02-14-2011, 11:36 AM
Model railraoding is my hobby. It is an activity I used to do to help unwind after a stressfull day at the office. It always did the job!
I am now retired. I work on my models because I enjoy it. And by trying new materials and techniques I learn new things and my skill set grows and the more I use each skill, the more proficient I become at it.
I would no sooner pay someone $4.00 to weather one of my models, much less pay some clown hundreds of miles away, that I have never met, who "claims" he can do it and posts photos of examples of "his work." Maybe that may have been a viable way for someone not interested in learning how to do it a decade or two ago, but in today's world? When someone who has hired one of those places to "custom build" a layout, and buys RTR rolling stock, "assembled" structures and such ... what is the hobby? Watching the trains run?
I dunno! Maybe I'm just getting too old to understand the world today ... but ... I just don't get it!
If you take the time to learn a new skill, weathering locomotives and rolling stock, $400 would go a long way towards buying weathering supplies!
Besides, I can remember that when other modelers looked at my weathered models, they always wondered (out loud) why I wanted to "ruin a perfectly good model?" Of course, to me, their layouts always looked like some sort of "Ideal Fantasy Antiseptic World." It least, they didn't look like the work that I saw through my very myopic eyes. Possibly it was merely dirty glasses that I was peering through.
I am now retired. I work on my models because I enjoy it. And by trying new materials and techniques I learn new things and my skill set grows and the more I use each skill, the more proficient I become at it.
I would no sooner pay someone $4.00 to weather one of my models, much less pay some clown hundreds of miles away, that I have never met, who "claims" he can do it and posts photos of examples of "his work." Maybe that may have been a viable way for someone not interested in learning how to do it a decade or two ago, but in today's world? When someone who has hired one of those places to "custom build" a layout, and buys RTR rolling stock, "assembled" structures and such ... what is the hobby? Watching the trains run?
I dunno! Maybe I'm just getting too old to understand the world today ... but ... I just don't get it!
If you take the time to learn a new skill, weathering locomotives and rolling stock, $400 would go a long way towards buying weathering supplies!
Besides, I can remember that when other modelers looked at my weathered models, they always wondered (out loud) why I wanted to "ruin a perfectly good model?" Of course, to me, their layouts always looked like some sort of "Ideal Fantasy Antiseptic World." It least, they didn't look like the work that I saw through my very myopic eyes. Possibly it was merely dirty glasses that I was peering through.
:mrgreen:
EDIT: I felt compelled to add one more adjective to the layout description. 
Oops! Misspelled the addition! :oops:
Oops! Misspelled the addition! :oops:
biL
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln