Just read the letter in the January News and thought it deserves a wider discussion here; even though I somehow missed the original question.
So, to stir up things I'll raise the new topic by postulating:
THE QUESTION IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG AS YOU CAN'T SCLE DOWN EVERYTHING!
Here is my rationale:
1. There are various physical parameters you can't scale, and as a result you have to compromise when working in smaller scales than 1:1.
I'll look at following selected properties to explain the point:
1. viscosity (and surface tension)
2. material strength
3. friction
3. gravity.
1. Viscosity
As we all have observed, real water doesn't look real on a model railway, even if it comes in pond sizes like at the MIWULA (Miniature Wunderland) in Hamburg. The problem is that in 00/H0 you need to scale down viscosity (and surface tension), and the only way to do that is finding an alternative liquid with a viscosity 76 times lower, which isn't available (unless you accept getting fumigated/ poisoned by a very high evaporation rate). We do fettle with the surface tension, but that's the best compromise possible.
Of course, when painting our models, viscosity (a carefully designe quality of paint) is part of the game too, and needs to be managed. Quite a lot of very nicely crafted models are let down by the failure to get to grips with viscosity during the paint job.
And then there is lubrication, where viscosity is a key parameter for achieving performance, i.e. scaling viscosity here is not an option.
2. Material Strength
Building static models, e.g. houses, trees, but even rolling stock bodies and vehicles I could scale wall thicknesses etc. accurately, but the resulting models would be highly fragile. That's because the strength of materials can't be scaled, and if I make them thin enough, they will break at the lightest touch. A sheet of glass 0,1mm thick you can bend through 180 degrees at 5cm radius, any tighter and it snaps like a cookie, it's still brittle. Of course, we use alternative materials to manage the issue, but in doing so we deviate from the original, i.e. are already on the road to less prototypical. And there are still more compromises: even if I do handrails in spring steel, I need to make them overscale to be sturdy enough, but I also need to compromise on radii as I can't do the tight ones to scale in spring steel.
3. Friction
With the lubrication issue already identified at 1. we need disproportionately higher power from our engines to get moving. But not only that, our rolling resistance is the same as in 1:1, and we do not have the same engineering refinement between rails and wheel as the prototype, not the least because a prototypical radius is not viable in the space available to most of us. So we need A LOT more power to get moving. Compromise is required, be that in the form of traction tyres or extra weight or reduced train length.
4. Gravity
To my knowledge the only way to scale gravity is by moving to another planet, so be my guest if you want to give it a try. Yes, friction is an effect of gravity, i.e. those 2 are connected, but there is impact in another way. Try to build a hump yard, and you'll find there is no way of doing that exactly to scale. It's not just friction that throws a spanner in the works, gravity as the power to hump rolling stock plays havoc too.
From the letter I conjure that the question was about following a specific prototype like the Ffestiniog, or freelancing the theme of your pike. As set out above, while you may work perfectly accurate to scale with regards to visual appearance, once you come to the topic of usability (sturdiness) and motion (running trains, vehicles, and pedestrians) you HAVE to deviate from scale accuracy, i.e. compromise.
So the question shouldn't be: prototypical or not, it should be WHERE DO YOU COMPROMISE?
Over to you folks, this is for discussion! Don't let me down. :laugh: :laugh: :police:
Cheers
Waldschrat
I think you've confused what we mean by "prototypical" and "freelance".
All modellers accept that you can't scale things down but that is not what we mean when we refer to freelance and prototype modelling.The four items you list are "compromises" that we railway modellers make when making/running our models and as such are not strictly part of a discussion on whether a model is "prototypical" or "freelance". After all the biggest obvious compromise we make is that we use "steam" and "diesel" engines powered by electricity and even our electric locos are not powered the same way as their full sized prototypes! Everything else pales into insignificance by comparison.
As far as what "Prototypical" and "Freelance" modelling means if you ask 99.9% of railway modellers the question they will say is related to what they actually model rather than any of the things you list. "Prototypical" relates to the models themselves, do they follow prototype practice, i.e. use of locos and stock based in the area of the country your model is based, are buildings based on the railway company that was based in that area, are the non-railway buildings typical of those from that area, does the layout work in the way that would be expected of that railway company. "Freelance" is, in it's widest sense, somewhere made up and running stock that the buyer likes but would be unlikely to be seen together in a real place, same for non-railway buildings...
Of course unless you model a particular section of real railway on a set time and only run stock that would have been around then it is arguable that any other layout is, to a greater or lesser extent, "freelance".
For instance, off the top of my head, a model such as "Dent Head", an 00 scale layout set on the Settle and Carlisle and based at a particular time could be said to be "prototypical" whilst something like a display of Triang or Hornby Dublo models at an exhibition would be freelance. Of course as I said there is a lot of grey area in between and i would say there are very few layouts that do not include some "freelance" in them!
Regarding the "compromises" you have listed my simple answer would be that I will try to use whatever comes to hand that (1) gives a good impression of whatever the model is based on and (2) I don't care how close to the original it is as long as it looks right and works. But that's the way Railway Modellers have always worked!
