On Sun, 11/23/14, Andy Carlson midcentury@... [STMFC] <STMFC@...> wrote:

Subject: [STMFC] Prototype fidelity
To: "Steam Era" <stmfc@...>
Date: Sunday, November 23, 2014, 4:54 PM

I find it odd that in this forum (STMFC) dedicated to promoting
greater accuracy in modeling, we find several defenders of
the practice of historical societies offering sham cars as
fund raisers. First, fund raising should be a society lower
priority of things to do, as the primary purpose of
societies should be to promote the subject railroad's
history. I don't believe the only way societies survive
is by offering duds.

Richard Hendrickson's tiff with the Burlington society was based
on the their inexcusable offering of bogus cars to the membership. Richard's strongest protest was
that the mission of a society to provide ACCURATE info to
the members was compromised when sham offerings are
released. He felt that to many members, they look to the
society for help with their own goal in acquiring useful
information, and because the assumption of "If the
society is offering this, it must be researched and produced
to a higher level of accuracy", the society let them down.
It may be argued that full disclosure of "foobies" is
enough for any historical society, allowing these offerings. I feel this
is wrong, as any society should have the obligation to
promoting prototype and accurate modeling.

BTW, if a society exists in making name train dining car
settings, then offering bogus mugs would be shameful. But in
our societies, no one is looking to their society to offer
well-researched coffee mugs.

I sure wish Richard was still with us to speak up on this
issue.

Regards,-
Andy Carlson
Ojai CA