When I got back into n gauge last year I wanted a model railway and not a train set....when does a train set become a model railway...is it about good scenery, ballasting etc... or having room enough to run realistic length trains..my layout is still just track on the baseboards....I know I should start turning it into something that looks realistic but I can't resist playing trains so progress is very slow...when did your train set's grow up and become a model railway ?
In my mind a train set goes back into the box when you've finished playing with it, loco, coaches/wagons, track, controller, the lot. If some of it stays out of the box due to the track being stuck down etc then it's a model railway.
Just my thoughts.
When you look at it as a model of real life instead of an engine dragging consists around. Your mind's eye is the key. Once it reflects real life to you, you have modeled a railroad and are no longer playing with trains. What happens next is a miracle that has often been compared to creation itself.
Onward!
I think when I reached the age of 14 I stopped telling people I had a train set and said I was into model railways.
But the two definitions above seem pretty good replies. :)
I'm another one who hit the buffers (sorry) when I got the ability to run trains and further progress slowed dramatically :-[
I think the question could be answered in many ways but I think your quote of....
Quote from: sparky on June 01, 2014, 01:10:00 PM
or having room enough to run realistic length trains
.......really hits the nail on the head for me. I hope I'm not upsetting anyone when I say in my opinion there's nothing worse than seeing large locos, regardless of type of traction, pulling minute trains. My main layout is designed such that 6-8 coach passenger trains can be run. However, I'm in the process of constructing a small (maybe exhibition) layout on which 3 car DMU's or loco + 2 coaches will be the max length, BUT the layout is designed around that premise so they won't look out of place at all.
In times gone by the 'train set' was deemed to be one that was placed on maybe the dining table for a running session then put away again afterwards, but that could also be applied nowadays to many a 'model railway', particularly with modular layouts.
The main thing is there is room in this world for both, and that youngsters are not deterred by any vilification possibly resulting from anyone looking down their nose at them.
After all, didn't most of us graduate from trainsets in our youth to what we are doing now?
Whenever you choose to call it that , it doesn't matter what it's called as long as you're having fun.
Quote from: Agrippa on June 01, 2014, 01:42:45 PM
Whenever you choose to call it that , it doesn't matter what it's called as long as you're having fun.
That pretty much sums it up perfectly :thumbsup:
Paul
Quote from: sparky on June 01, 2014, 01:10:00 PM
... or having room enough to run realistic length trains..
...although, as everyone says, there is always an example of something different in real life?
Poland March 1989 Steam train Ty43 123 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNV6eNyhw38#)
This is a Polish copy of the German wartime heavy freight 2-10-0 loco - pulling two coaches down a small branch line in Poland in 1989! This is one of the things I like about trying to model Polish railways in the 1970's-1990's - big steam locos alongside diesels, all pulling whatever needed pulling at the time!
Quote from: Sprintex on June 01, 2014, 01:56:26 PM
Quote from: Agrippa on June 01, 2014, 01:42:45 PM
Whenever you choose to call it that , it doesn't matter what it's called as long as you're having fun.
That pretty much sums it up perfectly :thumbsup:
While I do agree with this, I also think that a layout can be both a train set and a model railway. When I'm building a kit, weathering a piece of RTR rolling stock, or making scenery, it's a model railway. It's probably still a model railway when I try to do realistic shunting or marshalling of wagons, hoppers and brake vans in the sidings. Likewise buying rolling stock to assemble a realistic passenger train for a certain line or era is the stuff of model railroading.
But when I buy a locomotive I don't need but just like, and then leave it to run around the tracks for twenty minutes just for the fun of it, then that's a train set.
Quote from: newportnobby on June 01, 2014, 01:26:14 PM
I hope I'm not upsetting anyone when I say in my opinion there's nothing worse than seeing large locos, regardless of type of traction, pulling minute trains.
