Rivet counting Vs Fun

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where are you on this

  • total crumudgeon

    Votes: 1 1.8%

  • sort of a perfectionist

    Votes: 13 23.2%

  • doing the best with what you have

    Votes: 27 48.2%

  • really don't care

    Votes: 16 28.6%
  • Total voters
    56
  • Poll closed .
As I have stated many times, there is room for all kinds of us in the toy trains hobby. There's room for those who like scale representations with high fidelity to their prototypes, and there's room for those of us who lie on the living room floor and go "Choo, hooo!" while we shove our motorless plastic toys around. There's room for audiophiles to complain about HO sound, room for techies who like to use complex analog control systems, room for brass scratchbuilders.

As long as we're all having fun...........
 


G'day Mike....Louis was right...This is a great thread.....I voted for doing best with what I have......This hobby allows the whole gamut though doesn't it ? The sheer enjoyment ranges from . very prototypical locomotives , rolling stock , the right kind of bridge , station building , right type of track etc etc.... to just seeing a five year old watching his/her first toy train going around the Christmas Tree...Most of us are somewhere in between...For me...I'll be happy to spend what I can afford , get a layout that resembles a BNSF intermodal train/s going through a semi rural scene in the USA..with a little bit of industry / scene/s here and there...with generally accurate motive power and fairly close if it's affordable loads....I think the mainstream manufacturers do a pretty good job in that respect...The HUGE range of model/toy train genre's just proves how diverse we see the hobby which is perhaps why it really is 'the world's greatest hobby"...Thanks again for this great topic....Cheers Rod...
 
I failed to mention my vote. I am firmly into the "really don't care" camp.

I love the highly detailed and accurate modern trains. I also love my Tyco spirit of 76 and Lionel MPC era. I try to make my O gauge trains look realistic most of the time, but if they are not that is ok too.

I run colorful 4th of July trains with my Lionel Bicentennial locomotive and cars and that is one of my favorite trains. I also have some other patriotic cars that I run with my Lionel CSX B&O heritage AC6000 with a big American flag painted on the side. The locomotive is standard O and the cars are traditional O and that is fine by me. When people come to our 4th of July feast everyone takes a look at it running in my train room and no one has said "they are different scale", everyone loves them. Most important I love them and I really don't care that CSX never had a AC6000 B&O heritage locomotive.

I change my trains 3 or 4 times a year, always running Christmas and 4th of July trains at the appropriate times of year. The rest of the year its, coal trains, intermodal trains, covered hoppers, boxcars or what ever I decide to run.

I also set up 2,3 or even 4 trains under my Christmas trees, yes that is plural! Last year I had 4 Christmas trees all with at least 1 train running under them.

Sometimes its no trains because the O gauge layout is in transition.

I still have not progressed beyond the planning stages for my HO layout. I am happy in knowing that one day I will get my HO layout up and running.

I don't stress over my trains, my trains are a source of stress relief.

This forum is a big part of my enjoyment of my trains. No other single source has taught me so much. I've learned from novices like me and I have learned from the experts.

Thank you Mike for a great thread and thank you all for your insightful and respectful comments. I don't think you can find a better group of people anywhere!
 
Bruette said:
I also set up 2,3 or even 4 trains under my Christmas trees, yes that is plural! Last year I had 4 Christmas trees all with at least 1 train running under them.
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We have been adding 1 a year since we bought the bigger house. We sort of maxed out at 13, but then we bought an even bigger house, so we had 22 this year. Last year was sad because we lost one due to cats.... Yes, some are very small (2') but others are very large (15'), but regardless if it doesn't have a train around it, it isn't a Christmas tree.
 
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Iron Horseman said:
We have been adding 1 a year since we bought the bigger house. We sort of maxed out at 13, but then we bought an even bigger house, so we had 22 this year. Last year was sad because we lost one due to cats.... Yes, some are very small (2') and some are very large (15'), but regardless if it doesn't have a train around it, it isn't a Christmas tree.
Click to expand...


OUTSTANDING!!!

That is how you do Christmas! It takes a lot of time to set up and take down, but well worth the effort! I can't wait to tell my wife about your 22 trees! I agree 100%, a Christmas tree is not complete with out a train! I would never be able to fit that many trees in my house but I would love to have that many or even more!

I don't know what it is with cats and Christmas trees, but mine loves Christmas. She is 12 years old now. She was a birthday gift to my daughter from her aunt on her 16th birthday, of course that means she is mine and my wife's cat now. Her first Christmas I would come home from work and turn on the tree and see the lights reflecting off her eyes as she sat on a branch next to the tree trunk about half way up. She loves when I pull out the Christmas boxes. I call her my Christmas cat and fittingly my daughter named her Noel. I never even liked cats but I love my crazy Christmas cat Noel.
 
