Model Pet Peeves

[Guest jim s-w]

Hi All

 

We have had the cliché thing but what do you see often on models that peeve you?

 

I have 2

 

1 - Signal ladders - We see some superb model signals but flat etched ladders? All that effort spoilt by using a flat etch when 'proper' ladders (with round rungs and sides the right way round) are available. Yes you have to solder them up but its a minor thing compared to the effort some put into their signals.

 

2 - skies not matching the model. The model lit from one direction and the clouds in the sky lit from the other side.

 

Both little minor things really but thats what a pet peeve is.

 

Cheers

 

Jim

[Barry Ten]

It's an obvious one but I've seen so many nice layouts recently that are ruined by having out of the box shiny road vehicles plonked down all over the place. I do mean "ruined" because the shiny road vehicle is inevitably the thing that the eye can't help being drawn toward. I just don't get it. You've spent all this time toning down your track, structures, rolling stock - why blow it with something that looks like a Dinky toy straight out of the box?

[Mike Friedman]

Interesting how something that peeves YOU about someone else's layout, appears to give you the right to infer that THEY should change something on THEIR layout.

 

Suspension of disbelief is a very personal thing and resides in YOUR mind, not the layout, maybe you should work on changing what peeves YOU then you can enjoy many more layouts without becoming peeved.

 

On the other hand how can we learn from other, more experienced modellers, unless these modelling nuances are pointed out to us? So maybe on second thoughts Jim's peeves are a valuable source of experience and have a valuable teaching role, who knows what a list of valuable peeves this thread will bring forth?

 

The modelling newcomer will have a whole list of peeves to avoid, but as suspension of disbelief is a very personal thing the old saying might hold some wisdom:

 

“You can't please everyone so you might as well please yourself...â€

[Kenton]

Bad weathering - I'd rather see it all shiny and new -

I know folk need to practice but - please don't put the failed attempts on show.

[Chubber]

Card models with 'round' corners which look as though the buildings are built with bull-nose bricks.

[DavidH]

The "flat Earth" approach to modelling (flat baseboard with track on, scenery built up from that). There might be one board with a drop below baseboard level incorporated to allow a bridge.

 

Layouts where the builder obviously hasn't planned anything properly and keeps changing things because what they wanted in their heads doesn't fit or didn't work.

 

Both painfully evident in all four layouts I've started, so I'm not having a go at anyone in particular!

[DavidH]

Card models with 'round' corners which look as though the buildings are built with bull-nose bricks.

 

Conversely, because the hidden sidings have to be put somewhere, they are behind a long warehouse or improbable hill, which usually incorporates a sky with square corners. I've done that as well

[Guest jim s-w]

Interesting how something that peeves YOU about someone else's layout, appears to give you the right to infer that THEY should change something on THEIR layout.

 

 

No one has said that Mike. It may be that (to use my example of ladders) they dont know better is available or they just choose to use a flat etch. To give you another example people might find the lack of camber on a road a peeve. I haven't put it on my roads, I have my reasons and I am happy with my descision not to, doesn't mean it wont be a peeve to someone else though does it?

 

Dont think of it as "you should do this" think of it more like "I won't do that"

 

Cheers

 

Jim

[petethemole]

I don't see this very often as I only get to a few shows, but every so often there's a layout that's been taken from storage and erected at the show without being cleaned. There's dust, fluff and spiderwebs on the scenery and sometimes on the stock as well! For me it spoils what may otherwise be a good layout, and I don't tend to stick around. I know fine dust can give a toning down effect, but that tends to be what simple cleaning won't shift and that's not what I mean. If you're going to show the layout, at least blow the dust and cobwebs off!

 

Pete

[Blandford1969]

Everyone has different standards of building and what they want to achieve, so i look at a layout depending on the approach.

 

However where signals are on a layout it takes away when the operation does not use the signals or correct stopping places. As an example there was a loveley layout complete with ground signals. One of these was for access to a yard, i watched an engine run so the tender was just by the ground signal but the whole engine had not gone by. Immediatley the point was across and it was into the yard. I appreciate many would not even notice.

 

The other is sound on steam engines. As an example an engine arrives at a terminus to uncouple and run round. As soon as the engine moves you hear the sound of steam into the cylinders, which continues until it stops. Where as you tend only to use a quick breath of steam going onto a set of blocks and then running round.

 

Thats just mine though and many would not even notice them

[DavidM]

Unrenumbered locos - there's too many layouts with excellent fleet line-ups; perfectly weathered and detailed...but fall at the final hurdle by leaving them with the same number as out of the box - a bit more imagination please chaps?

[Raffles]

For me... it's seeing a beautifully detailed/repainted/weathered model of a 47 with the battery boxes on the wrong way round.

