Ben Hom:

Jim Cummings's point is well taken regarding the Branchline car as a
starting point; however, some of us are in the same boat as Greg -

we

bought large numbers on C&BT and Front Range cars in the late 1980s
and early 1990s when they were the best cars available, and now

we're

stuck with them. Might as well make chili out of chuck steak

instead

of complaining.

Why? What is it that keeps us from throwing bad/obsolete models away??
I suffer from this same affliction and have large stashes of old
models, detail parts, decals and half-finished projects that have long
since been eclipsed by better offerings. Yet I can't bring myself to
toss them, even though their aggregate cost was small compared to the
value of the extra time it would take me to build them into models
comparable to Branchline, Red Caboose or InterMountain. It's one thing
to cherish an old Ambroid kit for its collectibility, even to build it
just for the experience. But it's quite another to hang on to all
those old plastic freight car kits, body shells and detritus of past
kitbashing projects. The C&BT kits were the only game in town for a
while, but they were not good kits. The FRP kits were better but, as
the late Terry Metcalfe once told me, "Fred [Becker, owner of FRP]
always does 90% of a good job." My wife is no help. Last time I tried
to dumpster a cubic foot or two of Life-Like (toy), Bachmann, Tyco and
T-M shells and hulks she allowed as how the grandsons might like to
have them. What for? The 4-year old is into Thomas the Tank Engine,
and the 8-year old prefers scale rolling stock that actually runs.
When and if he's ready to enter the craft side of the hobby, I'd
prefer he start with something other than my old junk. Or your old
junk.

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

Tom Madden

And what do I do with all the old AHM/Rivarossi 12-1 I lovingly
detailed, painted and put interiors in? Or my Red Ball PRR R50b's, Or
my scratch built PRR B60s. And soon I will need the same answer for all
my AHM/Rivarossi 10-6s. Siiigh!

To keep on subject for this list, I am sure I have lots of old TM, MDC,
and Athearn freight cars with hundred of hours in them to make them
acceptable. But they look like a compromise along side of IM, RC, and
Branchline cars.

regards,

Andy Miller

Tom Madden confessed:

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

We all do. I shudder to think how many old kits are in storage
at the moment, waiting for when I have time and space to try
and resurrect them. Yes, it would be better to toss the whole
lot into a dumpster, but there's something about throwing out
stuff that you spent your hard-earned cash on (no matter how
outdated it is now) that just goes against my (packrat) nature.

Shawn Beckert

Andy Miller:

And what do I do with all the old AHM/Rivarossi 12-1 I lovingly
detailed, painted and put interiors in? Or my Red Ball PRR R50b's,

Or

my scratch built PRR B60s. And soon I will need the same answer for

all

my AHM/Rivarossi 10-6s. Siiigh!

To keep on subject for this list, I am sure I have lots of old TM,

MDC,

and Athearn freight cars with hundred of hours in them to make them
acceptable. But they look like a compromise along side of IM, RC, and
Branchline cars.

Ah, grasshopper, I was referring to unbuilt or partially-built models,
not completed ones. Such models are burdened with the future
investment of time, which you may not choose to make if you can have a
much better model in less time. This becomes more of an issue once
your remaining available time can no longer be measured in decades.

Your completed models will serve as an example to future generations
of modelers who can look at them and ask, rhetorically, "You mean
_that_ was state of the art in 1995??" (Don't laugh - check out Paul
Larson's "supermodel" Swift reefer in a mid-50's issue of MR.)

Tom Madden

It just takes all kinds Tom, I myself am a scratch-building, kit-bashing fool. I love the personal skill and effort that it takes me to build something out of "nothing" or some raw starting point.

I also have many R-T-R Kadee's, built several Tichy kits, resin kits, ad infinitum. Modern, current models ARE pretty great, and I intend to buy many of them as finance & time permit.

But, when I was a kid growing up in the '50's, my parents were of that time where "nothing-was-wasted". My mother saved buttons, scraps of material, patched my jeans, and (you know,.....the story of those times?). She used to say, "You eat everything on your plate. Think of all those starving children in China!"

My model-railroading practices followed those same principles. Model Railroader used to have a column called, "Kinks", back then, where they'd pay you a dollar for ideas on how to use an old ball-point-pen, brass cartridge for tubing and all that kind of stuff. I have stashes of all kinds of screws and parts like that. I can't help it. That tendency will be with me until I go to that great RIP-track in the sky. To me, it comes from just a strong sense of conservatism.

