Dave Branum wrote "There's plenty of S stuff already available as long as you
are willing to work within the framework of the products. Do you have an era
and a location in mind to model? The answer will probably tell you if it's a
good time to switch....."
This is excellent advice and by no means unique to S scale. Any of you who have
seen Tony Koester's great new book on modeling mountain railroads will recall
he devotes a long chapter to exactly this question, and every scale comes in
for its share of pros and cons. His argument is that many prototypes and eras
have a sweet spot in terms of a particular scale at a particular time in the
hobby, when you consider available equipment, balance of RTR vs kits vs scratch
(he uses the example of Andrew Dodge's exquisite Colo Midland in O),
compatibility with your layout space, etc.
One can model any road, any era in S. However, one can't expect to buy all one
needs for any road, any era. Evaluate whether you have the ability, time and
interest to scratch, to wait for a one-off to reappear on the market, to
kit-bash a piece of Flyer to a close-enough, and so on. For some era-prototype
combinations, that may be your only choice.
I model the EBT in Sn3, the Pennsy in S, the Maine two-footers (in 1908!) in
Sn2, and I dabble in Rio Grande narrow gauge in the 40s, Civil War wide gauge,
and 1870s narrow gauge in Ohio. On any given day, there is very little I can
buy. But by collecting over several years, and scratch-building strategic cars
that will likely never be offered in S, I've come up with more rolling stock
than I probably can ever use -- including bunches of items offered in the 80s
and 90s when my interests and finances were somewhat different.
The trick is to be comfortable with eBay, flea markets, the occasional for-sale
lists in this group . There is plenty of material in circulation now -- the
aging modeling population and the poor economy sadly both have seen to that.
But if that is not the kind of hobby experience that you want, than S will be
frustrating, and you may want to pick some other scale.
Lee Rainey
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