I agree totally with hobby. Can I throw another term into this discussion? I consider my own layout to have been built "prototypically freelance". It is an imaginary, might have been, planned but never built extension to a real prototype railway. That I have researched and built using published prototype information, so that my model is probably a fair representation of what would have been built if the company had gone on to build it. Freelance in a prototypical manner.☺
Quite a few narrow gauge layouts are based on that idea, County Gate and Cliffhanger are two well known examples. At the end of the day most layouts are Freelance in general (i.e. not based on a particular location/time) but the track layouts, stock, buildings and operation are based on Prototype Practice... It's only when you start analysing it that the grey areas appear! Although my new layout is based in an imaginary country, stock and working practices are based around an existing country as are the buildings (on and off the railway!), similar to Craigshire but in Central Europe!
My interpretation is that there is a continuum of possibilities ranging from the nearest achievable representation of an actual railway on an actual date through to complete fantasy.
It is not a one-dimensional progression either. Even the "what if" railways like Paul's have many branches, from planned but un-built extensions or even whole railways to "what if the line did not close in 18/19xx" to buildings transported to new settings or vignettes of real locations. Then there are imagined landscapes based on actual locations to fictitious peninsulas, islands and even whole countries, alternative political, social and commercial history through to complete alternative universes.
Some people delight in researching or creating a real or imaginary history while for others it grows organically. I imagine there are quite a lot of "magpie" layouts using collections of elements that appeal to the maker and they range from extensive use of RTR products through kit-bashing to completely scratch-built.
Edit: I see Blair and I have said pretty much the same thing as the same time!
I agree with the comments. The 'grey' areas are not only points along one scale between a 'reality' (which is a problematic term) and a 'fantasy' as there are all sorts of dimensions and alternate scales, probably roughly equivalent to the different ways we love our hobby: 'reality' of operation, scenery, geographical scaling, rail height, and so on and so on. My layout is faithful to one reality in that it is not a continuous run, and betrays another by being placed in a fictitious country....
Although I think Leprechaun's is addressing the 'wrong question' (which I mean in a very non-critical way), it is very interesting. Is it really true that our locomotives need and have disproportionately higher power from our engines to get moving? What are the numbers?
There is also compromise in the physics or physicality of the models as Leprechaun says.
Materials and physics do not scale and this shows up in several ways and leads to different compromises in models.
Scaling material sizes, particularly thickness renders models too delicate to handle or bearing materials be so thin as to wear out quickly.
Similarly, scaling down motors and gearing is generally not an option and putting "1:1" scale but miniature motors and gears in scale models usually means they take up more space and are less efficient than an equivalent full-sized system for the reasons he gives. A compromise for affordable and reliable models may mean filling a locomotive cab with a motor or having gears clearly visible between the frames. It can also result in models moving much faster than we would like.
All valid arguments, but I would like to think that the differentiation between prototypical and freelance, as set out by hobby, does not stand up to scrutinee. I think prototypical can acceptably be defined as '(exactly) like the prototype', and it may be applied to everything that's part of a model empire. Freelance on the other hand, is not well defined, and may be applied to anything not prototypical, for whatever reason.
Anyway, prototypical and freelance were used as antonyms in the question, not by me.
I have read about a modeller in Germany who takes pictures of every sleeper of the prototype so he can accurately model the grain and decay of each sleeper, as well as any spacing variations!
Why he doesn't take pictures of each ballast stone to make sure he accurately models those as well, is beyond me. :laugh:
But it shows the point I've been trying to make: for one reason or another every model has to deviate from the original, i.e. is not prototypical. Thus the question of prototypical or not doesn't really arise, whereas the question of how prototypical is the ever-raging battle between Proto, Finescale, and the rest.
By the way, I have not seen one scale-length station at the dozens of exhibitions I've been to, even by Finescalers. The one and only one I've seen built accurately to scale length was at a FREMO gathering; - and it was very long (something like 10m), even though the original is a little tiddler.
Thanks for the contributions to the topic
Waldschrat
I've always felt that the word 'prototypical' was a contraction of the words 'prototype' and 'typical', as in 'a prototypical model represents someting which is typical of the prototype'.
'Typical' does not have the same meaning as 'identical'.
Ultimately it's all semantics, but at the end of the day does it really matter? We make models for our own enjoyment, whether they are faithful recreations of real life, totally made up fictions or somewhere in between, and hopefully we can appreciate the modelling efforts of others no matter where on the spectrum they are compared to our own positioning on the matter, unlike the attitudes that seem to be prevalent in some model railway circles.
prototypicaladjective uk /ˌprəʊ.tə.ˈtɪp.ɪ.kəl/ us /ˌproʊ.t̬əˈtɪp.ɪ.kəl/
A prototypical example of something is a first example from which all later forms can be developed.