Tom Mix just posted a picture of a really fine, labor-intensive, scratch-built car in the photo-section. Boy, am I further inspired!!

Paul Hillman

Amen!

Tom Olsen
Newark, Delaware, 19711-7479

Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Tom Madden wrote:
"Why? What is it that keeps us from throwing bad/obsolete models away??"

I build simplified and legacy models mainly for one all too familiar
reason: the local ham-handed moron(s) at clubs who don't know or care
how to handle model rolling stock. You know, that individual that
destroys brake detail/sill steps/grab irons/trucks/couplers, even if
you admonish them not to do so. If I can build a decent looking model
that can withstand some careless handling that won't look too crappy
next to a Kadee PS-1, that means less time spent on fixing broken club
rolling stock and more time spent on projects that I want to do.

There's also the fact that some of these models do represent prototypes
that may be a long time coming in resin, or never will come again in
plastic - the HObbyline quad (LV), Lindberg/Mantua high side gon
(Erie), etc. They're crude starting points, but starting points
nonetheless.

Finally (and Doc will back me on this), there's the satisfaction of
taking a vintage or obsolete kit and turning it into a nice model.
(Stan Rydarowicz is a master at doing this!) My Athearn metal boxcars
may have been superceded by today's models, but they've fooled more
than one modeler at the display tables.

Still, I'm not turning down one bit of the progress that we've made in
the last 20-25 years!


Ben Hom

Tom Madden writes (in an Andy rooney manner):

"Why? What is it that keeps us from throwing bad/obsolete models away??
I suffer from this same affliction and have large stashes of old
models, detail parts, decals and half-finished projects that have long
since been eclipsed by better offerings. Yet I can't bring myself to
toss them, even though their aggregate cost was small compared to the
value of the extra time it would take me to build them into models
comparable to Branchline, Red Caboose or InterMountain. It's one thing
to cherish an old Ambroid kit for its collectibility, even to build it
just for the experience. But it's quite another to hang on to all
those old plastic freight car kits, body shells and detritus of past
kitbashing projects. The C&BT kits were the only game in town for a
while, but they were not good kits. The FRP kits were better but, as
the late Terry Metcalfe once told me, "Fred [Becker, owner of FRP]
always does 90% of a good job." My wife is no help. Last time I tried
to dumpster a cubic foot or two of Life-Like (toy), Bachmann, Tyco and
T-M shells and hulks she allowed as how the grandsons might like to
have them. What for? The 4-year old is into Thomas the Tank Engine,
and the 8-year old prefers scale rolling stock that actually runs.
When and if he's ready to enter the craft side of the hobby, I'd
prefer he start with something other than my old junk. Or your old
junk.

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

Tom Madden"
Confession time...
What make maters worst is that I actually have at least four or six
of a FRP set of NYC cars that I am considering using for this bash...
These were the last cars produced in the dark days of FRP before they
disappeared... Go figure! I told Tim O'Conner in an offline note that
I think I paid about the equivalant of about 4 or 5 bucks each(at the Old
Longs Drugs when I lived in Perris, CA). I just can't justify disposing
of them... Now I ask why? I think it is because I own them. Not that I
have a particular attachment to them but, I must.

My name is Greg (only my mother called me Tom and only when she was mad),
and I have a junk retention problem...
Greg Martin

--- In STMFC@..., "pullmanboss" <tgmadden@w...>
wrote:<snip out a bunch of stuff>What is it that keeps us from
throwing bad/obsolete models away??

I suffer from this same affliction and have large stashes of old
models, detail parts, decals and half-finished projects that have long
since been eclipsed by better offerings.<snip out the rest of the

message>.

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

Tom Madden

Maybe we need a new Yahoo! group, sort of a twelve step program for
obsolete "stuff" retainers. I have my own excuse (though it's a
reason as far as I'm concerned) but I know I probably have ten times
as much "junk" as I could ever justify, even with my "reason" (I've
been an armchair modeler for so long, and built so few kits in the
last ten years, that I'm going to build a few of the throw-aways and
practice kit bashing, roof removal, etc., on stuff that doesn't
matter. I've discovered that being an armchair modeler can result in
seeing pictures of great modeling that frighten me away from even
starting anything, because it'll take me years to even hope to get as
good as the photos in the magazines and on the Steam Freight Cars
website. Oh, well...).

