Prototype modeling - how far can you take it?

[doctorwayne]

Sorry...I don't see how this relates to my post, although the Thomas the Tank Engine statement does reinforce my point enormously.

I've been hanging around forums like this for years, and the constant complaint of modelers, including virtually all of them on this forum, is that the hobby is fun except for the rivet counters.

I think that the problem is not the rivet counters as a segment of the hobby who enjoy doing their modelling to the nth degree but the rivet counters whose secondary (or perhaps in some instances, primary) purpose is to attempt to find fault with others. Some of these types don't actually model anything themselves!

Now we have a branch of the hobby which is composed, if you will, of rivet counters with OCD. No problem; to each his own. But I know couple of these guys in my area, and they happily run Christmas trains and Thomas the Tank engines for their kids, while obsessing about the faults on the layouts of others. And here we have a problem. We now have schizophrenic, disassociated and hypocritical rivet counters.

Count 'em all you want, but either be consistent in your philosophy and leave the rest of us alone or take up knitting or something. We share this hobby, and that's as far as it goes.

I agree with you on these people having some sort of a psychological disorder, but their brand of "rivet counting" is merely the manifestation of the disorder that's presented to us. Can you imagine what it must be like living with such a person? Perhaps the only consistency which we can expect from them is inconsistency, and for my part, I refuse to let them suck the enjoyment out of my way of modelling. As General Anthony McAuliffe wrote: "Nuts".

Wayne