04-28-2009, 10:05 AM
iis612 Wrote:Let's not forget about the woefully overdone!
Why is it that every model railroad has to have mountains? I love looking at them, used to live really close to them. It seems the trend is to model these scenes with huge, over powering mountains, at least this is the image that the mainstream publications surrounding our hobby has painted. When they are done well, they are very photogenic, I will give on that. However, did you know that the midwest has some really breathtaking scenery that have NO mountains? What about coastlines? There are other ways to break scenes apart, without the use of imposing scenery.
I don't know the psychology involved in picking a prototype to model, or to pattern after, but it seems that there are a great many that are singled out. I have nothing against ANY road, I am just tired of seeing DRGW, CSX, UP, BNSF, ad nauseum, ad infinitum... Every road is spectacular in it's own way. The evolution of every road, if looked at with thought and attention is incredible, but it seems that the major class I's are being beat into a generic pulp.
Both of these gripes come to you courtesy of the hobbies mainstream publications. They seem to show the same scenes over and over and over and over. The same roads, redone and redux. Of course, that is probably because of the policy that seems to be in place that they have to use stuff from the same handful of contributors, or whatever there advertisers cough up. They want the dollars, and big names sell.
Matt
I suspect that you will see a lot more model railroads featuring UP, BNSF, CSX, or NS because so many modelers want to model today's scene. There are a few shortlines, but I'm not sure how many modelers are aware of them. I would imagine that a bridge line like Montana Rail Link might also be popular. I think there is also the problem of so many "modelers" today wanting everything r-t-r and already painted and decorated out of the box. When you combine that with the fact that the manufacturers seem to be ignorant sometimes, example Atlas comes out with an Rs32 in Arkansas & Missouri livery, but they come out with a C420 painted in various original 1960's paint schemes but none in A&M, it means that the layouts available to feature are going to be limited to the "big 4."
I think the overdoing of mountains has to do with the modeler's desire to have view blocks and the lack of imagination to recognize that a cut in the midst of rolling hills or tall urban buildings can act as view blocks as well as mountains. I think in the case of the mainstream magazines you have a certain amount of human prejudice that is going to come through. Model Railroader has always had a bias toward the Milwaukee Road because they are headquartered in Milwaukee. RMC seems to have a bit of a New Jersey/New York bias. I'm also not sure how much of the repetition of the same authors in the magazines is due to them not wanting to publish other authors and how much is due to them just not receiving quality work form other people rather than what they publish. They are expecting that anything they publish will be of professional quality. When they reject an article and pictures from someone other than the regular contributors is it because they only use the same regular contributors or is it that the work they have rejected is just too amaturish? Lou Sassi and Micheal Tylick to name just two regular contributors, may show up in Model Railroader a lot, but both of them have spent the money for the equipment and learned the craft necessary to do professional quality photography. I don't how much editing is required for their writing, but what it comes down to is that editing poorly written prose is much easier than having to try to edit poor photography. Poor composition may be corrected by croping, but problems with focus, depth of field, etc is probably not possible to fix.