We keep hearing about the Tea Party ; here's the ultimate relevant T party, where T stands for :
Trolleys, Trams, Traction & Transit --- The T-to-the-Fourth-Power Party
A Revolution in Trolley History, Rebirth, and Modeling
The Top Ten Reasons to be a Birther, and join us in our struggle for a Re-Birth of our hobby
1. Breathe new life into T4 modeling (The Four T's : Trolleys, Trams, Traction & Transit)
2. Blog rants suggest introducing new scales and gauges
3. Birth new models by encouraging manufacturers to venture into these new scales
4. Beloved traction journals and magazines have passed away . Replace them
5. Burgeoning light rail : springing up in Europe and in progressive American cities : Not your grandfather's streetcars
6. Build Beyond the rails --- with building fronts, figures, and trackside accessories
7. Beyond traditional publishers --- Beg Kalmbach and/or Carstens to venture into T4 with a new, fresh, American slant on traction & trams, large & small, from streetcars to light rail, from N scale to Mega-scale, from new perspectives to Forced Perspective
8. Bigger than merely reminiscences or historical nostalgia --- Look to the Future
9. Because so many good trolley people have moved to, or retired to, Florida, it's possible to bring an International Trolley Conference to Florida
10. Every modeler intdroduce one new person to the hobby each year, a New Birth of a New Trolley person .
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NOTE : Creative Commons Attribution ---- Non-Commercial --- Share-Alike .
Feel free to use this, but --- please --- provide attribution to its creator :
Harold Nils "Hal" Pelta
P O Box 208
Ellenton, Florida 34222 U.S.A. HNILS@MSN.com
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Showing posts with label advantages of traction modeling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advantages of traction modeling. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Monday, September 20, 2010
Destructive Behavior (continued)
11. If a hobby newcomer stops at your place of business, put him down sarcastically when he displays his lack of information or knowledge about the hobby or the prototype.
12. Double all those hints if the customer is a teenager; who needs them, anyway? All they're really interested in is that gaming stuff.
13. If your customer doesn't know what a Brill 67E truck is, sneer ! It took you a long time to learn that stuff, and he should wait until he's familiar with the hobby before jumping into it.
14. Pick a fight with another manufacturer. Better yet, put it in print, so that the entire Internet can read about it.
15. Make your website very large and difficult to navigate. You paid for 50 gigabytes of storage and you're going to get your money's worth !
12. Double all those hints if the customer is a teenager; who needs them, anyway? All they're really interested in is that gaming stuff.
13. If your customer doesn't know what a Brill 67E truck is, sneer ! It took you a long time to learn that stuff, and he should wait until he's familiar with the hobby before jumping into it.
14. Pick a fight with another manufacturer. Better yet, put it in print, so that the entire Internet can read about it.
15. Make your website very large and difficult to navigate. You paid for 50 gigabytes of storage and you're going to get your money's worth !
Friday, September 17, 2010
WHY A TROLLEY AND TRANSIT LAYOUT ?
Why don’t we build more trolleys and other electric transit models in very large scales, such as 2” = 1’ (1:6), and one inch = one foot (1:12) ?
Jimmy Sparkman, an active, build-from-scratch modeler of Philadelphia transit lines ---elevated rail --- has provided us with an excellent standard in his Fallon Street El, running at just below chest level on metal framework resembling girder bridges, and therefore providing an impressive front-car-window view to visitors. It has proven a hit at every East Penn Traction Club and other transit & trolley exhibition at which it has ever been displayed. Sparkman has chosen for his models a scale of ¾ inch to the foot (1:16), in this regard following the common practice of many tram modelers in the UK, where this is a popular choice.
Why ? We could give many reasons … so we will :
1. Small radius curves make gigantic scale much more feasible.
2. As the operator is not sitting on the car, but is operating it by remote control, trolleys --- with their fragile rooftop details --- are a new and welcome addition to possible rolling stock
3. As trolleys operate primarily in urban areas, the use of forced perspective and smaller scale backdrops --- say, in O Scale --- makes sense and is quick and easy to install
4. It would be unique, distinguishable from the live steam hobby
5. Trolleys cater to the trend in nostalgia
6. We maintain the realistic scale effect for which we strive: the motive power of the model reflects the motive power of the prototype.
7. Single unit trains are easy to run and require relatively little power.
8. Especially with passenger railcars, like urban transit, it is possible to stock the car with realistic --- even removable and therefore changeable --- figures reflecting the historic period we're trying to represent.
9. It epitomizes my feelings about sitting on top of mega-gauge models, as live-steamers do. It throws the whole scene completely out of scale, like a grown man on a child's tricycle.
It’s just one guy’s opinion, but we think that it might revitalize the hobby. Instead of just running a car around and around a repetitive course --- as attractive as the models are --- we begin to reproduce a segment of real life. We believe that the additional realities that we can then model in miniature will bring in hobbyists from many other skills and interests.
Until you’ve seen the Thorne Rooms, in the Art Institute of Chicago --- an entire world modeled in breathtaking miniature --- you might not fully appreciate what we mean.
Why don’t we build more trolleys and other electric transit models in very large scales, such as 2” = 1’ (1:6), and one inch = one foot (1:12) ?
Jimmy Sparkman, an active, build-from-scratch modeler of Philadelphia transit lines ---elevated rail --- has provided us with an excellent standard in his Fallon Street El, running at just below chest level on metal framework resembling girder bridges, and therefore providing an impressive front-car-window view to visitors. It has proven a hit at every East Penn Traction Club and other transit & trolley exhibition at which it has ever been displayed. Sparkman has chosen for his models a scale of ¾ inch to the foot (1:16), in this regard following the common practice of many tram modelers in the UK, where this is a popular choice.
Why ? We could give many reasons … so we will :
1. Small radius curves make gigantic scale much more feasible.
2. As the operator is not sitting on the car, but is operating it by remote control, trolleys --- with their fragile rooftop details --- are a new and welcome addition to possible rolling stock
3. As trolleys operate primarily in urban areas, the use of forced perspective and smaller scale backdrops --- say, in O Scale --- makes sense and is quick and easy to install
4. It would be unique, distinguishable from the live steam hobby
5. Trolleys cater to the trend in nostalgia
6. We maintain the realistic scale effect for which we strive: the motive power of the model reflects the motive power of the prototype.
7. Single unit trains are easy to run and require relatively little power.
8. Especially with passenger railcars, like urban transit, it is possible to stock the car with realistic --- even removable and therefore changeable --- figures reflecting the historic period we're trying to represent.
9. It epitomizes my feelings about sitting on top of mega-gauge models, as live-steamers do. It throws the whole scene completely out of scale, like a grown man on a child's tricycle.
It’s just one guy’s opinion, but we think that it might revitalize the hobby. Instead of just running a car around and around a repetitive course --- as attractive as the models are --- we begin to reproduce a segment of real life. We believe that the additional realities that we can then model in miniature will bring in hobbyists from many other skills and interests.
Until you’ve seen the Thorne Rooms, in the Art Institute of Chicago --- an entire world modeled in breathtaking miniature --- you might not fully appreciate what we mean.
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