 

Surely study of a photograph would point one in the right direction?

[bertiedog]

The strange black lines around the base of buildings!!.....even if they have to remove, why make the joint just where it screams... make it away from the base, and it does not show.

[Horsetan]

At exhibitions, the "hand of God" descending to poke an engine into life shortly after it has stalled......(possibly because the route wasn't properly set?)

[Gwiwer]

"Pet peeves"? "Get your goat"?

 

I was going to say cat hairs on everything until I realised it wasn't about that sort of pet

 

But in that vein it irks me to see perfectly good pictures of models which have been almost but not quite diligently dusted and cleaned. One speck or a stray hair remains glaringly obvious. In some ways an un-dusted loco would look better as at least it's in "used" condition.

 

I will also meekly raise my hand and admit I am as guilty as the next person in posting images of this nature at times.

[Sailor Charon]

The "flat Earth" approach to modelling (flat baseboard with track on, scenery built up from that). There might be one board with a drop below baseboard level incorporated to allow a bridge.

 

Layouts where the builder obviously hasn't planned anything properly and keeps changing things because what they wanted in their heads doesn't fit or didn't work.

 

Both painfully evident in all four layouts I've started, so I'm not having a go at anyone in particular!

 

Yes, I'd have to say the same for the first one. My current layout is very very flat. I'd wanted to go for open top boards, but chickened out in the end. But yes, I wish I had now...

And I'm tempted to say solid backed driving wheels in N gauge...

[JeremyC]

Poor running; i.e locos that stick and continually need 'digital assistance', either because they need their wheels cleaned or commonly [in my experience] due to badly adjusted pick-ups. Having fixed a consideable number of other peoples locos with the latter problem I've found that plunger pick-ups are the worst offenders. [i'm constantly surprised at the number of people who can build a loco kit to perfection, but can't get it to run properly.]

 

Jeremy

[Baby Deltic]

Skillfully hand built track and nicely detailed and weathered loco's and stock surrounded by a scenic cop-out. Flavour of the month seems to be corrogated sheet steel frame buildings like industrial units and DIY stores in low relief along the backscene.

[Guest Max Stafford]

A variation on Jeremy's point - poor driving. Even on an otherwise well-constructed and presented layout you can see some operators starting and stopping loose coupled coal trains and passenger services like they were conducting carrier air ops!

Please, please if you're one of these guys try to give some kind of realistic simulation of the physics of train operation. And if a loco or handler cannot perform in such a manner, they shouldn't be operating on an exhibition layout - simple as!

 

Dave.

[Andy C]

The "its my layout and I will run what I like" merchants at shows. Atypical example i saw was a quite nicely modelled N gauge layout which on the casual first glance got the exhibition managers nod from me. Then I saw a class 66 running with RCH Private owner waggons behind it and a brake van. Maybe a test train so carried on watching, but every train which followed had similarly impossibly mixed rolling stock and locos!

 

Modern Diesel depots, unless very well done like Mike Anson's Western Road. Far too many of them otherwise, and most are unformly cr*p clothes horses for the look how many locos I've got brigade..

 

And whilst in rant mode, the impossible landscape - theres at least one exhibition layout with a river running along halfway up the sides of a valley, not in the bottom of it! Doh. I'm much less worried about the "flat earth" layouts on the grounds that if you have a shunting plank, and only modelling the trackbed area, then its likely to be flat anyway. Totally agree though about the B & Q backscenes though

[PLD]

Two things that immediately come to mind:

1. The unpainted loco - OK very sensible to test it on the layout before finishing it, but does it have to be the prime mover all day??
2. Those layouts which are wonderful, well researched replicas within the railway boundary, but the other side of the fence... well the less said the better... Canals with right angled corners, impossible road layouts, hoch-poch of mismatched ready made buildings etc etc

Paul

 

 

 

[multiprinter]

Lets face it, even the worst layouts today are far better than almost all layouts of the 60s, most layouts of the 70s,etc. etc.

[John M Upton]

At an exhibition I cannot stand when a really excellently built or converted loco model, often from an etched kit is then ruined by sloppy application of the loco's number that looks like it was applied by a five year old with digits all over the shop.

[Downer]

Tracks disappearing through a square-cut hole in the backscene, with little or no effort to disguise the fact.

[298]

Poor operation, usually involving trains travelling too fast.

 

I can accept everything else as it's usually the case of an exhibition manager inviting a layout and knowing exactly what they're letting themselves in for, and providing they adequately advertise the layouts that'll be in attendance, it's then up to me to decide whether the show will be worth attending. Besides which, don't most people go to shows to be critical, which might sound like they're harbouring a personality complex but in reality are looking at these mistakes and compromises so they don't repeat the same ones...?