Walter M. Clark
Time stopped in November 1941
Riverside, California

One time I rounded up all my unstarted kits, the half-built kits, the AHM RTR type stuff, and the shake-the-box kits I had already shaken. I did an inventory and then I made a rule that I had to "use" two of them (finish them to "standards, sell or donate, or reduce them to useful parts)-- before I could BUY one more.
After I made some progress I changed it from a 2:1 ratio to 3:2. But fear of "missing out on something" has led me to make all sorts of "little exceptions" (especially in this era of Limited Runs.) So I still have about 75 to "use," but those 75 are fresher-- mostly purchases from the 1990s.

Scott Pitzer

In a message dated 8/9/2005 7:37:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
rhendrickson@... writes:
On
the other hand, you could probably get some significant $$ for this
junk on e-bay, since paying $$ for junk seems to be what e-bay is
mostly about.

Richard Hendrickson
RICHARD IS VERY, VERY CORRECT. eBAY IS A LOT LIKE FISHING, YOU HAVE TO KEEP
TRYING AND SOONER OR LATER ALL H%*& BRAKES LOOSE WITH A COUPLE OF GUYS WANTING
YOUR JUNK!! ALMOST NO JUNK LEFT IN MY CLOSET AND SOME EXTRA FUNDS FOR SUNSHINE
KITS-------------WHICH SOMEDAY WILL BE JUNK!! WHAT CAN I SAY?
Paul Lyons
Laguna Niguel, CA

A twelve-step group! Wow! Great idea! And those of us who are actually able
to get to the third or fourth step - that one where you finally get rid of
those odd-ball kits and hanger's on that don't really fit our era, but don't
want to depart with, well, then we can offer them to others in the
twelve-step group. That way, you always have new projects, but they are
still all unfinished. You remain in your comfort zone . . . if things get
really bad, you call a fellow OMA (Obsolete Modelers Anonymous) member and
you jointly build a model to completion, encouraging each other along the
way.

John Allen was noted in several magazine articles for being a very
meticulous modeler. He apparently had no junk box. Every piece or snippet of
detail was already earmarked for specific projects, and everything else went
to the trash. For those who do not know much of it, his railroad was built
into a dug out portion under the house, with concrete patted by hand over
some areas. When the layout burned down, there was discovered several runs
of wires installed under the concrete to different areas of the layout. John
had thought long and hard about signal placement and had run the wiring
under the concrete years before the benchwork and construction was even
started, let alone to the point where one would normally start thinking
"hmmm - - signals!" So, John Allen can be our "Bill W."! "I'm a friend of
John A."

Tom Jones

Andy Miller writes in part...

-----Part of the Original Message-----


And what do I do with all the old <SNIP>...

To keep on subject for this list, I am sure I have lots of old TM, MDC,
and Athearn freight cars with hundred of hours in them to make them
acceptable. But they look like a compromise along side of IM, RC, and
Branchline cars.

regards,

Andy Miller"
All,
For me the TM, MDC, and the lot are relegated to the parts boxes for
blosters, doors and underframes various parts and the weights . The bolster
end up on the old Revell/ConCor 50-ton flats rebuilds I have to finsh (what's up with
that?) or EWC 65-foot Mill gondolas and so forth... What a collection of Junk!
It's not like I don't have collection of new stuff... GO Figure!
Greg Martin

Ben write in part...

-----Part of the Original Message-----


"I build simplified and legacy models mainly for one all too familiar
reason: the local ham-handed moron(s) at clubs who don't know or care
how to handle model rolling stock. You know, that individual that
destroys brake detail/sill steps/grab irons/trucks/couplers, even if
you admonish them not to do so. If I can build a decent looking model
that can withstand some careless handling that won't look too crappy
next to a Kadee PS-1, that means less time spent on fixing broken club
rolling stock and more time spent on projects that I want to do."

There's also the fact that some of these models do represent prototypes
that may be a long time coming in resin, or never will come again in
plastic - the HObbyline quad (LV), Lindberg/Mantua high side gon
(Erie), etc. They're crude starting points, but starting points
nonetheless.<SNIP>
I did several co-authored articles in the early 90's with good friend
Jim Fuhrman with a by-line of "Jewels from the Junk Box" in RMC. Most of Jim's
purging started in my junk boxes and some adequate models for the club we
belonged to at the time. He did a couple of reefers one being the MDC 36-foot
"scratchbash" that today would stand up to some better models and it did represent
a genuine prototype. Sometimes I wished he lived closer so he could perform even
more purging... 3^)
Greg Martin

--- In STMFC@..., "Beckert, Shawn" <shawn.beckert@d...>
wrote:

Tom Madden confessed:

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

We all do. I shudder to think how many old kits are in storage
at the moment, waiting for when I have time and space to try
and resurrect them. Yes, it would be better to toss the whole
lot into a dumpster, but there's something about throwing out
stuff that you spent your hard-earned cash on (no matter how
outdated it is now) that just goes against my (packrat) nature.