So really the term should be "typical of", not prototypical. :)
Quote from: Leprechaun on January 15, 2020, 17:14
By the way, I have not seen one scale-length station at the dozens of exhibitions I've been to, even by Finescalers. The one and only one I've seen built accurately to scale length was at a FREMO gathering; - and it was very long (something like 10m), even though the original is a little tiddler.
Thanks for the contributions to the topic
Waldschrat
I've been regularly attending NG exhibitions and members days (mainly 009) for some 25 years now and have seen and photographed thousands of images of literally hundreds of layouts. There are a number of small scale layouts (by which I mean under 7mm scale) that have scale length stations.
A very recent example is Andy Cundick's Abergynolwyn which is a scale model of the station of that name on the Talyllyn as it was in 1920 and was exhibited at the SWOONS members open day at Ilton only last week. There have been and are many examples in several scales of Towyn station also on the Talyllyn that are built to scale.
A larger one that comes to mind is the Waller family's Ddualt which is an accurate scale model of Ddualt station on the Festiniog including the spiral. Another layout from the same railway that has been modelled and shown at exhibitions (actually 2 layouts by different modellers) over the past 20 years or so are the layouts that are scale models of Tan-y-Bwlch. And of course, talking of the Festiniog, there is Nick Welch's home layout of the whole of the Festiniog, including scale length models of all the stations on the railway as they were in 1926! This is comprehensively described in his well known book "Festiniog Fantasy".
On to the County Donegal: Andy Cundick has made scale length station models of Donegal, Letterkenny and Castlefin ( I have excluded his Strabane as that "only" included the narrow gauge part of the station) and Brian McCann from Dublin has done Castlefin in 3mm scale, whilst the late George Hanan's 5mm scale (16.5mm gauge) model of Donegal is preserved at the Donegal Heritage Centre at the full size (prototype........!) station of the same name. Then there are several Irish NG stations included in the layouts created by Dr Alan Gee in 00n3 which if you haven't seen them, have all been described over the past 12 years or so in Railway Modeller.
I nearly forgot: a very relevant current exhibition layout that features a scale length station is Richard Holder's superb 009 Launceston. Check it out!
I could go on and on and on but I think the point is made, there are many scale length stations in model form. As you say you have visited dozens of exhibitions and have only ever seen one scale length station model, perhaps you aren't going to the right exhibitions! And I am only talking about narrow gauge examples here - there are loads of accurate P4/Scale4 finescale models on the exhibition circuit and of course there is that fantastic Model Railway Club's 2mm finescale layout Copenhagen Fields depicting the approaches to Kings Cross station in LNER days that includes a significant chunk of North London, that has been regularly exhibited all over the country for over 20 years and I had the pleasure of seeing for my first time as recently as last October at the Fareham MRX.
Photos of all of the NG layouts I have mentioned (and hundreds of others) except Brian McCann's which regrettably eluded me, can all be seen on my blogsite at http://micksrovingreporter.blogspot.com/
Mick
Quote from: Leprechaun on January 15, 2020, 17:14All valid arguments, but I would like to think that the differentiation between prototypical and freelance, as set out by hobby, does not stand up to scrutiny.
You miss my point. I am not talking about literal use of the words (which you seem to be doing) but the
interpretation of the two words by most railway modellers. I am not asking whether it stands up to anything, just pointing out how the words are used within the hobby. You are taking the use of the words far too literally, as I said 99.9% of modellers don't use them the way you are.
The two words are used in a much broader sense within the hobby than their literal meaning. This is often the case in the English language and something I've noticed that people for whom English is not their first language find it difficult to understand that we do this, nothing wrong with that, I probably do the same thing.
I fully accept that if you took their their literal meaning you would end up which what you are trying to say. But that is not what we do. "Prototypical" and "Freelance" have much broader meanings within the hobby than just their dictionary definition.
My understanding of the letter in question that is not what the author was trying to promote. From what I could see he was trying to promote more layouts
based on Prototypes (either literal copies of a location or based on a particular Company's practice) rather that just a random collection of models in a layout populated with buildings that bear no resemblance to anywhere in particular and not seen together in reality, something that i have some sympathy with. I do not thing he was promoting absolute adherence to the prototype in all aspects of the model, we all accept that is impossible. as you have rightly pointed out!
I don not wish to get into an argument with you, that is how I have interpreted that letter, and, it would seem, several others have read it the same way. You may or may not accept what we say, that is your choice, but as far as the use of the words are that is all I have to say. As others have said what you are discussing is an interesting subject in itself and fully worthy of it's own thread. Though I'd still regard it as a discussion of where we, as modellers, are willing to "compromise" when building our models and goes well beyond what materials we use and the physics of them, as mentioned earlier one of the biggest compromises is space (or lack of it!)...
Well said Julien & Mick. 100% agree.
Quote from: Retiarius on January 15, 2020, 18:34So really the term should be "typical of", not prototypical. :)
I'd suggest that's typical of the way we English use/abuse/develop our language, Andrew. I agree with you but you can also see why we've bastardised it, it is easier to say, and it's just that the dictionary writers haven't caught up with us yet!! ;D
And hobby too!