A very fair point, but easily worked around with research (which is surely part of the fun of model railroading). Don't have space for a 12-coach passenger train but want to use a Type-4 diesel? Then milk tanks or nuclear flask trains could be options, depending on your era. I like milk trains a lot precisely because of this; the other day I came across a picture of a 'Duchess' class Pacific on the front of a trains consisting of maybe ten milk tanks and a three-axle 'Stove-R'-looking brake van! Since a loaded milk tanker weighs about the same as a loaded Mk 1 coach, that's actually a fair-sized train, and without refrigeration needed to be run at express speeds, hence the need for a bog engine at the front.
Lots of lines in Wales and Scotland ran Class 25s or 37s on the front of relatively short passenger trains during the 70s and 80s. There were also a fair number of four-coach interregional trains ran in the BR blue era, typically with Type-2 and Type-3 locomotives on the front, typically Class 31s.
Cheers, NeMo
7 ft X 3ft including a terminus station and sidings at one side don't really allow me much room for long trains but as I get stuck into the scenic etc I hope that the train set image vanishes into the surroundings. Time will tell I guess :-\
At least its a layout that's been separated from the main rail network thanks to Comrade Beeching in the past. The local population love the diversity of stock and locos so all is well----
A train set maybe but its my trainset or model railway
:NGaugersRule: :NGaugersRule: :NGaugersRule:
Your friends and family call it a train set but you call it a model railway.
I think it becomes a model railway once the track is permanently laid onto a baseboard with some sort of plan in mind.
I was told last Autumn at a show where I was exhibiting Port Perran that I should come back when I have a model railway not a train set I just smiled and let him get on with it) !
The person who said this was a fellow exhibitor (O gauge) who spent most of the time trying to get his "train set" to work. Eventually dropping his hand held controller which smashed into several pieces. Poetic Justice I thought.
Moan over !!
Anyway, I think call it what you will but I think a model railway is a fixed thing which isn't put away at the end of the day and is a representation of a railway scene (real or fictional).
This afternoon is typical.Posted my thought at about 1pm .... thought I should go and try to lay some more track on the "model railway"..... Got in the garage where the layout is housed and then spent all afternoon repairing a Class 47 that had stopped running...then ran it for an extra hour or so just to make sure...oh well...perhaps when the train set reaches 18 years old it will be grown up enough to call it a model railway !
I think we can all sympathise with that. Little jobs that we expect to take 10 minutes take half the day !
Quote from: port perran on June 01, 2014, 06:47:09 PM
I was told last Autumn at a show where I was exhibiting Port Perran that I should come back when I have a model railway not a train set I just smiled and let him get on with it) !
The person who said this was a fellow exhibitor (O gauge) who spent most of the time trying to get his "train set" to work. Eventually dropping his hand held controller which smashed into several pieces. Poetic Justice I thought.
Moan over !!
SWMBO only started going to model railway shows after we first met, so the first scale she got used to was N Gauge. When she started seeing other model scales and gauges, she said that she thought that N Gauge looked 'right' - anything smaller looked 'too small to see the detail' and anything
larger looked 'too toy-like'! :heart2: Gotta love her for that!
I enjoy looking at all the different scales and gauges at shows, and can see the differences in them can allow for a different set of skills as well as pros and cons in each - but I always come back to N Gauge! :NGaugersRule:
This is of course a very old discussion that has been going on for years...
FWIW, my few cents:
As others have already noted, the transition from 'Train Set' to 'Model Railway' seems to be made when the owner of a 'train set' decides that they want to replicate in some way 'real' full-sized trains that they have seen - either in 'real life' or in a magazine or electronic media.
This places their interest at a level slightly-above that of the 'circle of track and a clockwork mouse'. epitomised by the 'train set' as it is received, and indicates that the 'interest in trains' is developing. Whether anything ever come of this interest is of course dependent on a variety of factors, and as such it is outside the cope of the question.
As I said, FWIW, my few cents...
Quote from: silly moo on June 01, 2014, 03:14:59 PM
Your friends and family call it a train set but you call it a model railway.
I think it becomes a model railway once the track is permanently laid onto a baseboard with some sort of plan in mind.
