My thoughts.

1)Too much trackage for the available space.
2)Not enough opportunity for modelling - i.e., no scenic elements and no structures apart from an engine house and not much free space to put them. Operationally the layout is going to be limited - how can it not be in 12' x 12" - but you can get a lot of modelling into that area which will help develop the skills you'll need when a larger space becomes available.
3)No off-stage trackage to represent the rest of the world. Even a small layout like this should have some kind of staging/fiddle-yard where trains can go to and come from, otherwise you're just switching cars all the time. Depending on prototype and train length, staging can be as little at 30" using a cassette/sector plate design.
4) Looks too much like a plank of wood - consider having one end of it a little wider than the other, say 10" at one end and 14" at the other. More width means you can have tracks at an angle to each other rather than everything parallel. Makes it visually more interesting and more like the real thing.

The June issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist has some good plans for small RRs. http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh-2012-06-jun/small-track-plans. It's free to download as a PDF
Good luck

Quote from: gmhtrains on November 10, 2013, 11:11:58 PM
but how many actually operate passenger and headend trains that set out and pick up mail storage, meal service and sleeping cars en route?

As these are typical passenger operations on mainline standard gauge railroads you're much better off using HO or N gauge which represents standard gauge.

Model railroads are not serious in the way that fighting famine and disease or keeping a roof over your head are serious but there's no need to assume that for model railroading to be fun we mustn't take it seriously. Most things in life get to be more fun the more effort you put into them. There are thousands of prototypes out there in the real world for us to be inspired by so to ignore all of them strikes me as bizarre.
Colin.

"state-approved art"?

As for referencing Hendrix, music is (with a few exceptions) an art form that doesn't seek to represent something and so isn't comparable to anything that is 'modelled'. As for Picasso, he was a very great artist who chose to represent the world a certain way but what he did absolutely was not the kind of anything goes approach you appear to advocate.

And yes, many people model fantasy subjects, including inventing spaceships and modelling might-have-been planes the Luftwaffe never got around to building or creating the weird denizens of fantasy war-gaming and I admire their work. In fact, as a writer I invent fantasy a great deal and my blog is ample proof of my affection for the genre: http://bardoftweedale.wordpress.com/the-world-of-tamburlaine-bryce-macgregor/ 

But if what you model is fantasy then call it fantasy.

Of course not: artistic creativity is essential, unless you have a lot of space and a lot of time and money to create a near-perfect replica, as the record producer Pete Waterman is doing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njO6nCkN28E

But few of us are multi-millionaires and for us the artistic creativity is applied in taking something that's real and interpreting it and adjusting it into something that's modellable within one's space, time and financial constraints. Artistic creativity is not, in my view, doing whatever you feel like 'cos it's your railway, any more than doing whatever you feel like on a violin is ever going to convince anyone you're making music.

I do feel that on both sides of the pond railway/railroad modellers are increasingly looking to other models for their inspiration rather than going back to find inspiration in the prototype and that while this may offer short term benefits for manufacturers, in that they can sell more of the same thing, overall it's unhealthy for the hobby. It is an irony that as the models offered by manufacturers have become increasingly detailed and accurate modellers seem increasingly less interested in creating a 'realistic' railroad for them to run on. And realistic, in this context, doesn't mean a specific location modelled to dead scale, merely that the model is clearly identifiable as something that could have existed in a particular time and a particular place.

There's a wide difference between modelling an exact or real place and building a fantasy that never existed in any shape or form on any railway anywhere. Mostly you can sum at that difference as a 'toy train set' approach and the 'model railroad approach'. Few of us have the time or resources to build a real place at anything like real scale so we built might have been railroads of varying plausibility based, sometimes loosely, on prototype railroads and their operations.

Bottom line, covered stations on narrow gauge lines were few and far between. Covered stations that looked like Knapford were non-existent.

I think some people forget what the word 'model' in model railroads means, so here's a definition:
mod·el  (mdl) n.
1. A small object, usually built to scale, that represents in detail another, often larger object.
from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/model

Anything that doesn't fit with that description is just a toy.

