If you like it buy it!

[birdseyecircus]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

Paul

[Oldddudders]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

Paul

Absolutely right. Your money, your layout, your choice. You can't be "wrong". However, for many modellers, getting away from the "toy train" image involves putting together a plausible layout, with equally plausible collections of rolling stock, locos and structures, to provide a picture of some point in railway history, be it today, the 50s or the C19. And there may be limits beyond which each of us will not go - do you want a Rocket and a Javelin on the layout at the same time? A Class 66 and a Dean Single? How you define your limits may help ultimately to dictate how satisfying your layout is to operate - and to show off to others, be it on RMWeb, or just in the loft. No rights, no wrongs, just a need to feel comfortable with it all, perhaps.

[Glorious NSE]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

Unfortunately I don't possess the readies to buy everything I like the look of - being a bit picky on era/locale is a good way of cutting down the stuff I might buy to near manageable proportions!

[St. Simon]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

Paul

 

Hi Paul,

 

I totally agree with you!

 

We often hear the phrase "It's your railway, run what you like", but in reality, how many of us actually do?

 

When it comes to buying trains for me, if I like it (and if I can afford it! ), I buy it!

 

Simon

[Dagworth]

Unfortunately I don't possess the readies to buy everything I like the look of - being a bit picky on era/locale is a good way of cutting down the stuff I might buy to near manageable proportions!

 

That's the method I use, it saves me quite a bit of expenditure, otherwise I'd have a whole pile of 3rd rail EMUs starting to gather here... not quite sure how the big brown and yellow 4000HP beasty sat in a box here somewhere fits in with any of my eras but IMTS and it will appear on Ravensclyffe with vast rakes of HAAs behind it at some point.

 

Andi

[bluex5]

The layout i'm involved with is 60's Waterloo / Bournemouth mainline so some of my purchases are to suit that (BR Standards, Cromptons, WC/BB etc) however my railway interests are for more catholic, i.e. ER steam and transition diesel, anything Hydraulic etc etc. So I buy stuff I like too - I own at least one example of every BR diesel model released in the last 10 years, plus lots of ER Steam locos and a few oddities like the Super "D".

[Kenton]

The problem only arises when you come to exhibit it - then it no longer is just your railway - it becomes your interpretation of what the public might like to see on your railway.

 

That is fine if you say - its just a train set to show off the latest Hornby/Bachman/Hejan offering - or just a scene from the far fetched abstract reaches of my mind .... but as soon as you say it is a model of station xyz in region abc during the 3rd weekend in September 1906 - start to expect some know it all to come along and (perhaps justifiably) find fault.

 

Just like when THAT named loco goes through the station 2 seconds after it just departed because it is a roundy-roundy race track and you think everyone likes to see a B***P****** chase its tail.

[Pixie]

I've got a collection of things that I own on the sole basis that I like them or have some kinda of link to me. They sit quietly on the side, or 'The Shelf of Horn' as it's been coined by a friend, doing nothing more than giving me pleasure when I have a glance. I found that whilst I was building up stock for my current project I was quite well behaved but since obtaining almost everything that Roath will ever need my monies are starting to wander into the wrong pockets. Southern livery T9, Super D, Irish 141 with matching Cravens and Swallow power cars are all beacuse of my 'ooh, shiney' thoughts.

 

not quite sure how the big brown and yellow 4000HP beasty sat in a box here somewhere fits in with any of my eras but IMTS and it will appear on Ravensclyffe with vast rakes of HAAs behind it at some point.

 

Railfreight red stripe and TOPS numbers?

 

Pix

[shanks522]

Couldn't agree more, If have the money and i take a shine to it i'm going to buy it, My main area of modelling is modern era N-gauge but it doesn't stop me purchasing anything in any scale.

 

Graham.

[Bernard Lamb]

Deltic and 10001 were just too much for me to resist amongst the recent offerings.

I would probably buy an Ochre 31 if I ever saw one for sale.

Of course I have a Beatie Well Tank on order.

All strange choices for the northern borders circa 1960.

That strange machine named after a city it didn't normal go to was one that I had no urge to buy.