Well said Veronica, once you start to plan a track layout then, I feel, it goes from train set to layout. I know there are many layouts that take a very long time to progress from this state but not everyone can envisage what they want to achieve in the end. Therefore running trains on some track laid out on a board gives scope for changing the plan again and again and again. This is one of the reasons I like Kato Unitrack, a few clicks, you have a siding, a few more, you have a small fiddle yard and so it grows till you are happy with your efforts then buildings and scenery can start to be added and moved around.
cheers John.
When it stops being fun and starts getting ruddy frustrating ::)
Aye. And when you're getting older Yer prefer the trainset. ;D
If SouthWest Trains refer to their EMUs as train sets then that is good enough for me :D
I have a train set (and also a tram set)
Pengi
Re: 'If SouthWest Trains refer to their EMUs as train sets then that is good enough for me :D
I have a train set (and also a tram set)'
I see, therefore it's a case of 'Train, Set, and Match....'?
Well played, sir, well played.
Personally I think that scale length trains and accurately representing reality are perhaps a bit too restrictive. A great many excellent layouts involve some selective compression, even in N gauge.
For me it is when you start trying to represent the world beyond the edge of the tracks. Once the track is permentantly fixed to the board and you have made a start on some kind of scenery then it is a model railway rather than just a train set. You may have a long way to go to reach the standards of some of the layouts on the exhibition circuit but you have taken your first step into a bigger world. :)
Quote from: NeMo on June 01, 2014, 02:45:19 PM
Don't have space for a 12-coach passenger train but want to use a Type-4 diesel? Then milk tanks or nuclear flask trains could be options, depending on your era. I like milk trains a lot precisely because of this; the other day I came across a picture of a 'Duchess' class Pacific on the front of a trains consisting of maybe ten milk tanks and a three-axle 'Stove-R'-looking brake van! Since a loaded milk tanker weighs about the same as a loaded Mk 1 coach, that's actually a fair-sized train, and without refrigeration needed to be run at express speeds, hence the need for a bog engine at the front.
I agree, I like milk trains for the same reason and you can get even more extreme examples than that. Here is a GWR Castle with just 6 tanks, a can and an old Collett BG. And this is at the London end! :goggleeyes:
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5531/10805322984_a6afec1800_b.jpg)
Just to add my 2 cents worth to the debate.
When you come back in to the main part of the house (or whatever) with your hands full of glue, paint, and sores - then you have been working on a model railway, and the misses tells you off for ruining a perfectly good shirt "playing with your trains!" as she puts it, instead of helping with the housework.
When I told my daughter I was going to buy my grandson an OO gauge DCC starter locomotive set for Christmas the comment was he is too old for a train set. He is 22 years old but with slight disability. I replied I am not talking about a train set but a model railway where he will learn skills such as wiring, painting, soldering, carpentry and more but she was still sceptical. He is building it in a spare bedroom at my home with supervision. I think she is pretty impressed with what he has achieved now. Unfortunately he got me hooked to so I am building an n gauge one. I thought N gauge may be a bit small for him to handle but he is better with it than me. I wish I had started him with N gauge now as there is so much more you can fit onto an 8x4 base.
Alwyn
I would say a train set becomes a model railway when two things happen. The set up become permanent and when you are trying to portray something other than a bare circuit of track/tracks, and give it some life (scenery etc.).
Then again, some people still call their models a train set, include a couple of club members who have constructed a scale model of Hawkhurst in SR days!
Quote from: Silver Line on June 02, 2014, 09:13:30 AM
When I told my daughter I was going to buy my grandson an OO gauge DCC starter locomotive set for Christmas the comment was he is too old for a train set. He is 22 years old but with slight disability. I replied I am not talking about a train set but a model railway where he will learn skills such as wiring, painting, soldering, carpentry and more but she was still sceptical. He is building it in a spare bedroom at my home with supervision. I think she is pretty impressed with what he has achieved now. Unfortunately he got me hooked to so I am building an n gauge one. I thought N gauge may be a bit small for him to handle but he is better with it than me. I wish I had started him with N gauge now as there is so much more you can fit onto an 8x4 base.
Alwyn
Well done Alwyn... :thumbsup:
Just goes to prove you are never too old to get involved in this wonderful hobby.....
