Jimgress

I don't intend to make #modeltrain switch puzzles in Yuba City but you bet your ass I wanna make a derpy Sacramento Northern box motor that putts around my garden making cute little deliveries to itty-bitty 1:29 scale Californians. Here's your flowers and shirt buttons don't get swooped by a crow

This does give me the idea of having a post where people share their "in progress" or "reference" photos they save when they are trying to problem solve or work on layout challenges. Like how I'm trying to figure out if I need to lurch my layout 6in away from the fence in this shot.

It is! There's a few layouts in the midwest and east coast that I really want to see, and his is one of them. He posted this build a few months back and it was such an eye opener for me. I just didn't know such large structures could be doable.

Does anyone else just have a folder of other #modeltrain layouts where instead of doomscrolling you just look at them and fawn a little at their majesty? I have so many of these photos but a dozen or so just never cease to amaze me. This is an outdoor G scale garden layout btw.

I can't sing enough praise for #modeltrain hobbyists like Sarah Griessenboeck over at TrainKitchen who not only sell O scale kits but also offer files to #3dprint Her work is fantastic and because of the download option I'm able to repurpose parts to print in 1:29 G scale trainkitchen.com/downloads/

You ever run an inventory of the #modeltrains you have, want, or (maybe like me) in the process of 3D printing/building and realize that you've gotten a bit out of hand? Sacramento Northern isn't even the main railroad I'm modeling! Yet here I am, with parts to build all of this in 1:29 scale.

Is this model train lore that I'm not aware of? Who did that?

Based on a great point from @interurbanera.bsky.social about maintaining whimsy on your layout #modeltrains
I agree and my personal preference is lots of easter eggs to keep the sanity on your proto layouts. Hiding a cryptid like Mothman is a nice reminder to yourself that this is meant to be fun.

One thing I really love about #garden #trains is Gauge One layouts in the UK. I love the focus on fast-paced passenger services. 1:32 trains are so often express and hauling ass, compared to the slow crawl of American layouts. Just a personal preference. (nice vid by Bill Robertson btw)

That's the plan. They want everyone in endless debt. The end game is renting forever, indentured servitude from birth to grave.

Goodness is that a beautiful layout. Like, holy crap I love every inch of that. The color immersion, the synchronicity of weathering to scene and model. Those bridges are beautiful. The faded wooden-slabbed boxcars and the dusty umber sprays on the wheel wells of the cars. Amazing.

Agreed. I don't call my pshop smudge tool "art". AI slop reminds me so much of the 90's clip art era where everyone thought this could replace advertising but within 10 years people remembered that we as a species demand fresh ideas for attention.

I know I give #modeltrains boomers a lot of shit for their one billionth transition-era layout with more corvettes present than women but waiting for a video guy to cover it is not worth the loss of creativity. If you can learn to clean a carb, scratch build a depot, you can learn to shoot video.

I can't tell you how many times I see #modeltrains featured on YouTube where the modeler is no longer with us. Honestly any video that is 5+ years older has like a 50/50 shot of the comments saying farewell to the guy on camera. RECORD YOUR WORK, NO MATTER HOW SMALL. Post. Your. Trains.

Hot Take: In #modelrailroading I firmly believe improving video and photos for your layouts is mandatory, even at amateur levels. Layouts don't last forever but people deserve to see the work you do no matter how small, and contributing to the hobby by archiving it is essential for its survivability

I can tell how many people in the replies grew up on the pre-Facebook internet vs those who can't fathom a world where you could just log off.

When I went to college in '04 I met a girl in class who was a Something Awful forums "goon". I was bewildered that she was horrified when I mentioned in public that we used that site. I didn't get it then as online culture had only just begun to mainstream but I think she was on to something.

Unpopular Opinion: out-of-print #train books should be digitized and archived online for everyone to have access. You can't claim a #hobby is struggling w/ youth audiences when artificial scarcity makes books cost $200 EACH. And no, the library system doesn't have many of these titles. #modeltrains

Look I know this is a #modeltrailroad account but #architecture and #art are both deeply intertwined to good #train layouts. Rob Pointon has some incredible paintings of SF that convey the visceral steepness of the hills in a captivating way. I'd love to be able to someday afford work this amazing

Ah okay. Yeah I hadn't seen one of those before in O scale. Anytime I see traction anything in model railroading like most of them are scratch builds so it's wild to see one that was sold by a company at one point.

Neat! Which manufacturer made that in O?

Yea it's part of why I don't model in O, that and the whole not really meant for outside thing. It's funny tho because some of my favorite modelers are in O scale. Some of the most stunning work I've seen via Proto48

Yea it is hyper niche. 7.5k views or less. YouTube loves to show them to me though but rarely sends me new HO or N channels. On30 would be nice too but I at least know that's hyper niche too.

Yea the more I learn about collectors and their perceptions of the market the more confused I get. Their gripes almost don't fit the reality of the cost of detailed trains? Like it's vibes based? The more I try to understand them the less it makes sense to me.

Yea it's absolutely true that the prices are high, it's just I'm surprised that they're surprised? And based on what they complain about they expect models that don't exist for their prices that wouldn't even cover tooling costs. I'm not sure where they get their gut instincts come from.

It's odd because based on views that scale's ecosystem have the largest audience reach. I'm mostly confused by model train YouTube. I see way less HO than I'd expect, way more O scale, and for some reason all of them have smaller reach than RC car channels and none of them are as big as cosplay.

Don't mind me. Just posting boxcars I want to include in my 1/29 G scale rolling stock fleet that managed to find their way to the west coast for deliveries by SP or Sacramento Northern in the early 1940s. #trains #modeltrains

Like, the more I learn about the history of model railroading there was never an era that detailed trains were cheap. Ever. Accuracy was always a premium. Toys were cheap but available. They want some magic middle that is somehow detailed enough for their complaining but cheap enough.

I just don't get the ideology. They want a hobby, but they just want to run trains. They want trains but don't want to pay what it costs to build them. They want cheap but aren't willing to commit sweat equity to get it. Like how are they hobbyists? Are they just avoiding their wives?

#modeltrain hot take: I think kits need to make a comeback for bigger scales. This 1937 catalog shows $700 semi-assembled kit and $1800 for a full loco (prices adj. for 2025 via CPI inflation). People moan about detailed O-scale engines at $1500+ new, but could DIY a kit at $580.