Bernard

[Flymo748]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

If your interest is actually in building kits or converting models to a specific prototype, then the making may be actually more important than the end result.

 

That explains why I have in my workbench queue (amongst others) several 1910 GER locomotives, class 37 and class 47 diesels, and a Highland Railway 0-6-4T...

 

Flymo

[LSWR]

I think we sometimes take ourselves too seriously, especially when new locos come out.

The cries of 'how can I justify one when i model ....' is often heard.

If you like it buy it - the police won't arrest you! it's your layout run what you want.

 

Paul

 

Too right! Be like Hollywood. Rewrite History as it should have been.....

 

[Turkey]

In my case it's definitly down to cash availablity, as my interests are dangerously wide anyway, so if it does not fit in it does not get bought, haveing said that there are a couple of things I would luve to have just for the sake of having them............

............Like a pair of Betties well tanks.

[Leicester Thumper]

if i have the money, i buy it, if i don't i scrounge for money (i love mum really ) or i put it back down and say no.

 

i run whatever the hell i want on my exhibition layout, i built that layout to run the trains that i want to run and i built that layout around an interesting operating concept, so its not unlikely to see a Peco jubilee pulling some air con Mk.2s in Blue/grey.

 

the class 14 will be one i shall buy, along with a union mills engine.... providing i have the money

[wiggoforgold]

Quite right - its your railway!

There seem to me to be two further rules:

1. If you see it and think you would like one, get it now, because when you actually want it, you won't be able to get one.

2. If you make one, someone will inevitably produce an RTR one.

[The Stationmaster]

Difficult one to be honest but I think having a set scenario does help to control spending, well most of it .

 

I am firmly in the Western camp but as there are very strong leanings to South Wales that also allows in remnants of the LMS group (only the LNWR side and post group) so I have reasonable rein although how on earth I could ever justify one 'Castle' let alone the number I'm likely to end up with I just don't know .

 

But at least it is keeping me off the path to the Beattie well tank and the S&DJR 2-8-0 which would otherwise be severe temptations. And, alas for my bank balance, childhood memories and a touch of nostalgia do mean that several Gresley pacifics have slipped through the net along with the a pretty blue Co-Co from the NRM. But I have firmly resisted T9s, Bulleids etc, and have no wish to reawaken miserable memories of an appalling trip on the GC behind a decrepit 46100.

 

Oh, and definitely 'get one now' - because if you don't it's going to cost more in the future and it might never reappear on the market (hence the 'Castles' ).

[Jamie]

Yeah, I guess it's down to what you get from the modelling hobby.

 

In my own case I have a set of ground rules to adhere to*, which keeps the trains coherent with the road vehicles, setting and other trains of the layout. Otherwise I might as well use a purple "barney the dinosaur" sitting on the layout to destroy the illusion of reality in miniature - which is what I personally look for and aim for. Others will vary on what their priority is, and why not.

 

*said rules are based on a loose interpretation of reality: plausible, not pedantic

 

It's not to say I don't have a couple of "specials" - there's some early to mid 90s period stock lurking - but they probably won't ever touch the rails on the layout.

[Jenny Emily]

^^ What the OP said.

 

Behind the facade of a late 1970s BR blue railway, I have a fleet of varied steamers waiting to get out. L&Y livery pug, LBSCR terrier 'Waddon', Super D, GWR Pannier, 14xx in GWR green, Southern livery N class, 4MT, as well as an assortment of plain green diesels, some SNCF electric thing and a Burlington Northern GP40.

 

It's my little fiefdom, and I'll run what I want, even if the GP40 does get wedged under one of the bridges if I send it on the wrong road and the SNCF thing is prone to getting its pantographs tangled in pipe bridges. In the future my crystal ball shows a class 85, a Beattie well tank and anything in LNWR livery will be joining them.

[BB17005]

Difficult one to be honest but I think having a set scenario does help to control spending, well most of it .

 

 

I agree but give myself ample leeway to dabble in the market when I can

I have an LMR (North Wales) early 60s scenario but have a green peak (which didn't really show on the NWCL till the 80s) and a green D7500 class 25 whose proto. was built in 1966

Of the steam classes , I have a couple of Early crest locos but I don't look that closely !! I have the Super D which from research got as far as Mold Junction in 1957 !!

