On being an oddball.
I want to apologize for something that I did. As a joke, I marked Joe's comment as spam, not knowing that the message would be deleted. However, something he said in jest made me think a bit. He said that since S scalers need their own special day, they must be a bit odd. I guess I agree. To model in such a minority scale, you must be crazy.
I appreciate the humor of the responses to my post and after all, I intended it to be taken that way.The photo Don displayed points out one of the problems with S scale. There were a huge number of present day HO modelers who began with a set of American Flyers under a Christmas tree. People like Allen McClellan started out with AF. But then, when it was time to mature and get serious about model railroading, the modeler turned to HO. Most of them didn't even realize that there was such a thing as S scale. Today the perception that S is just like that set of AF under the tree still persists. HO was probably the best choice, though. If the V&O was done in S, it probably would have never been heard of by a majority of the model railroad community.
Let's face it. S can't compete with HO for available stuff. I wrote an S specific column in Model Railroad News for eight years. It was depressing to see the march of new products in the other scales month after month while I had to scrounge around for new products like milk cans or stairways. I got tired of shilling a scale that was and was to remain small. If you doubt me, look for S scale product announcements in any of the major publications including MRH. S scalers are too few in number to warrant any major products. They must rely on whatever the manufacturers aim at the highrail community or limited runs. I'm afraid that from my own experience, that it is doomed to remain that way.
A huge part of the blame is S scalers themselves. When I was president of the National Association of S Gaugers (NASG), promoting S was a big priority. However, it was like like charging windmills. Today the NASG hardly bothers with promotion seeking instead to just satisfy the needs of the present members. I tried to get the membership interested in promotional efforts, but failed to rally the troops. They are parochially minded and pretty much stick to themselves. There is a lot of comradeship among S people and that is understandable. There are lot of S clubs and they do a lot of promotion by setting up portable layouts at conventions and train shows. However, the trains are usually AF or highrail and do little to promote pure S scale, once again drawing us to that picture of the train under the tree..
If an S scaler chooses to participate in a national organization such as the NMRA, he has to endure a lot of the “odd-ball” jokes. It comes with the territory. My skin is thick enough to take it, because I'm a model railroader who happens to do it in S scale. When you think about it, all model railroaders are odd in that they are grownups playing with toys albeit expensive toys. Actually, you do gain respect for S because the other members get to see a layout that actually has scale sized rail, wheels and couplers. It's always good to see S layouts published in the main stream press. But pretty soon the readers will realize that they're the same layouts by the same people. I would love to see other S scalers on this website. Some day, you'll get tired of me if you haven't already. Then I'll just fade away and join my fellow S scalers in their self-proclaimed obscurity.
So if you want to be a bonafide oddball, be an S scaler.
