Real Life Model Railroading

[DudedeDude]

I gave up on N3V Games years ago. Why? It’s quite simple. Why pay at at least $300 on paid content, not to mention the subscription service, when I can get what I want for my O-gauge layout instead. I’ve found some really good deals on 3-rail O-gauge over the years, especially at train shows. I once paid $100 for a set of four Mike’s Train House (MTH) Railking “Overton” cars. These cars are detailed and are pretty decent. Go look them up, they have made some great and decent products over the years. But the one problem with all the O-gauge manufacturers in the US, is that they don’t make any early to mid 19th century American locomotives. Not to mention the extreme lack of consists from the early and pioneer era of US locomotives. But, I could make my own powered box cars and baggage cars (with motors, receiver, batteries, etc) and keep the smoke unit in the funnel while having the speaker in the tender. Then you could link all the electronics up. That is one way to overcome the small size of early locomotives since consists were bigger and longer than locomotives by 1860. In other words, I can have everything I want in real life for my model layout. Why spend thousands on Trainz products (you don’t own digital if Ubisoft gets to redefine “buy” in any future The Crew 1 lawsuits) when you can spend the same on materials and a few trains in a month. Might as well get the real thing over time instead of paying for something digital. They can take away your digital purchases in certain situations. On the bright side, you can also make your own trains from parts of old and broken locomotives and use those parts to make something new. Maybe I might try to start producing of a new model train company if I ever get the chance. Think of decent quality Railking and LionChief like products, but scaled 19th century trains. You can hide the motors and a few of the other electrical components in the cars following the tender and or or locomotive. This may be a goodbye. Hopefully, I’ll be where I want in a few years. Who knows, perhaps I will get the chance to get a team together, get some funding or backing, and make a theme park. Live long and prosper.

 

[Railwoodman]

On the other hand , I have . Lets see HO , N , G, Standard and o-scale . The money spent on anyone of those is a fraction I've spent on this simulation . That includes the PC . Layouts while vary much enjoyed . Had to be built , and the space to build them . I never had a layout that was considered finished or large enough . Nor could I ever run all I had . In my younger days I built many there benchwork , and helped wire many as well . I doubt any are around today
Now I have a representation of the road I most wanted to model . That could never be done in any of the model trains I still have . And I still run trains when the time calls for it . LOL .

Just my thoughts

Matt

 

[pdkoester]

You can also do a lot with 3D printing, I am sure.

 

[dangavel]

Hmm, a new member who gave up on the sim years ago, then why are you bothering to post here at all ?
Anyway, I gave up on model railroads several decades ago, you have to have a LOT of space to achieve anything meaningful , the models are HUGELY expensive and it makes a great deal of mess to build , the track always needs cleaning, and is susceptible to heat . I can do 1000 times more on a sim than I ever could with a model railroad and living in Australia also meant that it was very difficult to get the models I needed to do US routes. My expenditure on Trainz is a mere fraction of what I would have spent on my model railroad and I can achieve far more , a lot more easily than I ever could with the 'real thing"

 

[JCitron]

I'm glad you can afford the real thing and have the space for a real model railroad, but this isn't a one size fits all situation for everyone. There are many reasons why people have gone to virtual railroading.

I for one would give anything to be able to set up a real model railroad. I packed up N-scale model railroad in December 2003. There were a number of reasons. Among them was loss of coordination with my hands. I was decorating and weathering structures when I had difficulties painting the mullions of a building. I thought I was tired after working a 70-hour week, and left it for another day. I was able to paint the building and thought nothing about it afterwards until I dropped an expensive locomotive. Yes, smaller scales are very expensive and always have been. In 2002, a Kato Alco RS-3 cost me $100 on sale from Brooklyn Locomotive Works. This coordination issue, later followed by fatigue, stiffness, rigidity, slow movement, and tremors didn't bode well and this not only cost me my model railroad, but also my career later.

While physical layouts can be enjoyable, and as I said I'd love to have one, the virtual world can be as well with its nearly unlimited route sizes, and multitude of objects. For 10% of what you paid for your single locomotive, a virtual railroader can have a full series of locomotives. Kit bashing locomotives can be difficult but so can doing the same with the real models.

The cost of the subscription is nothing compared to the cost of model railroad equipment. The cost of an annual subscription is much less than a single non-DCC Atlas diesel locomotive. At $12.99 per month for longtime users, this even costs less than many other subscriptions that many people think nothing of subscribing to.

In the end, it boils down to what makes a person happy and gives them something to enjoy. If they like physical models, so be it. If they like the virtual world, whether they purchased a stand-alone Trainz version or the subscription and enjoy countless hours building routes that would never fit in a football stadium, so be it. They're having fun too escaping to their virtual basements.

