At the risk of being tared and feathered, my own humble opinion...
Thirty or forty years ago, (yeah, I'm old) I used to be in the "can't
wait" mode, waiting for the latest issue of MR to come out with
pictures of all the neat models that folks had built. Lots of
locomotives, most scratch built, kit built, or kit bashed. By today's
standards, some were kind of crude,... but still, they were fascinating
works of art. Also, all kinds of cars, cranes, etc. No rivet counters
here.
You don't see this much any more. First, there aren't many S locomotive
kits out there, and the ones that are, are expensive (when you don't
have a lot of money), and sort of off beat. No 2-8-2's, 4-6-2's, you
get the drift. Also no parts are around to scratch build a locomotive,
especially drivers. It's difficult. I speak from experience, having
scratch built a BL-2, a 2-8-2, and a 4-6-2 from scratch.
I think that not having the resources to build locomotives is hurting
the hobby. Model railroad magazines, today, are too focused on scenery,
track plans,and electronics. Heck, half the fun of making a layout, was
making your own plans. It's almost as if the magazines think we are not
capable of this stuff.
To an extent, I have gone back to building model airplanes (please, no
rocks through my front window). Imagine if building model airplanes had
gone the way of model railroading. Most of the building would be of
runways, hangers, control towers and such. There wouldn't be much on
the market we could use to build our own airplanes.
I also think that all this talk about not having enough time to build
is a bunch of hogwash. Even if you watch only an hour and a half of TV
a day, which isn't very much, think of what you could build with this
time, IF, you had the resources.
Just an opinion, please, no one take offense.
All take care,
John Bell
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