 

From the recent & new crop of steam locos , I can justify a 3F as Rhyl had one allocated in 1960 I'd love to go for the S&DJR & Clan but for me , they are regionally "too" incorrect.

[Rannoch Moor]

I have to agree with Jamie for my part. Reasonably plausible is hard to nail down of course, but at home, that's up to the owner be it Barney driving an orange Flying Scotsman in P4 or whatever, but at an exhibition that will be determined by what the owner wishes to portray and the exhibition manager wants. (ie I doubt that Scaleforum would wish the above layout to presented (at least throughout!) with Barney and his Sunset A3, but that type of train on the same layout may be exactly what a local exhibition would want.

 

Otherwise, the recreation for exhibition use (as far as I'm concerned at least!)has to suit the owner. For my part, I am entirely happy that my layout "might have been scenario" (ie Caledonian line from Oban to Campbeltown with another NB branch joining it after passing through Glen Croe) is reasonably plausible (ie it was thought about during the late 19th Century) but in reality totally impractical (no economic justification, massive engineering works required on the NB Branch) which probably make the concept as ridiculous as Barney above. (And that's before we talk about motors and tight curves and compression).

 

In sum though, it works as a suspension of reality for me. Were I to exhibit, I would apply some discipline and only run items that I judged would be suited tro the concept and chosen time frame, because that is what I would want to show off (deliberately chosen phrase!). At home though, I may stretch the point a bit to run items that may fit in for period or as Scots prototypes but would never have been seen on a small branch in the West Highlands (eg a St Margarets A3 in late BR livery) or completely abandon theatre type realism to run a friend's stock that was wrong for period/geogrpahy or strict real world authenticity. That said, never say never and one day maybe Kilbrannan Ferry may see an EM Q1 or T9 (but never a King or Grange!)

 

Gus

[Chris116]

I like to keep my trains looking right and also have a wide range of ones that I like and want to run. So the simple way to solve the problem was to make my station a meeting place between National Railways and a Preservation Society, which means I can run what I like.

 

I have a full set of stock for BR(S) Steam, BR(E) Steam, BR(M) Steam, BR(M) Green Diesel and GWR Steam for the Preservation Society and then some Central Trains DMU's and similar era diesels for the National Railways side. If I get fed up with running the layout in 1999 I can switch to 1969 and use the Green Diesels as BR and whatever I like on the Preservation side.

 

Chris

[Clay Country]

I'm normally fairly strict on this, more to contain my spending than anything else. I have my 1997-2005 N gauge East Midlands fleet and my 1987-1994 OO Cornish fleet. Then there's the Replica 03, Heljan 26, and the Beattie Well tank I've ordered that don't fit in anywhere...

[birdseyecircus]

Some interesting views there. I can understand exhibitions and obviously if funds are low, but some people seem petrified (on here and letters in mags) of running say a GWR Steamer on a scottish based layout, without photo evidence or claims to back it up. Relax!

 

Paul

[Pennine MC]

 

i run whatever the hell i want on my exhibition layout, i built that layout to run the trains that i want to run and i built that layout around an interesting operating concept, so its not unlikely to see a Peco jubilee pulling some air con Mk.2s in Blue/grey.

 

 

(my bold)

 

I'd hope that statement isnt meant in quite the way it comes across, because it's rather dismissive of the range of preferences found within exhibition audiences - the very people who indirectly fund your layout's appearances

[Leicester Thumper]

(my bold)

 

I'd hope that statement isnt meant in quite the way it comes across, because it's rather dismissive of the range of preferences found within exhibition audiences - the very people who indirectly fund your layout's appearances

 

yes i appreciate i could have worded that comment a lot better, thanks for pointing it out

 

i run whatever i like on the layout and it does work, people at the shows and exhibitions do come and stand for a good old while and watch the movements on the layout. since i put a good mixture of engines down (and mostly representing Most eras) people make positive comments, talk about their memories about the railways, i even get former railway workers talking to me, they say things like 'i remember when i drove them' etc, and thats what makes it for me personally, im having fun but the audience like it too, if you see what i mean?