 

[pdkoester]

I still have all my HO stuff and my father's HO stuff (1960s-1980s) in storage and we never built a layout. He has the space for it, now, but he lives so far away and is too old to want to do it alone. He got into Trainz and MS Train Simulator (the original) way back, and before I did. He still uses the PC I built for him 8 years ago. He never made it past TS2012, although has considered lately getting the latest.

 

[OddRails]

Your father's stuff? Wow. Good for you!
I still have stuff packed away in boxes. Had N and loved it but the details were so small and I'm a klutz. Went back to HO even though it needed more space.
None of the stuff I've done in Trainz would fit in a house using any of the commercial scales.

 

[pdkoester]

Your father's stuff? Wow. Good for you!
I still have stuff packed away in boxes. Had N and loved it but the details were so small and I'm a klutz. Went back to HO even though it needed more space.
None of the stuff I've done in Trainz would fit in a house using any of the commercial scales.

Yes, he had a lot of older Athearn items, some in blue boxes. I also had collected a lot of things, too. Some Atlas and other name brands, I can't remember them. He also has bunch of brass custom painted Southern Pacific commuter stuff, and two Key System Bridge units, one of each scheme they had. Mixed in there is a lot of Tyco and Bachman when I was kid in the 70s. Also, some experiments that tried painting (weathering) are still around. Funny thing is some of these old items have the motors and running gear looking the same for over the past 60 years.
The newest stuff he still has is either G scale or LGB scale, they are BIG and he only has displayed them on a few feet of track, never ran them. SP switcher, GP9 or SD9, and something else. I should bug him to send me some pictures from where they are stored.

 

[OddRails]

Awesome! That's so cool that you and your dad shared that hobby.

 

[pdkoester]

Awesome! That's so cool that you and your dad shared that hobby.

He also has two old buses in storage. One is an ex-AC transit 'fishbowl', and the other is a different transit from the south, the older split window GMC before the 'fishbowl' type.

 

[HiBaller]

I have quite a bit of N-gauge models, both for Japanese rail and US. Even a couple of German engines in HO. Building up and tearing down every few years while in the Navy took me out of the "real" modeling scene. Now, I can build whatever routes I want using Trainz.

Bill

 

[johnwhelan]

On the trainz side you can buy TANE for $10, there are a fair number of free sites besides the DLS that host content. Yes you need a PC but a refurbished one works fine. N gauge I gave up on, too many problems keeping the track and locos dust free. I do have some metal track Lego trains which I run for fun on an 8 by 4 layout in the basement but really it needs much more space to do it justice.

Cheerio John

 

[Vern]

The few times I've picked up Railway Modeller in the newsagents and looked at the advertisements the prices are outrageous, compared to years ago. Usually over £100 for a RTR OO loco, £25 to £30 for a Mark One coach. Unless you have a stash of equipment built up from years ago, a non starter.

The only pros of a real model railway vs, digital is you get a real 3D model as opposed to some 2D pixels on screen and unlike software which (these days) has no resale value the worth of your collection might actually increase.

 

[pdkoester]

I think HO scale prices of today are like what O scale prices were back in the early 80s:

https://ia802909.us.archive.org/14/items/railroad-model-craftsman-1982-03/railroad-model-craftsman-1982-03.pdf

 

[dangavel]

Awesome! That's so cool that you and your dad shared that hobby.

So did my dad, he worked on the railways as a fireman and my grandfather drove on the GWR , had no choice but to love trains with that background. Dad died of lung cancer in 1989 , 18 months after migrating to Australia, I had an entire garage all ready to build a rocky mountain layout and he would have loved to have helped, but when he died I just could not go ahead with it ,I lost heart,lost interest , I gave up modeling until 2010 when I discovered Trainz.

 

[JCitron]

My dad built my first model railroad for me when I was about 7. My grandfather got me the Revell Postage Stamp Trainset for Christmas one year. This came with a small booklet, a catalog actually, of various track pieces, available kits, and trains, and also some layouts.

He chose a small squished figure-eight layout from the book and put it together for me. Being a graphic artist, he made some of the structures for me including a water tower which I have tucked away somewhere. Over the years, the track and trains got integrated in other layouts and the original small 2' x 4' layout, that could fit under my bed and sat on squeaky plastic wheels, replaced with much more elaborate layouts.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if he was a secret rail fan and model railroader. He used to take me over to a fence that overlooked the B&M Bradford yard and passenger station to watch the freight being shunted around the yard and the mainline trains pass by. At three years old, this nailed the hobby squarely on my shoulders as well. He grew up in New York City and used to see the New Haven and New York Central, as well as the elevated and Long Island Railroad in full operation and took the train up to Poughkeepsie to stay with his grandmother during the summer at her cottage.

 

[OddRails]

@dangavel With that background, no wonder indeed that you liked trains. I think that it's great that you had that influence.
My oldest sister married the son of a Southern Pacific steam engineer. I never knew until after his father died. A gal I liked in high school was a daughter of an SP diesel engineer but again I wasn't close enough to learn anything.