The Road Not Traveled

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “good enough.” That phrase is often thrown into the mix to talk about the concept of detailing locomotives and rolling stock just enough to look “the part.” But it clearly creeps into everything we do on our layouts.

I’ve also been reading Lance Mindheim‘s recent book Model Railroading as Art and one of the things he mentions is that you primarily have to build your layout for an audience of one: you.

So what does “good enough” mean if all you need to do is please yourself? The answer, of course, is that it’ll be different for everybody. And for some of us, it’ll involve a little bit of insanity.

What do I mean by that? Well, I knew when I started building this layout that if I modeled everything faithfully, it would take me forever. In fact, on the “About the MCTD” page I state, among other things, the following:

… I [want] the freedom to change things, move things, add or delete things, based on my needs. So I decided to make an alter-ego for Baltimore, and thus “Monument City” (a variation on Baltimore’s nickname as the “Monumental City”) was born.

In essence, I made the conscious decision that I was not building a prototypical layout and that I would not have to make every structure more or less faithful to “the real world.” I could take liberties where and when it was expedient (read: easier). And it should have been easy. I live hundreds of miles from the prototype, and a good chunk of what I’m modeling doesn’t even exist anymore. If I take some shortcuts, almost no one is going to know the difference.

And yet, so far, I’ve completely ignored that. Each of the three buildings I’ve undertaken so far resembles its prototype much more than it doesn’t.

The first is the Penn Mary Yard Office. That structure, shown in the header as well as below, is a mixture of Pikestuff parts, 3D printed elements (those cursed windows in the front left) and styrene.

Am I happy with it? Yes. Has it taken a long time? Yes!

The second is the GM Assembly Plant that I’ve referred to here and here. I’ll be talking more about it in an upcoming post, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it right now. But, to make a long story short, a kit wasn’t “good enough” for me. It’s mostly scratchbuilt.

The third is part of the former Crown Cork and Seal complex in Baltimore. This is not an online industry for me, and actually will be used to hide Conrail staging in a little alcove in the back corner. So no need to do anything fancy, right? Just a quick stand-in that provides Baltimorian (Monument City-an?) flavor should do it, correct?

Nope. I decided to go in full bore. And just to give you an idea of the level of lunacy we’re looking at, here’s some recent shots of the prototype structure:

Here is the embryo of the model, which doesn’t even begin to take into account that whole crazy area of concrete, brick, corrugated metal, and assorted other materials:

So why have I done this to myself? Especially if no one’s going to know the difference?

The only answer I can come up with is, “I’ll know.” And thus, it wouldn’t be good enough.

Is this blog helpful? Informative?
Let me know in the comments. And don’t forget to subscribe!