Run away, I’m waxing…

 I went to college to become a history teacher, but spent most of my collegiate time looking at a three square foot piece of grass, “Let’s run that again offense!”. I played football. To be more accurate, I played left tackle. BEFORE it was fashionable. 

In graduate school I was working on my doctorate in History*, when a dispute between one of my professors and I lead to strongly worded suggestions that I might find a better future in the trades. So I swung a hammer for 32 years in the movie business. Anyway, I made more money*.

As so often happens in my writings, I go around the long way to get to the point. I THINK I have the perspective of someone trained in “historiography” when I look at model railroads, and in looking I see that I am sorely lacking.

Modelers who follow the prototype are closer to the pure religion of history than those infidels who freelance.

I want my layout to be built for operations. I want my op sessions to be fun. I have a background in “Historical Simulation” board games and I want my layout to be a 3D board game. I want to publish, and be respected in the model railroading community. Alas the last two are probably not to be. 

That’s because it’s easier to freelance, and one does not need to develop the discipline required to produce quality work. That’s not to say Freelancers do not produce quality work, it’s just that I’m inherently lazy.

All the jobs on the Atlantic Inland are designed to be jobs I’d want to do on any layout I visit. Because of that, and as a reflection of my personality, the AIR is busier than most. The AIR does more and different things than one might find on a prototype railroad. We haul coal, passengers, grain, beer, livestock, LCL, mail, merchandise, express; what else am I forgetting?

What I can’t do is add something useful to the pool of knowledge we all dip into when we engage in this hobby.

When I was working full time, the time I could carve out to get in the train room was vital to my sanity, obviously I did not spend enough time however! So like the vast majority of modelers I created my own world into which I could withdraw. That will have to be enough. 



*19th Century British History, NOW that was seven years well spent…

* I have NO DOUBT what so ever, that this was the best decision for me. Can you see me in TODAYS academic environment? Administrations would bounce me out so fast your head would spin…


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wingedfoot Paper Part 2: Pulpwood

 On AIR1 a large, centrally located industry, was Wingedfoot Paper. As Jon Cure is fond of saying, a paper mill is the perfect Model Railroad industry. The major raw material is wood pulp. In 1952  pulpwood, cut and stacked like cord wood, was shipped to mills in a variety of cars. Nearly any car you can name was used, or modified in such a way as to become, a pulpwood hauler. Generally pulpwood was not valuable enough to travel far. The collection of pulpwood racks I have,  needs a great deal of repainting and re-lettering.  I just don’t think it’s likely to see Atlantic Coast Line cars hauling pulpwood into central WV! I have been toying with the idea of repainting cars from distant foreign roads and just adding a simplified lettering, using the premise that they are not for interchange. We’ll see. [4/19/22 this afternoon I went through the box of pulpwood cars. I think with only a few exceptions I’m going to have to repaint these flats and letter them for the AIR....
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL and Freight Houses

 LCL is a huge source of revenue, car loading, and tonnage for railroads of the steam era. By the end of WWII numbers dropped fast, mainly due to trucks and roads. But to be honest LCL continued to be a big part of railroading. Today all that UPS traffic is LCL. There has been a lot of discussion of late about how to implement LCL  on a model railroad. My feeling is I do not want to perform a function by simply standing and counting off the seconds, pretending to off load LCL packages. What I did on AIR1 was to print up Waybills that simulated packages of LCL.  The peddler car was placed in the consist of a local, the car card for the peddler car had multiple bills in it, and as the local got to each depot, the train crew would check their LCL bills to check for a set out. You did not set out the car, you set out the BILL.  I extended this procedure for REA packages, US Mail, passengers, and now I plan to add this function for loaded milk cans, but more on all that l...
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL from Foreign Road Freight Houses

 On AIR 1 while WM , N&W, CRR, and VGN trains had trackage rights over some or all of the layout, there were no freight houses for these foreign roads. Often in towns served by two or more competing lines one will find a freight house for each of these roads. In Winchester, VA the freight houses for the PRR and the B&O still stand today. On AIR 2 I do not plan model the extensive trackage rights as on the first layout. I plan to have these foreign roads to come on to the layout via either a short run of their track, visibly modeled, terminating at an interchange point, or simply a transfer from an off layout staging yard. In short fairly limited presence. However at each of these interchange points there should be some foreign road structures in their colors to give strong visual clues that these tracks do indeed belong to someone else. In a few cases, WM and N&W  for sure, some of these foreign road structures will be a freight house. Again, relying on the Kalmbac...
Read more