04-03-2010, 12:51 PM
nachoman Wrote:The nostalgia comment reminded me of a personal experience... I once took a sketching class, and the instructor had an exercise where we were supposed to sketch a coffee cup. "Sketch it as you see it", he instructed. He placed the coffee cup in front of a camera, and displayed the image via a large screen so everyone in the classroom was seeing the same image of the coffee cup. Again, the exercise was to sketch what we saw on the screen.
After 5 minutes elapsed, he went around the room and selected students drawings as examples for the class. Some showed the coffee cup from an angle where one could see inside the rim, others where the inside of the cup could not be seen. Some had the handle on the left, some on the right, some had the shadows on the right, others on the left. But they were all instructed to draw the same image.
The point was that many people weren't drawing what they saw. They instead saw a coffee cup, and drew what a coffee cup is supposed to look like (from their memory). I wonder if nostalgia and model railroading is the same way. Instead of recreating what was there, we selectively (consciously or unconsciously) recreate what we think is supposed to be there. In some instances this is manifested as "modelers license". In others, it is "selective compression", a side effect of having a lack of layout space. But in other instances we are creating what we think a model layout ought to have - tunnels, high bridges, happy people playing in a park. But that is also the best part about this hobby - it is our layout and we can create what we want, or what we like.
I think that concept depends on what you think model railroading actually is. If you are a strict prototyper, then what you seek to do is create a museum-quality model of a specific place and time. If you are not, then you seek to model an operating railroad with the "feel" and "flavor" of a particular era, usually bending history to make it fit.
What is interesting about this hobby is that it has no fantasy modelers, except those interested in Thomas The Train Engine, perhaps.