I honestly don't know how freelancers do it! When I went to build a garden railroad when I was younger, I tried freelancing and didn't get past the layout plan! I was buying engines left and right! I feel like I NEED structure just to keep focus and avoud impulsive buying. Heck, even though a 70-tonner was used on an SD&AE branch, and I'm modelling 1951, but I won't get it from Bachmann in november because its not MAINLINE power! Best of luck to all freelancers who have a smidge more imagination than a die-hard SD&AE prototype modeler. my advice for rosters would be to use "borrowed power" from connecting lines so appalachian coal haulers can pass up a gs-4 and northeastern industrial railroaders don't have a UP big boy lying around. :0)
Actually....freelancing is a piece of cake. You can have new structures next to old structures...new motive power and old motive power...new rolling stock and old rolling stock. No one can say any of it "Dont look real." Go with an era or a specific road...you put yourself in a box...and have to try to harder to make it all right...JMO .
"Pass up a GS4" and you call yourself an SP Steamer. SHAME on you, SHAME! just toss away the single best looking surving 4-8-4, if not the best outright. One should be promoting such a beautiful piece of work, not giving people a reason not to own one, or three. (Freedom Train, Steam Excursion, etc...) [/partial sarcasm] We can do it because we don't have to justify it. The outlook is not "IWANT I WANT IWANT" as much it is "Do I like?". A UP modeler who likes the Centipedes has two choices: Demonstrator, or he has to hide it sheepishly when his firends are around. A freelancer does not have such greamlins within him, and is free to make a fair choice of "Do I like it" without "Can I justify it". Though admittedly, Every good Freelance has a structure. You just may not see it. --- My world is torn asunder right now. Dad and I were building the Half-Moon Orion & Northern, a rivertown that I figured has to sit somewhere near Evansville IN due to its conection with the Naptown & White River ( A train club dad and I belonged to) and beyond that, I didn't care where it went. The ruling power was Big mainline, but the city of half-moon was switched by an Ho version of the Aristocradt RS1/3 and a 45tonner. (neither of which were yet owned). The businesses were made up from characters he and I made stories of, and the station weas called on self-powered bilevel coaches, along the same lines as the new South Shore Bilevel Interurbans. Anything that didn't fit that pattern was visiting power, or belonged to SouthEastern Car Works, (ex-Jefferson Locomotive WOrks, nee-Northern Enterprises) who did rail lease of engines, freight, an Private Varnish coaches. If I couldn't get SCX to explain it away, I didn't need it. So far, the fiction has made room for a Chessie Steam painted 4449, the 4449 in Amtrak Phase 5, and a PC turbo in 2000s, as well as a whole host of Christmas trains, an NMRA special by Rivarossi, and even the Tracks in the Sand set Walthers did for the NMRA in 2002. Stuff I like, not "IWANTIWANTIWANT" After Half-Moon finshed, or falls through, the next project is a stylization of the City of Madison Port Authority, with a few changes. One, I'm modeling SCX in the former Jefferson Proving Grounds, in the protoype the CMPA does car storage only there. Also, The Madison Inlcine was preserved in the 80s by the Army Corp of Engineers and is now a tourist device run by RDC, and if I can get the trains to do it, will be hosting Coal up and down it's 6% slopes. (In reality, the incline closed in the 90s and is losing large hunks of rock out from it every year) I'm also trying to re-integrate the old industries on the Madison line when the PRR had it, and a few industries trackside to the CMPA are getting sidings that they didn't have before. I'm debating whether or not to tweak the Half-Moon plans to use them as Old Madison at the bottom of the hill. in protoype, they paved over the old tracks (Though they are clwing their way back through the pavement in spots ) and the old mills have fallen, but at the rate I'm going, why not have some fun with it? Part of me feels that if I have to make such drastic changes to the railroad, it isn't worth modeling. And yet, the first day I saw it run, I wanted to model the CMPA.