:beers:...Ste
Thanks dock shunter I am a 72 year old grandmother ;) We have been teaching eachother
According to the OED a model is a three dimensional representation of something ,
thus a train set with a loco , 2 coaches and a circle of track is a model railway.
Though not necessarily prototypical.
Quote from: Agrippa on June 02, 2014, 11:51:10 AM
According to the OED a model is a three dimensional representation of something ,
thus a train set with a loco , 2 coaches and a circle of track is a model railway.
Though not necessarily prototypical.
Ah yes, but a model of a Farish class 47 is a model; be it on a beautifully landscaped, prototypically run work of art; sitting in a display cabinate; in its box in a drawer or running around a circuit of track with a couple of carriages. Therefore your example is a model, running as part of a train set - i.e. something which exists in its own right purely to run the model. The model train running on a model railway is when the circuite of track takes on some context and meaning.
What is it, for you, that defines where 'train set' stops and 'layout' starts? Are they different expressions for the same thing? Is it a layout as soon as the track gets attached to a baseboard?
Is there actually a definition that is universal or is it an individual, personal thing?
Did you notice that every sentence in this post ends in a question mark? (No need to respond to that last one coz now it doesn't.)
Regards, Allan.....
Surely it's when you have a permanent deployment of said set ? Probably once the track is lain ? And is this over-use of question marks contagious ? ???
A "layout" is what people call their train set when they're being pretentious or have delusions of their own importance!! :P :D
Quote from: MikeDunn on July 10, 2015, 01:00:33 PM
...And is this over-use of question marks contagious ? ???
Good question!!! I don't know!!!
Quote from: Zogbert Splod on July 10, 2015, 01:18:13 PM
Quote from: MikeDunn on July 10, 2015, 01:00:33 PM
...And is this over-use of question marks contagious ? ???
Good question!!! I don't know!!!
Oh god, it's mutated into an over-use of exclamation marks !!!
Nurse - the screens !!! :helpneededsign:
I thought you meant - Nurse the screens - as in get an IT bod to remove the rash of ??? and !!!
As I've always seen it, a train set is where the track is taken apart and goes back in the box when you're finished playing with it. A layout is a more permanent arrangement, with scenery...
It's a layout if you can legally drink an adult beverage while watching the trains go round?
Quote from: Basinga on July 10, 2015, 01:52:50 PM
As I've always seen it, a train set is where the track is taken apart and goes back in the box when you're finished playing with it. A layout is a more permanent arrangement, with scenery...
Are we getting somewhere here? '
with scenery', possibly a serious plan to add scenery would work too.
But I think that somewhere in the back of my head there is the feeling that, if a train can pass the same place more than once, going in the same direction and without having stopped, it's a train set. I know that is way too simplistic, and the board mounted train set I am just starting work on is just such an example. I think I'll wait and see if this thread arrives at any consensus.....
Surely a train set is when you have one loco running on a oval, now a layout can be anything as small as anything but you have Numerous Loco's to run on the Layout.
And as Only Me says when one goes over x amount of pounds it becomes a passion or a serious problem lol.
Now why did I get more than one Loco :doh:
Knew I'd seen this question before so merged it with the thread from last year, save some from reposting :thumbsup:
Paul
Booo !!!! :thumbsdown: :ban:
Personally, I don't like the question.
Why are we debating this at all? Does it matter? There is a long history of railway modellers being defensive about their hobby because of the tendency of certain outsiders to sneer at it (and them) and dismiss it as "playing trains". None of us likes it when others do this to us - so WHY do we insist on perpetuating this divisive debate among ourselves about which of us has a "model railway" and which only has a "train set"???
If FORCED to define a distinction, I'd say a "train set" is any set up where the trains run round in a circle for no good reason other than the entertainment of the viewer, and the viewer can see that this is so and no effort has been made at pretending otherwise; whereas a "model railway" is one in which scenic breaks and hidden fiddle yards etc. have been used to create the illusion that trains are coming from and going to "somewhere else", rather than just running round and round all day.