Have you tried looking at the passenger operations of real-life US narrow gauge lines? Only Knapford Station doesn't look like anything I've seen in any book covering US (or British) narrow gauge lines.

Or standard-gauge, come to that.

From what I recall no one had posted a link. Someone said a new loco was being made in Taiwan. I Googled, found out what it was and said (as it's a frequently requested loco) that lots of people would be very happy. Someone then posted a picture of it.

At no point, when I last saw the posts, had anyone even mentioned the manufacturer's name, let alone posted a link to them.

So, to reiterate, how can we discuss the future of ON30 without referring to other manufacturers?

That we've lost a number of posts referencing a new rtr loco being released in ON30 is a little weird in the context of a discussion on the health and future of ON30.

If you look at the variety of steam locos in On30 and compare it with HO and N I think it's doing fine. Someone modelling a 1930s RR in ON30 could establish a reasonable roster just from Bachmann alone and that's just impossible in any of the standard gauge scales. Pre-transition era US modellers seem very badly done by compared with the situation in the UK where Bachmann and Hornby (and others) offer a lot of locos. Sure, many classes of loco are missing but it's still much better than in the US. For example, this is what Bachmann currently offer in UK outline steam era equipment: http://www.bachmann.co.uk/prod1.php?prod_selected=branchline&prod=3&orderby=1and that includes no less than five(!) new steam locos produced this year.

My point is that US narrow gauge is almost exclusively steam era whereas US modelling in standard gauge seems heavily biased towards transition era and later, with diesels far better represented than steam locos. In the UK, by comparison, the steam era still heavily dominates model railways. Maybe this is because the UK got rid of mainline steam later than in the US (mid 1960s) or the frequent use of steam on mainline tours and the number of preserved railways in the UK means that 'steam' has never really gone away, but whatever the reason I look at US model railways and am sad that so much of your railroad history is under represented, regardless of gauge modelled.     

LGB is, nominally, 1:22.5, with 45mm gauge track representing metre gauge prototypes.

Quote from: jward on September 28, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
seriously....

steam locomotives were not standardized designs for the most part. and that means outside of the usra types, any steamer produced is going to have a much more limited market than a diesel.

Well, much the same applies over here with standardized steam engine designs not appearing till the late 40s/early 50s, but Bachmann UK produces a very decent range of steam locos many of which are specific to certain routes in certain eras.

I just look at what Bachmann UK produces for the steam era and see far more diversity compared to Bachmann US. Maybe steam era modelling is just much less popular in the US than here in the UK.

Colin.   

But I hate dismals 

How about steam locos for a typical standard gauge shortline circa 1910?

Or a first class railroad circa 1950?

Or a Latin-American 30" gauge railroad?

Or Maine 2' gauge?

Or nineteenth century railroading in any gauge?

Some of what Bachmann produce is useful for modelling the above, but I bet there are many more modelling possibilities with Bachmann's models, perhaps augmented by the products of a few other manufacturers, than meets the eye.
Colin.

I don't think the issue is whether or not the information about tourist/museum railroads on the net. The question is whether there's some value in Bachmann US doing what Bachmann UK is doing and providing information and/or links to them.

I'd go further than the OP and suggest there'd be a great benefit in having a Discussion Board where we can talk about the present-day, historic, and tourist railroads where the prototypes of Bachmann's models worked. A lot of the discussion here seems to be about what Bachmann might or should produce (Colorado prototypes on the ON30 board, for example) and precious little about the prototype railroads that could be modelled with what Bachmann is producing now.
Colin.

There are individual threads dealing with prototype RRs and locos, etcetera, but I agree it would be nice to broaden the forum a little. As you say, If Bachmann's UK site has links to real railroads there can't be any reason for Bachmann's US site not to. It would be especially useful when there is a connection between a Bachmann model and the railroad that the prototype runs/ran on.

http://www.bachmann.co.uk/branchline.php offers an interesting comparison to Bachmann US

camouflage ?

Maybe, though the presence of a large 'tree' growing on the railway track might be a tad conspicuous!

Perhaps parked at the end of a siding they might pass unnoticed.
Colin