:tb-shocked: yikes! my bad! i didn't mean it like that! just so we understand each other: 1. I LOVE GS-4's. Even considered getting TWO black war-era models and re-decaling it with a cool olive green design on the tender & cab to match my olive green SD&AE harriman cars! But it wouldn't fit on my 2'x4' layouts sharp curves (8" that a 2-8-0 is much more adept at traversing). 2. I model the Sand Diego & Arizona Eastern. I am an sp-SUBSIDIARY steamer. 3. the GS-4 was a Horrible example. Given my SP background, Another UP engine would have been much more appropriate for me to recommend not getting. I repent for my sins on hands and knees and pray for someone to make the events of the 1996 merger not happen. i love sp i love sp i love sp i love sp
If you are going to do prototypical freelancing: 1) Pick a place Where are you on the map? Why does your line exist? Who does it interchange with? 2) Pick a time Whas it the '50's the '80's or today? This will determine the buildings on your layout, bridge construction styles. It will even help you figure out what motive power you would run. 3) Pick a similar prototype You don't have to re-invent the wheel. WHat were the practices of similar prototypes? If you have a modern regional line, SD40-2s and GP38's would be logical motive pwer choices. If you run a short line, a rebuilt GP9 or GP20 might fir the bill. If you were a Class 1 in the late '50's you might still have some steam, but you would be well into the new GP7s, F and E units. 4) Make yourself happy Reality can be "tweaked", your Modern Day Short Line may have a transportation museum it helps out and that museum may have just finished restoring an SP cab forward and is running excursions through your Iowa based line, it happens...
OR, whatever can be purchased used from another road is good enough for the LLL. If you can get a deal on black or brown or red paint, why bother with traditional white for reporting information?
Actually freelancing a railroad can be harder to model if it is to be believable like the former V&O and AM.Other shining examples is the Maumee Route,The Utah Belt and other like freelance railroads and yes,if sloppily done it can look ridiculous and fully unbelievable.. A freelance generic layout must be design right if its to be believable. Why is that? Glad you ask. A freelance railroad must look like its a part of national rail transportation and a freelance layout has to compliment the freelance railroad and give the railroad a reason for being.
Working in railroading - and shortlines - the number of current shortlines that sound like 'fantasy railroads' is longer than you think. Reconnecting abandoned routes, preserving chunks of previous Class 1's on a new railroad name with borrowed paint schemes, well that really happens every day. I got to participate in the startup of this line, which was abandoned for 10 years. The 'reason for being' is now hosting unit coal trains from NS and keeping the online industries alive across an entire state. It doesn't hurt that the management team has a respect for the history of the line, or that it 'borrowed' a PRR-predecessor name dating back to 1890, or that it runs mostly Alco Century units. But it this isn't a fantasy railroad come to life, I don't know what is: http://www.wnyprr.com/ If you spend some time looking at situations like this, and how they are operated, and how they evolve, it doesn't take much imagination to do it to other routes. You have no idea how many NEAR MISSES have happened in railroad history that could be modelled as 'free lance' lines.... with just a minor tweak of the time-space continium? Take a route that still makes sense.... buy it at scrap value ..... name it as part or partial or all of a previous historic route.... put your favorite power on it.... and host your favorite Class-1 as overhead traffic? Happens all the time. It's also called "Montana Rail Link". Did you know that Santa Fe ACTIVELY studied the acquisition of the Erie Lackwanna? And that only an 11th-hour decision kept E-L from becoming part of CSX prior to Conrail? Did you know that New York Central was actively building a new main-line railroad across Pennsylvania at the same time that the West Shore line was being funded by PRR? The 'settlement on the yaght' ended that nonsense, but ....what if? What if Nickel Plate had merged with the Lackawanna instead of the Erie? It was a near-miss. What if NYC had managed to leverage its branch lines into a real Buffalo-Pittsburgh main line instead of being thwarted by PRR? What if the Milwaukee line suddenly made sense again? Trails to rails has happened before. What about Tennessee Pass? Remember that the most unlikely of fantasy railroads was grown by NYS&W with the re-opening of Sparta Jct., intermodal traffic, trackage rights.... and a public corporation was born out of a shortline shell. Working in rail studies, its always fascinated me the split-second decisions that have changed the national map, and continue to. Freelancing works in 12"=1' too. And for steam, all you have to do is have an online railroad museum. Generally the smaller the railroad the better that works, but any number of examples exist today where shortlines and railroad museums coexist on the same track, and probably the finest is the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western shortline at Scranton with Steamtown. If you want to 'fast forward' into the future, the pressure will be on to reactivate abandoned freight right-of-ways around major metro areas to free up passenger right-of-ways for high-speed rail. The only way many of the ideas work is to move the freight traffic elsewhere.
I'm just yankin' your chain. Yur funny. Although, if 1996 didn't hsppen, we'd be stuck with a buch of ugly bloody-nose Dash 9s, (single stupidest SP diesel desicion, the Bloody nose usurping the 'Widow) and the Heritage Units UP did wouldn't be around...
