----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Betz
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 3:21 PM
Subject: [STMFC] Re: A Purpose For Frt Car Distribution Studies.


Guys,

The amount of heat in some of these posts is making my screen glow
brighter than usual ...

I might be wrong but it seems to me that the essence of the 'conflict'
is not as much about whether or not Tim's work was 'correct', nor even
about whether or not it is 'interesting/useful'.
It seems to me that what gets people emotionally involved and displaying
either aggressive or defensive behaviors (on either side) is the idea that
Tim's analysis should be applied to the freight car fleets on our layouts.
Especially on "my" layout or when considering the content of "my" personal
collection of freight cars ("my" is meant to refer to "whoever is talking
at the time" - even when the "my" is actually a group of guys such as at a
club).
The other thing that seems to be a source of the heat is when someone
says something like "Tim's analysis is nice - but it doesn't apply to
model railroading". And then a bunch feel they have to get in there and
'defend' Tim. Personally, I don't think he needs defending and I doubt he
would have wanted it. I've read Tim's own words and he always seemed to
be talking about 'trends' and 'imbalances' in our model freight car
fleets and not about "right and wrong".

Perhaps we need to re-visit the concept of "It's my railroad and I
get to do it my way." I don't think anyone needs to defend the choices
they make (or don't even think about it as a choice) - or have made.
On either side of this topic. And I certainly don't think that anyone
should be making statements such as "the freight cars on this layout
are all wrong because they don't represent Tim's analysis". And I
don't think that many of the posts have reflected such attitudes. But
here we are with a lot of "he said/they said/I said" quotes that pick
at details in any one opinion.

Having said that - I'll restate that when I ... and many others on this
list ... go to operate on a layout and the skew is -soooo- heavily shifted
in any one direction that it is "immediately noticeable" that we tend to
feel that maybe the owner has a bit too much affection for his particular
RR. Heck, I've even known guys who are put off because there weren't any
cars from his particular favorite RR running on someone else's layout!

- Jim (Betz) in San Jose