But ... I don't accept the validity of the distinction between "train sets" and "model railways". We are all part of the same hobby, pursuing it because it gives us pleasure. Each of us takes pleasure in differing degrees from different aspects of our hobby, and therefore each of us places emphasis on different things in our modelling. There is no objective "right" and "wrong" approach (other than trying to run N gauge stock on TT track ... that is objectively wrong!). There is just what is right for me and what is right for you. They are probably not the same thing. But that doesn't mean one or other of us is "wrong", or to be belittled or sneered at. It just means that we - and our modelling interests - are different; and there's nothing wrong with that.
.... when YOU ballast the track!!!
Quote from: PGN on July 10, 2015, 03:45:08 PM
Personally, I don't like the question.
...
Why are we debating this at all? Does it matter? ...so WHY do we insist on perpetuating this divisive debate among ourselves about which of us has a "model railway" and which only has a "train set"???
If FORCED to define a distinction, I'd say ...
But ... I don't accept the validity of the distinction between "train sets" and "model railways". We are all part of the same hobby, pursuing it because it gives us pleasure. ...
Don't like the question? But still, you have given, probably, the best and most inciteful, well stated analysis of the difference/distinction so far in the thread.
Thanks, Allan.....
Quote from: Zogbert Splod on July 10, 2015, 04:27:57 PM
Quote from: PGN on July 10, 2015, 03:45:08 PM
Personally, I don't like the question.
...
Why are we debating this at all? Does it matter? ...so WHY do we insist on perpetuating this divisive debate among ourselves about which of us has a "model railway" and which only has a "train set"???
If FORCED to define a distinction, I'd say ...
But ... I don't accept the validity of the distinction between "train sets" and "model railways". We are all part of the same hobby, pursuing it because it gives us pleasure. ...
Don't like the question? But still, you have given, probably, the best and most inciteful, well stated analysis of the difference/distinction so far in the thread.
Thanks, Allan.....
Surely rule one applies here. I didn't see anything judgemental in the question. I have a view on what's a train set or otherwise, but if the owner is happy with it, who am I to argue?
For my money, a train set is a bunch of stuff which
is capable of being taken apart and put back into its boxes. It might be pinned to a board, but if it's all standard commercial ready-built parts, with no attempt to adapt or otherwise model scenery, then it's a train set.
And I repeat, it's none the worse for it. More than I have at the moment ::)
As of the time of writing none of my stuff is fixed to anything. But I have plans, oh yes. Plans. :D
a train set becomes a Model Railway when you retire :D
For me, the definition is clear:
A "set" is a defined number of objects that make up an entity.
Chess set
Crockery/cutlery set
Aerobics set (aaggghh)
Set menu
etc.
So, when you buy a pre-selected number of scale railway items in a box, it is a train set.
When you then buy lots of additional items, selected to extend the set into something individual and personal (and doesn't that happen fast and in vast quantity), then it becomes a model railway.
Cheers,
Tom.
A tv set is just 1 object................ ;D
No, it is a collection of individual components in a box.
However, a badger's set is just a hole in the ground
Cheers,
Tom U.
You mean a badger's train sett ....................
That's it to a "t" (or 2 teas, which could make the tea set).
The big railway has trainsets and so do I.
Quote from: Pengi on July 14, 2015, 10:53:58 AM
The big railway has trainsets and so do I.
Pengi's comment made me think just how very protypical my
train set model railway is.... It costs me a small fortune and runs completely at a loss with frustration thrown in for good measure. :laugh: :laugh:
Once a train set is out of the box and has been set up it beomes a model railway,the more bits you add to just makes it a bigger model ralway. :-X
Quote from: Tom U on July 13, 2015, 01:41:06 PM
For me, the definition is clear:
A "set" is a defined number of objects that make up an entity.
Eeek ! I thort I left Set Theory and Venn diagrams behind 50y ago :(
We could have a discussion about Rule 1, is it a member of the sets of , real numbers, positive integers, or we could contemplate the sq.root-1 cos it is quite a complex issue , ? , errr, oops,
ducks&runs for cover > >
:laugh3: ;D
Well for me it is always a train set and I have no problem in HOLLERTON JUNCTION being described as such. If Tony Wright is happy to refer to his wonderful Little Bytham as a "train set" then who am I to differ? ;)
Paddy