perhaps someday I can acquire some of these skills. In the interim, I'll be content with occasionally purchasing a reasonably-priced "instant gratification" product. BTW, how many of you reading this post did so accessing the internet on a computer you made yourself? I'm guessing probably not too many of you took the route I did years ago (with the $$$ Lian Li case, the water-cooled graphics card, the tweaked RAM settings, etc.), for some of the same reasons I outlined above. But mostly because to each their own.
Excellent point dwc13 !!! Some of these guys probably have never heard of a 'Trash80', nor have had to hand solder resistors and wires into a 'Mickey Mouse Board' before 'Math Co-processors' existed, either. Remember learning 'Binary Code'? Because of health, some of us have to 'buy' instead of 'build', and just dream of the 'good old days' when we were on a first name basis with Buck Rogers and a slide rule was high tech!
I did enough of that at work. I helped design computer based medical analysis machines around Computer Automation LSI-4 processors. We played around with phone modems where you plugged the telephone hand set into two rubber boots on a cradle. I think they had a baud rate of around 14K. I did not get on the internet at home till I could afford an IBM clone PC.
Ah, the TRS-80. 4K of RAM and you could save your programs/data to tape using a standard tape cassette recorder. And no "blue screen of death". What more could you want from a PC?! I wonder if some of the long-time model railroad enthusiasts can comment on the quality, selection, and availabililty of old Athearn / Varney kits. Perhaps the quality just wasn't where it needed to be, or perhaps only a limited number of roadnames were available (there were far more railroads in existence 50 years ago), which is why many hobbyists opted to scratchbuild their own items. Fortunately for me, the tooling used to produce today's R-T-R items and kits has improved tremendously over what was used even 10 years ago. And inkjet technology has improved to the point where it is virtually on par with laser technology (for lettering). BTW, my 8086 had a math coprocessor. It was an HP-12C.
I build my own computers. At work, I make IT build my computers for me. Frankly, even my first Heathkit (Zenith) PC clone was a build your own. My dad helped me put it together. No soldering though. Which is good, because I suck at it. I missed the Trash80 by a year or 2. At work, I let the techs do that.
Welcome to the all-thumbs club when it comes to carpentry Sievers benchwork is available for folks who have issues with sawing straight lines (musta heard about me somewhere). Me, I'm a zero at wiring, which is why my layouts have been block wiring all these years. I'm gonna have to step it up a notch to learn how to wire for DCC, or even install decoders. It's called "learning a skill", which is something we've been doing sicne birth. in our hobby, we all have varying degrees of competency and skill- somethings we excel at, others we don't. My wiring example is somethiing I've been comfortable with. For car weathering, I use chalk pigments, a skill I picked up 25 years ago and one which works for me quite well. To me, our hobby is a continuous educational process- we may claim to pursue this hobby just to have fun, but in reality we're also learning things as we go. How to put track together, apply scenery, put cars & locomotives on track, build benchwork (I AM getting better with time, thank goodness)- the list goes on. Personally, I don't like the weathering job Athearn did on their Genesis cars. I prefer to do my own, and in all humility I can do a better job. And I don't like plastic couplers, so I replace them with Kadees- my fleet is 100% Kadee couplers, locos and cars alike. Even the wheels get replaced if they're not metal- that process is taking a very long time, but perhaps in a few years all my cars will have metal wheels. And nowhere did I rant about someone doing, say, custom paint work on a model for you, or doing your decoder install, or helping on wiring, etc. I've had certain jobs "farmed out" to folks I knew were good at it so I could concentrate on other tasks (much like hiring out the pasture mowing).
A 14400 baud modem? Slow down there! Sometimes I miss the good ol' days when you could access a Wildcat bulletin board or CompuServe (go trains, anyone?) with a 2400 baud modem. No pop up ads, no flash animations...