Gary Rose hit the nail on the head when he said buy Con-Cor. My attempt at a fantasy road ....... Folks get too wrapped up in whether everything is prototypical. Forget about it and have fun with your railraod. I had a lot of fun painting, making decals and finishing the above. A good friend had fun in designing and making my avatar for this "home road". That's what this hobby is supposed to be; fun!
First of all, I think the bloody nose is a great scheme, though not so much on Dash9s and AC4400s and SD70Ms. Secondly, We shouldn't have to be punished with UP (Talk about ugly) just to avoid bloody nose. Whose to Say Mike "Heritage" Haverty's influence wouldn't have caused a scheme like the SP Heritage unit to go on all mainline power? Pure freelancing can be easier, because you don't need to study the who what where and why of everything on the railroad. If you want an industry, you place the industry, if you want mountains, you place mountains, a river, you place a river. Protolance on the other hand is a bit more difficult in the sense that it requires you to be a writer as much as a modeler. With strict prototype, the hard part is research, design and modelling talent to make accurate track, structures, train. With Protolance, you need to be a story teller, you need to be able to convey the why of the railroad and place it in a realistic context. Whereas in Proto, that why and that context is there, you're just translating it to the model. With protolance, you develop the why, the how, the context, then you have to translate it on to the model as well. In pure freelancing, the storytelling may still be there, but it doesn't need to be.
With all of the definitions flying around it has me wondering.... What am I? I've been calling myself a freelancer, but I'm also a storyteller...kind of. I painted and decaled my own locomotives and cabooses for my fantasy railroad. I even had Micro-Trains do a special run of boxcars for me. My railroad doesn't exist, but supposedly connects two railroads that did exist in 1985. Am I a protolancer? Whatever I am, I think I need help. If you have time check out my Railimages link and take a tour of The Oregon Western Lines.
Rett,I would call you a freelance railroader because of your OWL.. IMHO the term "freelance" is misused a lot by well meaning folks to mean a lot of different things such as a "freelance" layout.I believe "generic" would be a better term.
If you're using real locations and havethe geography and industry set up in a reasonably real scenario, then that's probably protolance. If you're railroad is no specific place with imaginary names then its more freelanced or generic. Personally, I'm doing a lot of backstory work on my imaginary protoype, but when it gets constructed, it may not adhere to specific actual towns and features. So it will be protolance moving toward freelance.
if you cant have fun with your trains whats the point??? just thank con-cor for all the wonderful fantasy paint jobs found this on the web :thumbs_up::thumbs_up:
My book: If your taking an existing railroad and tweaking it, like I plan to do to the CMPA, or pulling a Fallen Flag through their downfall, then one is "Protolancing" If one has a whole new concept railroad, then it's "Freelancing". If you want to feel special, and acknowledge painstaking hours of research into the concpet, then you can call it Freelance+, but it's not needed.
I have been working on some ideas around a fantasy railroad, too. Mine is based on a couple of coastal branchlines and a "coudabin" scenario based on an idea that had actually been floated in the early 20th century. On the north side, we have the Astoria branchline, which is currently a PNWR line, but had been BNSF, BN, SP&S, and one or two previous roads. It runs from the Portland area to Astoria, mostly along the Columbia River. At one point it ran as far as Holladay, south of Seaside, along the coast. On the south side we have the Tillamook Branch. Most recently it was operated by POTB. Before that it was SP. The furthest point north on the coast is Wheeler. In my world, the plans that had been floated but never acted upon to connect these together had actually happened. With lots of small traffic among the coastal cities, and with SP operating primarily out of Tillamook and SP&S operating primarily out of Astoria, the Astoria Belt Railroad and the Tillamook Terminal eventually merged to create the Tillamook and Astoria Terminal Railway (TATR). I have been getting caught up in modeling some other things recently so I haven't done much with the TATR, but I do have a 44-tonner which will be lettered as TATR switcher (known as a "tot" by the rails that operate them). So, to answer the question, I have used some real railroad history and the idea of a line connecting the two historic lines as a springboard to explore my coudabin operation.
If you want to get Technical, the term protolance really comes out of the concepts that inform Allen McClelland's Virginian and Ohio and Tony Koester's Allegheny Midland. Both of which under your definition would be Freelance+. I guess what I'm saying is that you can define things however you want, but if you want a definition of Protolancing that has meaning for everyone, then it means Fictional railroad that is placed in reality as if it existed. The definition says nothing about tweaking real historical or modern railroads. Though those concepts could be the basis of a proto-freelance mr. there is a Proto-freelance Special interest group on Yahoo. It doesn't get a lot of activity, but maybe that's because not enough people know about it.
