Undec. vs. Painted and RTR

Charlie,

I have been 'upgrading' my freight car fleet over the past 3-4 yeats. I had a lot of custom painted/weathered Athearn cars(did the work myself). But there has been a lot of RTR P2K, Intermountain, and Red Caboose stuff at train shows at very good prices($15-20 each). I really like the seperate parts and detail. I have built some Intermountain kits and painted them, but I am finding a lot of the 50's era decals I used 25 years ago just are not available anymore. I have looked at some of the nice paint jobs on the Athearn/MDC cars, but the thick roofwals and cast on grabs keep me away. I wish Accurail would go to individual grabs on their outstanding wood side kits....

Jim Bernier

Charles Bix wrote:

Well, I created my own railroad, so I don't have a choice .

I run a mix of N scale RTR and custom-paint-and-decaled stuff. All my motive power and cabin cars are custom painted. I've done a good bit of rolling stock as well, even to the point of trying some kitbashing and scratch-building.

Photos on my web site listed below.

"

" Nice, very nice.

Paul

"Charles Bix"

Not me.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

Committed shake-the-box person. Undecs are getting rare in my parts. That's getting to be an extra step, as in #1: strip the paint...

Jay CNS&M Wireheads of the world, unite!

I shaved off my first Accurail wood box car. Added about a half-hour to shave and replace with wires. I messed up a few wires and dropped a few along the way. With no losses, it's about an extra 20 minutes.

Jay CNS&M Wireheads of the world, unite!

Since I model modern BC Rail (and some CN thrown in) I have been forced to buy undecorated shells and paint and detail them up. I have also found that I value and enjoy these 'custom' engines much more than the generic RTR stuff. Not that I would not heave one of those Atlas C425 in the garbage should it get given to me.

Morgan Quesnel, BC "Stop the Sale of BC Rail" "Sell Cambell's Liberals Instead"

I'll purchase ready to run only if there's not a kit available. I have a problem with paying as much as double for someone to biuld and kit knowing that I'll more than likely need to disassemble and rebuild to get it working right in many cases.

If I'm buying a kit I'd rather get it undecorated than with an inappropriate paint scheme that I have to strip. You never seem to get all the paint off.

I'll do it if I have to to get a car that I want in an appropriate scheme but I won't be a happy camper about it.

There's nothing wrong with RTR, it can be a great timesaver but I don't think it's worth more than double the actually cost for the company to ship the parts to wherever they have it built, the cost of having it built and back.

What I'd really like to see is manufacturers be required to provide historical data on their cars and information such as what brand and color of paint they used to decorate them in order to be able to be allowed to mark their products as meeting NMRA or MRIA standards.

I *hate* having to play the try and match the paint game after shaving grab irons and other details. I start having fantasies about supergluing cans of spray paint to the manufacturer's hands and sending them to Singapore.

Eric

Charles wrote:

"How many of us have started to purchase all ready to run equipment instead of buying undec and doing our own painting and lettering?"

I do not like to purchase RTR. I want to build the kit, paint and letter it and whatever else it takes to get it the way I want it. I am not a prototype modeler in the sense that I only have rolling stock from actual railroads under my ownership. In fact, other than GM&O cars, I have a preponderance of freelanced roadnames on my equipment. ( I can hear the cries of "HORRORS" even now )

This was one of the things I wanted to bring up in my stillborn attempt to generate a thread about what constitutes a "real" model railroad as opposed to one that just does not quite make it.

S i g h, it sems that too many of us are too tight arsed, too concerned with being politically correct or too ambivalent - or just plain apathetic, for any proper discussion to come out of my urgings

At any rate I prefer kits to RTR and undec to painted/lettered.

....................F>

Model railroading is like sex. If you're not operating, who the hell wants to watch?

I tried to shave an Accurail box car. Jammed up my Norelco and voided the warranty....

Andy :-)

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- Pre-Interstate Urban Archaeology

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Or maybe we just don't agree with your definition of what constitutes a "real" model railroader.

My approach is pretty simple and pragmatic, given my goals- buy prepainted RTR when it meets my needs and standards, but build/kitbash/paint what I have to in order to get the equipment I want.

What I truly love in this hobby is operation, so for me it ultimately makes no difference whether I bought a car and spent 20 minutes weathering and tuning it up and put it on the layout, or whether I had to spend a hundred hours on a piece of equipment. Frankly, when I'm looking at trying to have a couple hundred pieces of reasonably-accurate rolling stock and a fleet of rather specialized motive power, I'd rather not have to spend huge amounts of time on every single piece.

I make a distinction in how far I'll go for accuracy. For home road models, my standards are higher than for cars from the roads with which my railroad interchanges, largely because I'm more aware of the specific details of the PM's equipment. Very distinctive cars from other roads get more attention as well. I'm quite content to give a Kadee boxcar a quick weathering job to get "yet another PS1 boxcar from a connecting road", but for the two Pennsy H30A covered hoppers I want to have, I'll put in the hours to build the Funaro & Camerlengo kit.

For me, craftsmanship is a means to an end, not the end itself.

-fm Webmaster of the Pere Marquette Historical Society, at

The address in the header of this message is deliberately bogus to foil address-harvesters. See my web sites for my real address.

Should've used a Remington...

This is exactly what has given me such a case of the rmr blues Mark. I didn't ask y'all to agree with me. I asked y'all to sit down and write a short bit on what YOU THINK constitutes a "real" or "worthwhile" model railoroad. I don't care if you agree with me or not. I don't think an oval of track on a sheet of plywood is a model railroad and I don't think that works like the F&SM are either. I am not looking for sycophants, I am looking for the ideas and thoughts of others on this subject.

What are yours?...................F>

Are we getting a little too technical in defining this neat passtime we call model railroading when we start asking if a guy like George Sellios is a model railroader or not because his trains do not run very well?

If you don't think he is a model railroder let me ask you if he sells a model railroad product (Fine Scale Miniatures). He doesn't sell model railroad locomotives or freight cars so by the logic expressed in an earlier thread he is not a model railroad product manufacturer?

Of course he is a model railroader. Take your bias against his over detailing out of the picture, he might be MORE of a model railroader because he has not overloaded his layout with track. In real life what's the ratio of track to scenery? More scenery or more track?

Jim

I'm with Froggy on this. The great advantage of a kit is that you can modify it to fit your exact needs -- whether that be to better suit your own freelance RR or to make it into a more accurate prototype model.

I imagine my Chesapeake and Allegheny Western as having been bought out by the New York Central System. This gives me the opportunity to do both freelance and proto modeling.

Also like Froggy, I have many cars for friends railroads on my line -- like some really nice Florida Northern cars Rusty Keeney did for me.

Den

THINK constitutes a "real" or "worthwhile" model railoroad. I don't care if you

Yet you reject, out of hand, two concepts that can have meaning for the modeler. Sellos has certainly inspired more model railroaders than a circle on ply even though that circle probably represents a significant part of the hobby. My current layout is 2 inches wide and six feet long. DCC. I spend a lot of time replicating many sorts of prototype operations as I learn about those operations. Yes, I find some pleasure in pumping the air. I'd guess that this is certainly a rejectable definition, but I'm still going to continue calling myself a model railroader!

CTucker NY

If it's got flanged wheels and metal rails, it's a railroad. If it's less than 1' = 1' its a model railroad. If the guy spends his own time working with it and enjoys it, he's a real model railroader.

David J. Starr