Modeling Cliches to Avoid when Building your Layout

[Steamtrains]

I think that most of the opinions voiced here are legitimate, but we should not loose sight of the ends 99% of RR modelers are trying to accomplish....Namely, to entertain ourselves....I would venture that a great majority have no notions of geology (myself included), or the different features that differentiate a meandering stream from a raging river, and what the size of the "stones" would tell us about it. Nor are we manually gifted to be able to reproduce all those features faithfully....In fact, all of us delve into an imaginary world we create, some with greater "fidelity" to the "real" world, and most just take an honest stab at it. And all of us are guilty to a greater or lesser degree of indulging in these so-called "cliches"....Why...??? Because we can....and its our prerogative to do so....

I saw a video the other day of "toy trains"...American Flyer, to be exact. One of the layouts featured is just track on a table top. And the owner said what at the time seemed heresy...He said his layout was more "real" than those of "true" modelers; that his toy trains and their setting were truly real. And, after thinking about it, I came to agree with him. He was not pretending to have anything more than toy trains on a table top, as we pretend to have, and can't really achieve, no matter how gifted we may be, or how elaborate our settings. We do no more than pretend....and that's fine with me...

I'm gonna go and play with my trains now....