Those railroad processes I like to model, and why I always get them wrong

 Once I begin to look at modeling those processes the prototype performed in depth I began to realize everything I like to model was, for lack of a better term, already passe.

LCL for example. I went to great lengths to set my era in 1952. And over a period of say 30 years I structured my car fleet to reflect that year, 1952. I DO have some anachronistic models but you can count them on the fingers of two hands. When you consider my total car fleet, I don’t think that’s bad, but I digress, LCL. I want to model relatively intense LCL operations, but on the prototype I’m about twenty years too late.

Passenger service, what I like to model, again 15-20 years too late.

So many of the major processes and procedures I really like about big time railroading, and that I have gone to great lengths to model and simulate are all from an era prior to the era I have selected. 

Even car types, I’d rather be in hell with my back broken than roster a fleet of PS-1 boxcars. WWII ran most of the mainstay cars, I like to model, into the ground. Railroads were buying fleets of new cars.

Yuck! Remember this, Old is good, new is bad!