When your AC12 is a pusher up hill on your 15 car 36' tank train pulled by an AC4400. Santa is real , Right? Mike
True Confession (For the humor-impaired, if such a creature could be a Trainboard subscriber, kindly note that the following is tongue-in-cheek. I think.) Those of you who have been following the "Prototype-itis" thread may be shocked to find me posting here. It was I, after all, who started the thread, to which this thread (and another equally hilarious one) was launched in protest. But it is time for a confession. I am ashamed to admit this, but I suspect that many of us who are clearly afflicted by prototype-itis have secret freelance fantasies. I know that I do. The trouble is, these freelance fantasies are so extreme that we cannot deal with them. I am no psychologist, mind you, but this may account for our rigidly prototypical views. Will I tell you my freelance fantasies? By no means. I am not quite ready for that. But I will tell you this much. Some of you have speculated on scenarios that would explain why you can run the SP Daylight, the California Zephyr, and the Super Chief on a single layout, and you have invented pathetically weak justifications for this. You are, in fact total amateurs. On my freelance layout, there is a plausible scenario for the SP Daylight, California Zephyr, Super Chief, AND the Broadway Limited, and it makes excellent (indeed, perfect, sense). Do me the kindness of not asking me to elaborate. At this time, this is as far as I feel I am able to go. ^_^ --Bryan
Time to bump this thread. You had guest at your wedding sign white painted freight cars. 20% of your rolling stock is undecorated. You might be buying more undecorated even though you have begun to de-accumulate. You would buy more bullet trains if they came out undecorated. You are trying to build a 'dinosaur train' for the 5yo. Yep, 8 years later I still have the condisiton.
If you spent more than 60% of your train time trying to pick a name for your railroad and a map of where it runs!! Mike
Your BN theater car is running behind a 2-6-2. The Turtle Creek Central is slowly taking over everywhere. Your railroad is located on an Island that might have once had 5 miles of track. Your entire motive power roster consists of critters, some that were built in a monastery back hidden in the hills. Union Pacific doesn't exist.
I hate to disagree with you but these examples are not that's not Freelance-ites, that's called necessity. This isn't Freelance-ites... its modeling the Boston & Maine. The PRR almost had domes. They inquired to American Car & Foundry about building single level domes similar to the more modern Colorado Railcar domes and ACF provided PRR with a drawing. The drawing appears in the book Some Classic Trains but PRR decided to go another direction instead. If your imagination is good enough you can look at the shot of the Rocky Mountain Railtours' car below and picture it as a single level car... that will give to at least some idea of what was purposed... the narrow framing is very close to what the purposed car was like... https://www.flickr.com/photos/cathieonline/4844325732
I was really blessed. A cartographer friend put together USGS maps for my route. I love staring at them. I knew the area very well as a boy and still love it.
You can't figure out WHY people freak out when they see you running a UP FEF-3 and 10 VIA Rail Passenger cars or The American Freedom Train GS-4 leading 10 car Illinois Central Passenger cars.
[h=2]Ya Really Know You Have Freelance-ites when... [/h]You know nobody can claim you are doing it wrong... OR You dont even care if they do say you are..its your railroad !! :teeth:
come up with excuses of why your rail road still runs main line steam in the mid 1960s. You have made up heavy grades to justify mallets in southern Minnesota. ( actually the Milwaukee Road had a steep grade west out of La Crescent ,MN which is my freelance main line) Minnesota & western railway
.......you pick the name of your fictitious railroad so that a derogatory name will fit the initials, reporting marks or the railroad's actual name. When this topic started, my non-historic was called St. Peter's and Lake Erie, initials St.P.&L.E., which gave rise to "Start Pushing and Leave Early", "Start Praying and Leave Early". It allowed me to decal Pittsburgh and Lake Erie cars in Railroad Roman, as they were in the early 1950s and before. All that I needed to do was cut off the "St.". I was never happy with the whole thing, so I sold most of the equipment that I had bought for it. Work did not leave much time for modelling at that time, either. My pike was beat up , as it had moved several times. It got to the point where I decided to take it down. If I wanted to run trains, I still had my 2'x4' nineteenth century pike. When there was more time, I got the idea of adding ends to an N-Trak module to make a dogbone type layout. It went through various forms, until it arrived at what it is to-day. Finally, I seem to have gotten all of the bugs out of the track (Yes, I know, more will develop). Further, I have gotten the motive power roster to something believable and reliable (...speaking of reviving old topics) Thus, it is time to move beyond Plywood and Pacific stage (although the N-Trak module is, and always has been scenicked). I picked an appropriate name for a busy short line that would lend itself well to a derogatory name: Short Creek and Nopedale, reporting marks SC&N.
Hmmm.... how appropriate this topic goes with my signature below... "A fictitious precursor" is pronounced 'FREELANCE'... I'm definitely in the freelanc-itis group. Imagine that any railroad which ran train through the Rockies... and some that really didn't... has a Zephyr passenger consist. The Northern Pacific's... North Coast Limited is joined by the Cascadian Zephyr which terminates at Denver. Great Northerns' Empire Builder is joined by their version of the Empire Zephyr which terminates at Denver too. MoPac's Colorado Eagle goes to Denver... but... the MoPac Eagle Zephyr goes thru Pueblo all the way to Grand Junction. The Southern Pacific' Daylights... yep... the Daylight Zephyr thru Ogden to terminate in Grand Junction. Grand Junction... in my fictitious world... is a large metropolis like Denver. Oddly... the Santa Fe and the Union Pacific are partners and have track rights thru Denver apart from the 'Joint Line'... and has track rights into Ogden as well. So the Super Chief thru Ogden and other trains are frequent visitors at both ends of the D&RGW terminals. Passenger service is so well served by the cooperating railroads... that it remained profitable and active EVEN with steam locomotives all the way until 1970. Now... as for the electrification of the lines from Pennsylvania... that's an ongoing prospect to get the GG1 and the Broadway Limited Zephyr into the Rockies. Perhaps some sort of photovoltaic arrays on top of the GG1???
Strange but electrics have always caught my fancy but I just never wanted to fiddle with catenary. Did engage though in an attempt to produce a hybrid high horsepower. Sort of like a U-36 with pantagraphs and in an A-B-A configuration. Still have the pantagraphs.
You like steam power, and gave-up modeling B&O in HO scale for N to get more operating capability, only to find that N scale has little in the way of reliable steam power and most of what is painted as B&O isn't like anything the B&O ever ran. SO, you buy what looks cool to YOU and put it on a fictitious short line in your favorite era with a plausible story to explain how that SP-like Model Power 4-4-0 got to an eastern railroad that CONNECTS with the B&O "somewhere". [Freelance is the step-child of necessity].
When your fictions modern day line has dm&e like paint jobs and e and f units will have a pre 1961 soo line and hauls iron ore, grain, and anything. You feel like bought the boundry trail railway and has sd40-2's sd70's and anything you want interchanges with the CN , CP and exists only In a 5 foot by 5 foot space and exists in Manitoba, and Ontario hauls passengers too through a pass in the mountains (maybe the Canadian sheild)
