I see a column coming
Wow! Enter Academia into Model Railroading! Joe Fugate, I see a column coming!
Anyways, this could be a sticky subject, one that has been bantered around for years. 'Realism' is in the eye of the beholder, so is "accuracy in realism" in my opinion. Myself, I'm not a 'rivet-counter'. To me a boxcar is a boxcar, but I model the 50's so it needs to be a 50's boxcar not a modern one. They do look different and are certainly different sizes, so it wouldn't look right to me. If I didn't know any better I wouldn't care, but once I knew better through research accidental or intentional, then there'd be a problem. I recently bought an Atlas PS-2 covered hopper, period-correct but found out later it mostly hauled cement or potash....I wanted it to haul grain! Now I have to 'justify' it in my mind to use on my layout (it was going to be a track-cleaner car...so was my period-correct PS-1 boxcar but fell in love with it after I weathered it). No one in my family- the ones that are going to view my layout- will notice anything goofy about a covered PS-2 hopper in farm-country hauling grain to the Budweiser brewing facility in St. Louis on my layout. I probably won't have any NMRA or club-folk in my train-room to go "ah...that's wrong" so again, it's in the 'eye of the beholder'...me.
I love scenery. I love weathering. I love things that look photo-real. I look at what I've created/manipulated with paint and go- 'GOOD, now move on'. BUT I always have the option to add to it or change it later. My wife CONSTANTLY says to me "you'll never be done, at least in your eyes". Probably true, but I can't believe it. To me there is a goal to any project, and a goal means there is an end-point. Accomplishment or failure, but failure just means "okay, that didn't work, so try it this way". Model Railroading is not a finite thing. Guys have done a layout, torn it all down and started over...then torn it down again and started over , then torn it down....etc. Sometimes it's to change the modeled location, sometimes to change era, sometimes because it wasn't prototypical (meaning based on the actual real-world track layout) and they wanted things more 'real'.
Real is I guess as real as what you want it to be. To some, real means 'it works!!'- all electric connections work and the things actually pulls these little plastic train boxcars around. To others there has to be moving DCC-controlled birds in the sky, and a slowly-setting sun, and the cars and people all have to move, and a scale HO mile is really a scale HO mile in their train room (do the math...it is quite a long way in that train room).
Rule #1 is: My layout, My rules.
