mortals can pursue. Oh, and in case you missed it, slot cars
have not killed the hobby of model railroading, either.
Model railroaders or railroad modelers?
Another implication of the “no craftsman in the hobby left” con-
cern is that those of us lamenting the bygone craftsman days of
the hobby seem to prefer model railroaders who are builders to
those who take the broader theme of being railroad modelers.
Here at MRH, we feel it’s all in how you define model building.
At some point you let someone else do the work and you just
pay them for it.
Do you dig the iron and copper out of the ground yourself, or
do you let someone else do that, and do you buy the brass
sheet? Do you build your loco motors yourself, or do you let
someone else do that, and you buy pre-built motors?
Do you let someone else make mold masters and cast the
detail parts, and then you buy the cast parts?
Do you buy a car kit and assemble it yourself, or do you let
someone else assemble it?
The hobby is trending today toward ever more prototype fidel-
ity, be that proto-freelance or modeling a specific prototype.
Thanks to those RTR plastic trains, modelers can purchase
some portion of their needs, and then focus on kitbashing
or scratchbuilding only what they can’t buy. And in case you
didn’t notice – you can’t model any prototype well and just
buy everything. You will
have to
kitbash and scratchbuild if
you intend to do your prototype justice.
Should the highest goal in the hobby be that modelers can
show how macho they are by denying themselves of readily
MRH staff notes - 3
available parts, and build by hand just to demonstrate their
craftmanship prowess? These days, that’s called a special
technique for more contest points – almost no modelers build
layouts that way.
We contend a better goal, and one that actually is good for the
hobby, is to get more modelers building more layouts. To make
that practical, that means modelers need to focus their hobby
efforts wisely by only building what they can’t easily purchase.
We won’t argue those old timer hobby craftsman like Carl
Traub, John Allen, Jack Work, and Ben King did some amazing
work, especially considering what they had to work with.
But modelers today are doing even more amazing work – if
you consider how the end product looks. If you don’t believe
us, just look at the last 12 months of Ken Patterson’s “What’s
MRH-Feb 2014