Shawn Beckert

I guess we lack the process of writing stuff off the books. How about
giving a write-off period of say, ten years. After this period one re-
evaluate the cars with respect to detail, prototypical
representation, match to the fleet and "personal value" (what ever
that is!).

I have lots of kits sitting in various states of completeness. I look
mostly at them for the fun I have in building not possessing. So it
is easier to give/sell them off. But I am not a layout guy (at the
foreseeable future) so I restrict my purchases to one or two cars. By
the time I will have a layout the will will be obsolete anyway. So
they are like a bank account well filled: nice to have but not really
used.

Manfred

On Aug 9, 2005, at 11:41 AM, pullmanboss wrote:

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

Tom Madden

There's a twelve step program for this, Tom. Actually, it may be more than twelve steps; depends on how far away the nearest dumpster is. On the other hand, you could probably get some significant $$ for this junk on e-bay, since paying $$ for junk seems to be what e-bay is mostly about.

Richard Hendrickson

On Aug 9, 2005, at 5:01 PM, tgregmrtn@... wrote:

I did several co-authored articles in the early 90's with good friend
Jim Fuhrman with a by-line of "Jewels from the Junk Box" in RMC. Most of Jim's
purging started in my junk boxes and some adequate models for the club we
belonged to at the time. He did a couple of reefers one being the MDC 36-foot
"scratchbash" that today would stand up to some better models and it did represent
a genuine prototype. Sometimes I wished he lived closer so he could perform even
more purging... 3^)

Gee, Greg, I'm not so far away from you. Maybe we could pool our junk and.....

On second thought, let's not go there.

Richard Hendrickson

On Aug 9, 2005, at 12:02 PM, Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Tom Madden confessed:

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem.........

We all do. I shudder to think how many old kits are in storage
at the moment, waiting for when I have time and space to try
and resurrect them. Yes, it would be better to toss the whole
lot into a dumpster, but there's something about throwing out
stuff that you spent your hard-earned cash on (no matter how
outdated it is now) that just goes against my (packrat) nature.

Yeah, I remember some women who caused me that kind of grief (before I met Sandra, of course) Oops, sorry, off-topic.

Richard Hendrickson

Tom wrote:

"Why? What is it that keeps us from throwing bad/obsolete models away??
I suffer from this same affliction and have large stashes of old
models, detail parts, decals and half-finished projects that have long
since been eclipsed by better offerings. Yet I can't bring myself to
toss them, even though their aggregate cost was small compared to the
value of the extra time it would take me to build them into models
comparable to Branchline, Red Caboose or InterMountain. It's one thing
to cherish an old Ambroid kit for its collectibility, even to build it
just for the experience. But it's quite another to hang on to all
those old plastic freight car kits, body shells and detritus of past
kitbashing projects. The C&BT kits were the only game in town for a
while, but they were not good kits. The FRP kits were better but, as
the late Terry Metcalfe once told me, "Fred [Becker, owner of FRP]
always does 90% of a good job." My wife is no help. Last time I tried
to dumpster a cubic foot or two of Life-Like (toy), Bachmann, Tyco and
T-M shells and hulks she allowed as how the grandsons might like to
have them. What for? The 4-year old is into Thomas the Tank Engine,
and the 8-year old prefers scale rolling stock that actually runs.
When and if he's ready to enter the craft side of the hobby, I'd
prefer he start with something other than my old junk. Or your old
junk.

My name is Tom, and I have a junk retention problem........."

When I was doing fly fishing you'd see a lot of cases of parents outfitting their kid with a cast
off rod that was too heavy for the line they were using combined with a reel that was too heavy for
the rod and unbalanced it. Thus creating a system that an experienced adult would have had trouble
with. The result: the kid ended up frustrated and hating the sport.

Here's an idea.

A couple of years ago I came across a photo of a stack of box car sides being loaded into a gondola.
You could go through a bunch of cars building that load.


Eric Petersson

________________________________________________
Get your own "800" number
Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more
http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag

Guyz,

Without fail, you toss it out, and 3 weeks later an article appears which uses said dumpster fodder as the starting point. Rather be model retentive than the alternative.

Fred F