Proto Z Scale

I'm no expert on Finescale Modeling vs. Proto Modeling, but I have seen the San Luis Obispo club's Proto HO work, and it is hands down the best modeling I have ever seen.

It goes something like this. When a guy first gets bit by the train bug, you get into the whole Plasticville USA thing. Buy tons of kits, cram a dizzying array of over/under trackwork spaghetti on a board and build the empire of your dreams.

The next step up, where I am stuck right now, is to scratchbuild some models to an era you like, build a more convincing layout, with a more plausable trackplan, and include some weathering, and strive for realism.

Then there are the Finescale Modelers like Art Fahie, George Sellios, and the like, who build fantastic layouts with lots of convincing scenes, lots of weathering, and stick to the era and theme throughout the layout. Typically you will only see related roadnames on motive power and rolling stock, all fitting in the theme. This type of modeling is true artistry, and is front cover or foldout material in the magazines.

Then come the Proto Modelers. These guys get down. Their equipment is perfectly to scale. An era is modeled to perfection. No Wicked Wanda saloons, but rather a scale model of Bob's big Boy as it looked on a 1973 Saturday Afternoon on the corner of Mission Blvd in Niles. Cars are a mix of surviving 50's hotrods, mostly 60's muscle cars through to a 72' Cuda with the hood opened and a crowd of motor heads admiring it.

That SP GP35 coming through Niles Canyon is DCC and Sound equipt with the correct EMD sound files, and blasts the correct horn sequence of long-long-short-long as it approaches the grade crossing, then the crossing bells go off as the gated go down. Weathering on equipment is done to exact prototype photo's and grafitti is kept to a minimum, as it has not really caught on yet, and the term "tagging" has not yet been coined. Rolling stock is a mix of mostly 1960's ORER cars of the era, serving the local businesses.

Telephone poles along the right of way have 4 arms for wires, but the wires have been removed, and there is a 70/30 mix of green insulators to white insulators, with a few broken ones on those arms, as well as 3 fine reflective stripes near the bottom of those tapered poles. The oak trees on the hills have the correct color foliage and the grass is yellow. It's summer.

Everyone wears Bellbottom pants and lots of tie-dyed t-shirts, and they have no problem tossing a Slurpie Cup out the window while driving by, and the asphalt has a few fine cracks in it. There are no pallets and tires thrown into the creek, however there is a lot of litter on the west side of the bridge, as that is where the wind blows most of it. The Smokey Bear campaign is in full swing, and everyone is tired of hearing "Only you can prevent forest fires!"

Well I hope I painted a picture of the proto modelers, at least the ones I have seen.

-Robert