Building from real prototypes vs freestyle, which side are you on?

I land firmly on the freestyle side, mostly because I learned the hard way what chasing accuracy costs. Spent about two years on a brick-built steam switcher based on photos I took at a local rail museum, and somewhere around the third attempt at the running boards I realized I wasn't having fun anymore. The model was fine. The hobby had turned into homework.

What I do now is pick one or two things I actually care about and let the rest go. On a little narrow gauge engine I finished last spring, the thing I obsessed over was the oversized driving wheels and the way the rods moved, and I deliberately made the cab a bit too tall because it looked better to my eye. Nobody who sees it on the shelf asks if the proportions are exact. They ask if it rolls, and it rolls beautifully.

That said, I get the pull. Every so often I'll see someone's museum-grade replica with hand-cut decals and matching paint codes, and there's a geniune itch to try that level of discipline. I just know myself well enough now that if the build stops feeling like play, it goes in a drawer unfinished. So maybe the honest answer is that the right target depends on why you started. If it was the locomotive that grabbed you, accuracy will satisfy you. If it was the building, accuracy is just one flavor of it, and not always the tastiest.

I spent two years on an 8-wide copy of a streamliner from photos in a library book, and every hour of measuring was the point for me. I printed the side view, worked out that one stud stood for roughly fifteen inches of real train at that scale, and counted everything from there, the driver spacing, the boiler length, the overhang past the cab. When a curve refused to sit right I rebuilt the whole section rather than fudge it, and honestly those rebuilds were my favorite evenings. The payoff for me is the double take. My dad, who rode those trains as a kid, stopped at the shelf one visit and asked where I had bought it. That moment cost me a pile of BrickLink orders and way too much dark bluish gray, and I would do it all again tomorrow.

The rule that keeps me sane is a limit of three attempts on any section. After that it stays as built and I note what still bugs me for a possible redo someday. Without that limit I would finish nothing. Your Hudson alredy reads as a streamliner at ten paces, so if the replica itch ever wins, you would be tightening an existing design instead of starting from scratch.