Bruette said:
It takes a lot of time to set up and take down, but well worth the effort! I can't wait to tell my wife about your 22 trees!
Click to expand...
Here is the main "forest" with 12 of the trees (actually photo was taken before it was completely set up). You will see we cheated a bit and there are only 4 trains servicing them. But the one loco requires a 45" radius curve so that limits the arrangements. But I do love the figure 8 configuration with one tree in each part of the "8".
GymLobbyChristmasSideOn2013.jpgChristmas2.jpgView attachment 43237MainLobbyChristmas2013-5.jpgLobby.jpg
eventually the trains get run over by gifts.
 
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I love the trees Iron Horsemen! Thank you so much for sharing them.

Santa makes a long stop at your house, your family must be high on the nice list!

Its a shame you live more then half way across the country, but probably good for you. I would love to see them in person.

I want to do one of those corner figure 8s with 2 trees, but I just don't have enough space in my living room. My wife did not like the idea of moving the love seat into the dinning room.

For the record I don't think you cheated at all, you have the best Christmas layout I have seen!

Thanks again!
 
Well it seems to me the Atlas Rescue forum is picking up right where the original forum left off. Check out the thread over there called "intermountain sd40-2 is out" to see where the rivet counters hang out on line. Sad and a bit comical that people take the hobby so seriously.
 
bigB said:
Well it seems to me the Atlas Rescue forum is picking up right where the original forum left off. Check out the thread over there called "intermountain sd40-2 is out" to see where the rivet counters hang out on line. Sad and a bit comical that people take the hobby so seriously.
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Nah, I think I'll pass.... :)
 
Yeah I did go and read through it. Them is some REALLY serious folks there, complete with pictures to show you how bad one is against the other lol :p
 
You probably saw my thread then about trying to get people to lighten up a bit. I get it--model railroading is expensive, you spend good money and you want the product to look and perform well. But good grief, some of these modelers act is if you were to just add water to it and scale it up from 1:87, it should look just like the real thing. No way, no how is that ever going to be possible. Anyhow, my post was met with a couple of sharp comments about how poor the model is. One guy went on to compare a locomotive's "inertial air filter" as a cherry on top of a ice cream sundae. Really? I guess I don't have to go to the Home Depot to see tools.

I think I'm done with that forum. Too uptight over there and serious. Last time I checked, hobbies were about having fun and entertainment.

Brad
 
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bigB said:
... But good grief, some of these modelers act is if you were to just add water to it and scale it up from 1:87, it should look just like the real thing. No way, no how is that ever going to be possible. Anyhow, my post was met with a couple of sharp comments about how poor the model is. One guy went on to compare a locomotive's "inertial air filter" as a cherry on top of a ice cream sundae. Really? I guess I don't have to go to the Home Depot to see tools.

I think I'm done with that forum. Too uptight over there and serious. Last time I checked, hobbies were about having fun and entertainment.

Brad
Click to expand...

Brad,

Yeah they are uptight, and have always been. I got severely criticized one time because I stated that I only build kits, and only by chance thru gifts, and other situations did I own any RTR. You'd think that I'd killed the Pope or something like that. I even explained that by building kits, esp resin kits that I got cars more accurate than most RTR. They were road specific, and after figuring in the paint, glue trucks couplers etc, that the actual costs of the kit came down to about $.75-$1.00 and hour for entertainment thru the time that kit took to build.

One guy even said that there was no way that I would ever have a fleet of cars to do any layout justice, and I was out of my mind for even thinking it. It kind of shut him up when I said, that while he was trying to come up with the money to get another 12 cars of some type, I would be at the club, running my 50-65 car coal train pulled by one of my brass 2-10-2's, while he was still waiting for something that may not occur for another year or so. They all really quieted down when I told them that at the time I already had over 400 cars built, and still had another 50-60 to go, and I'd been in this hobby since I was 8yo, and still had my first kit a Silver Streak Dbl Door auto box.

They seem to have one concept on model railroading, and if yours is different from that, you're obviously wrong. Needless to say, I don't post there anymore.
 
I don't have anything of value to add to this conversation, I just keep coming back to this thread to look at Iron Horsemen's Christmas trees.
 
The only thing more I can say for this subject is this: I do what I do, how I do, when I do, its my layout, its my world and I'll refer everyone back to rule #1. Its MY layout.

And that is all I got to say about that :p
 


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