Putting it into perspective
It is with some dismay that I have been reading a current forum thread “
So What’s next for Non-Subscription TRS19 Users?”, a topic of some interest with 1,497 views in three days and 54 and counting responses.
As I see it non-subscribers, those that purchased TRS19 outright, are concerned that they are not getting bug fixes and updated in a timely fashion, those that bought into a Gold Membership are concerned that they are paying to be beta testers, and everyone is concerned with the slow progress in development for which they feel they paid, or are currently paying, too much for.
I am not old enough to remember the time (1920’s, 30’s and 40’s) when you had to make everything. You could buy nothing. Oh, there was Lionel Trains. They started in 1900 and made train set which most found under their tree at Christmas. As a kid I got mine second hand, a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood, which was propped up on little more than two saw horses so I could view it a eye level while seated in front of the transformer. I was over the moon when I was able to expand it with the addition of a second 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood arranged to form an “L” shaped layout in the basement. The route was two loops one inside the other. On the bottom of the L were two reversing loops one on top of the other with a crossover. There were turnout so one could go from one loop to the other and one short siding with an oil company, I had a tank car, and a dairy, I had an open gondola which I could fill with milk cans. As I recall other than a box car and a caboose that was my freight train pulled by a steam locomotive that you could put tablets into the smoke stack and it would chuff “real smoke” as you went down the line. My only other train was a silver passenger train that had a dome car and red light on the end of the rounded last car, which kept burning out; LEDs hadn’t been invented yet.
By chance I ended up going to Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. It wasn’t until I got there that I found out they were the home of the Boiler Makers, the football team. You see, Lafayette is a railroad town. Three railroads passed through it, the New York Central that ran north west from Cincinnati to Chicago, the Norfolk and Western that ran south west from Detroit to St. Louis, and the Monon that ran north to south from Gary to Louisville and had it’s shops in Lafayette. The Monon ran down the centre of one of the downtown streets. Many a time I encountered a train passing through town on a Saturday morning. If you were travelling north or south you could drive beside the train. But if you were travelling east or west you had to wait. It travelled about 5 to 10 miles an hour so if anyone got in the way it could either stop in time or, at least, the damage would be somewhat limited. On the south side of town all three railroads crossed in an amazing crossover. I remember getting the opportunity to visit the control tower. Everything was operated mechanically with big leavers that the operator pulled forward or pushed backwards.
But what made Purdue University unique was that they had
a model railroad club with a large HO scale layout in the basement of the student union building.
Most, if not all, of the locomotives and rolling stock were purchased from Walthers. In the 60s one didn’t have to make locomotive, rolling stock or scenery item any more, you could just buy them from
Walthers. They had a catalogue the size of a large metropolitan phone book, and inch and an half thick as I remember with I don’t know how many thousands of item, all at a price of course. Kind of like the DLS (N3V’s down load station). It’s online now.
When I finally got a job I started my own HO scale layout in the basement. It took up a good part of the basement but was limited by my wife, who said I couldn’t occupy the entire basement. It never got to the have scenery before it was abandoned because of cost, which ran into the thousands of dollars I think.
Instead I joined a local model railroad club, the Scale Rail Guild. Several of their members had their own layouts but one in particular was something to see and operate,
John Marlor’s The Mountain Division: Kamloops to Field, British Columbia, Canada.
It filled almost the entire basement and was a real work of art. Much of the rolling stock and locomotives would have been purchased from Walthers or other sources but the scenery was hand crafted. The locomotives were digitally controlled, an expensive system at the time but a dream to operate. We had operating sessions almost every week. It was some two hundred miles compressed into 200 feet.
So you can imagine my excitement when I first saw Trainz. One could make layouts/routes hundreds of miles long. I bought Trainz 2009, for about $30 US, I think, and continues with my interest in the railroads of British Columbia creating the 150 mile
Mountain Subdivision circa 2010 from Revelstoke to Field and east through the Kicking Horse Pass to the Laggan Hill.
I am presently updating it for TRS19 so, among other things, so I can run the Rocky Mountaineer on it’s home turf through Rogers Pass, down the Beaver River valley, through the Spiral Tunnels and over the Kicking Horse Pass.
I am also working on an
1887 version, the golden age of the Mountain Subdivision when it descended the Big Hill, a 4.5% grade that preceded the Spiral Tunnels, crossed timber trestles in the Beaver River valley some of which at the time were largest and tallest wooden structure in the world.
So what’s my point?
To illustrate let me use the
EMD SD40 (Electro-Motive Diesel Special Duty/Standard Duty) probably the most successful diesel locomotive design in history with a total of 3,945 SD40-2s built.
If you were to buy now one from
Walthers (HO scale) it would cost you $279.95 US.
If you were to buy one from
Lionel (O scale) it would cost you $429.95 US.
If you would prefer to have
a brass O scale model as some do, it could cost you $750.00 US.
However, if you are a virtual model railroader using Trainz you can get one from
Jointed Rail for $14.99 US.
And if you were to go to N3V’s down load station you can get one for FREE!
The cost of model railroading has never been cheaper whether you are a non-subscriber or have a gold membership.
Cayden
