01-31-2009, 07:39 PM
Catt Wrote:What gives any of you the right to tell somebody else how to enjoy their hobby? I mean afterall it's their hobby it is not YOURS.You have your own.
Nobody's telling anyone how to enjoy their hobby. They're simply expressing an opinion about how they do it. As noted by others, if it floats their boat, then fine. But it may not cut it for others.
What we have the right to do is point our fingers and laugh our butts off at things we find funny, find fault with anything that doesn't meet our standards of what is and isn't model railroading, and criticize any obvious character flaws presented for public approval.
We also have the right to applaud and praise work we find exceptional, worthy or just downright nice.
The initial complaint was about a 5 page photo-spread article in MR, about a custom-built layout for some guy. There was no description of how the layout was built, the equipment used on it, or how it ran. It was a "look at the pretty toys we built" article. Very close to a paid ad, IMHO. I really didn't care about the owner's life story, but if that's all they could find to talk about to pad the article, then it's pretty lame.
If MR wanted to be "truer" to model railroading, they would have presented it as a short "look at this custom-built layout" or a spread in Trackside Photos, rather than pump it up into an article about the winter layout belonging to someone who didn't have the time, energy or talent to build a model railroad.
MR has a long history of infomercial articles... my bugaboo has been any of the DCC "DIY" articles that you can only "do" by buying CVP products.