Details, details, details

Although this is a larger scale than most people model in, with almost everything being custom built, George Selios certainly showed that this degree of detail can be done in HO scale as well. This is the secret to model railroading, and honestly, I think most people miss it. It's details, details, details. No matter how many scale people you have sitting around doing stuff on your railroad, it's almost certainly not enough. No matter how many animals you have, you could have more. No matter how many little random piles of junk and litter you have, you need more. Almost every square inch of this railroad is a whimsical museum quality vignette. From black bears scaling the scaffolding of a trestle to a puppy chasing a bullfrog to a bucket full of water with a goose and her goslings floating in it, to a table with a rabbit being butchered to a tree full of pre-teenaged boys climbing up to get a glimpse of the naked ladies on the second and third floors of a cathouse, you just can't beat the detail of a railroad like this. The operational guys who nail down thousands of feet of track in complicated yards but can barely be bothered to glue down some flock to represent grass simply don't get it. Look, if that's how you want to spend your free time in your basement or wherever, knock yourself out. But don't expect anyone else to be very excited about your spergy, joyless parody of the hobby of model railroading. Especially not if you're going to self-righteously attack the very people who make the hobby interesting to those outside of it by calling their work a caricature or cartoon.

Model railroading as a hobby has completely lost its way, judging by the kinds of people who run the magazines that are the voice of the hobby, and the kinds of people who drive much of the discussion online. Without rediscovering what it once was about, I predict that it will confine itself to an increasingly shrunken, self-referential ghetto that has nothing to offer those outside of it, until the businesses that support it are no longer able to sustain themselves. At which point the whole hobby collapses. Maybe it can be reborn like a phoenix when those who refuse to give it up, forced to scratchbuild, remind people about what made the hobby a fun one to have in the first place.

Anyway, this video is a reminder of what the hobby can and should be. View it on YouTube and full screen and at least HD resolution if not 4K.

These guys are open one day a month out in Odessa Florida, a suburb of Tampa. Next time my family wants to go to Orlando to see the Pedophile amusement parks, maybe I'll be making a run to Odessa. It's only a two hour or so drive. It looks like it actually hosts four rail lines, probably because they were made by different craftsmen. The Sundance Central is the one shown here, but there's also the Muskrat Ramble that has a kind of bayou Louisiana vibe to it, the Dolly Varden Appalachia-style railroad, and the Silverton Central.