Another one for me...the old guard complaining that the hobby is dying, yet when a kid asks to play with their trains, the old guy says no.
Regarding technical drawings of locomotive trucks and other items on the Internet, there is indeed a dearth of such things. However, books and magazines remain an excellent source. The old Prototype Modeler Magazine often featured excellent drawings and photos of all sorts of details, and older Trains and even MR has had its stellar issues. I think there's a lesson here too about general railfan photography. Future generations will find millions of our engine roster shots, but few photos of roof detail, trucks, fuel tanks, lettering and stencils and end platform detail. Same with pictures of physical plant, structures and signals, which are often ignored by fans in favor of trains.
Unfortunately the locomotive builders view a lot of that information as a trade secret. Then to compound that, we are not allowed camera's on railroad property. Believe it or not, there is a rule that states no camera's allowed on railroad property. We also have a rule prohibiting the use of cell phones, because of the accident in California where a freight train ran into the rear end of a commuter train. The engineer was found to be texting, so cell phones are prohibited. Times have changed on the railroad, I personally know guys who 20 years ago brought camera's to work everyday and no one said a word. Doing so today could cost you your job. As for being a rivet counter, there is nothing wrong with wanting to create highly detailed models, there's room in this hobby for everyone, just remember there are those of us who also go by the 10 foot rule. If it looks close enough from 10' away, it's good enough for us.
Hard to find now but the old Train shed Cyclopedias were full of drawings from steam locos to diesels, and passenger and freight cars. Even some structures.
One more for me it’s the railway Locomotive CAD Drawings which people do... they can’t even include right side, Roof line. It seems that when searching for a particular Drawing and find the drawing one is looking for it only shows you either the left or right side only not the full drawing. Tom
Well what bothers me the most are the exploding accumate couplers. I no longer buy Atlas anything because of all the bad accumates I have had to replace because they just did not hold up.
I've had the same problem with Atlas accumate couplers DCE, they fall apart just looking at them. Have never had any problems with MicroTrains couplers. For years I have replaced the Atlas with MT's as soon as possible. Joe
A) KATO insists on releasing items based upon business case rather than my particular wants (e.g. NCL and E5B) B) ridiculous non-prototypical coupling distances
Two of my siblings and one of my 5 Niece's Acknowledged my Birthday nor did my nephew's acknowledge it, I am not surprised with this in my family. Tom
I will have to say my biggest craw is the short production runs, then stupid prices in the secondary market because of such. For example, I need a few Bombardier bi-levels in New Mexico Rail Runner paint and they are not available at the moment, but evilbay has 2 right now for $120 each... $120 should be for a set of 4. I’m the type that welcome kids or run my trains at shows. I keep an eye on them and guide them in what to do, but my fellow club members are the type that were mentioned above that always say no... and they also don’t like when I do it either. Funny kids are jumping up and down and excited when they leave our layout after they get a lap or so with my TGV. And last, while at a show, the guy who has to be fouling all 3 mains while working an industry or a group of industries and prevents ALL other trains from passing and does this for 10 or so minutes. Trains need to move so people will be interested... just sayin if you are “that guy”
…… and the guy who works the yard, departs and leaves all of the switches set against the mainline. The next train through the yard then shorts electrically or derails.
How many people run left handed. See this a lot on T-Trak and N-Trak. This is not British prototypes. I get over it quickly, not worth worrying about.
The Chicago & Northwester had sections of mainline that used left hand running. Also before 1921 in Britain or what is referred to as "Pre-Gouping" there were railways setup for right hand running, not all railways had left hand running. There were also many other railroads here in the US that had dual running, in other words the mainlines were signaled to support running in both directions, so you could see left hand running.
