Official book of rules for model railroading

Interesting Find.  

There are no rules for model railroading!

gunrunnerjohn posted:

There are no rules for model railroading!

The Only Rule for Model Railroading:

If you are not having fun, you ain’t doing it right.

We don't need no stinkin rules

The first rule of model railroading is there are no rules !  

One of the great things about this hobby is the lack of rules.  I agree with the previous posts...we don't need rules. 

I have a copy of that around somewhere as well.  Actually, it's a neat read!  One part mentions that if you don't have a layout and are running on the floor, make sure you carefully put the loco and cars away, then carefully take up the track and transformer.

Not sure on that timetable, if I'd have a town called "Lovelyville"...

Pretty neat to find that.  That was from back in the day when you built a layout with the premise of imitating a real railroad.  Your layout had a purpose and you bought equipment to fit your operation.  It wasn't intended for guys who just buy and buy train stuff with no rhyme or reason or even a layout to run it on.  Just to look at the boxes.  I would rather follow the rules, a more apt term may be the tenets, of building a layout than collect a bunch of stuff for no reason.  I grew up reading books like that and Track Planning for Realistic Operation etc., so I still like that approach.  But, every one is different.  I have no problem with that.

Nice basement find: If you are a member of the LCCA • TCA • NMRA,  even a local model train club. They all have a rule book that covers a variety of topics.  On and off the layout.

Gary

 

There are no rules for model railroading!

Oh.....I don't know about that!

Depends on what segment of "model railroading" we're talking about.

One of the reasons I left 'The Dark Side' of this hobby....HO ()...is because of the 'rules' that that group seemed to obsess over.  Everything from incessant  picking-of-nits to running everything by a clock, deck of card orders, trackside signals, blah, blah...and at the direction of a dispatcher/club president/basement owner/etc.  

For me.....not fun.

But, that's just MHO, of course.

John Allen, a former icon of the hobby, used to have a Stegosaurus with 'cab number' on its side, saddled and ridden by some pudgy guy in a sombrero, doing switching chores in the yard on his HO Gorre and Daphetid railroad.  Years ago I attended an HO club meeting where such levity/heresy would've had you shunned forever.   Stress?.....they apparently thrived on it.  

Of course, to be fair, not all in the How Ordinary portion of the hobby are that rules-driven.  But it seems to be that the FUN folks are over here....in the O-my-goodness-we're-having-FUN segment!!

KD

"One of the great things about this hobby is the lack of rules.  I agree with the previous posts...we don't need rules." 

Well, now - without rules it's like NASCAR - round and round and round and...zzzzz....

Can't play a game without rules. The Lionel book above is probably  good thing - I never heard of it. Probably, it boils down the real thing to a digestible point, while maintaining some actual "functionality", if it fits in with other Lionel "reality" efforts. This sort of thing is available elsewhere in model RR'ing, but some of those things are not user friendly (read: many "operating sessions" that become tense and chore-like).

Probably, Lionel should re-issue it. I'd buy it.

I saw the name of this post and my teeth started grinding, could just imagine someone turning trains into dogma.........there are plenty of people in the O gauge world who are just as dogmatic as the HO scale modelers who have their own brand of rules/obsessions, I think that that happens when more than 1 person does something, there are always those, like the Puritans, who seem to take joy out of taking the fun out of things for other people *lol*. There are rivet counters who complain in a new model doesn't have the right number of levers in the cab or if the drivers are a scale .5" too big, people who hate command control, people who love command control and think people running conventional are just 'playing with trains' (as if that is a bad thing...., that is just human nature. 

I suspect that it was produced like most things the company did, to improve their sales. A book like this likely was aimed at trying to keep dad in the hobby long after the kids moved on from trains or from Christmas layouts.  This gybed with what I recall of the book on Lionel showroom layouts, when they built the famous postwar one in 1948, it featured what today we would call hi rail, over the display layouts that in the past emphasized the fun of the accessories and such. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that even with this, there were relatively few "serious' modelers using 3 rail O back then, I suspect those wishing to model 'real railroading' moved over to HO, both because of getting more in a given space and also the amount that was becoming available in HO. I think Lionel created that book to try and entice people to stay with their trains and show how you could create your own railroad with lionel stuff, but I wonder how much impact it had. Just my opinion, but I suspect using 3 rail to simulate real trains, with operating sessions and the like, happened only in relatively recent years, maybe last 20-30, as scale equipment came out, and many of us got older and found HO to be a lot more difficult to deal with than O (not to mention, too, that during this time the introduction of scale equipment, sound systems, and then command control,made it more palatable to operations/scale minded folks). 

An interesting and educational find, but FUN in this hobby should prevail over any rules!  :-)

The ONLY "rule" should be to have FUN! Personally I consider all my train models to be TOYS! :-)

Amazing what some on this forum can make out of a simple thing!

It was simply a guidebook produced in the early 50s for those who had just purchased a Lionel train set. It contained ideas on how to expand the set and build a layout of some type.

Real railroads had "Rule Books" so Lionel simply chose to use this railroad terminology for their latest guide book. (Come to think of it, maybe it is a rule that you have to connect two wires to the track to make the train run!!!!) 

I think some could have more fun with the hobby if they didn't look for drama and angst where it doesn't exist.  

Jim

You can get the book here: http://www.thortrains.net/52rules3.html

All the pages are present. Save to file or simply print them.

Jim, your so right. I have a number of these small books. They are fun to read and were obviously made for kids to learn about block signals and what whistle to use when backing up or going forward. Things kids could learn in a fun and easy way.  Good for Lionel for producing these kinds of little free books. Everything from teaching stores how to sell Lionel to teaching kids the parts of railroad cars and engines, to a planning book for "Pop" on how to build a layout. I think they are wonderful things to collect. Don

no rules and if there are some for model railroading i don't follow them 

here's how i break em 

1 my roadname is fantasy

2 right now i don't care what i get in o scale throw me some ol postwars or a beat up 752 and i'll patch it for csx  or a 2020 for NS 

just imagine a blue and grey csx 752 set that would be funny and cool

Thanks Jim and Don for trying to keep this post on the fun track!!!

The booklet is just a cool find that takes us back in time and shows how Lionel did a fantastic job educating kids while they played with these amazing toys. Kids learned how to blow the whistle or horn with short and long blasts, how signals work, setting and keeping schedules, etc. It appears some are missing the idea that the booklet cover mimicked a railroad's rule book as a style point not a black and white rules are rules and must be followed.

Now everybody get back to having some fun with your trains!!! That is the rule. 

Did any of you jokers actually look at the thing before pooh-poohing it?

This book was an wonderful attempt to provide Jr. with basic info about how RRs work in order to give him actions to stimulate and keep playing with his trains fresh.

Frankly, I think this kind of thing would go a lot further than 57 varieties of control systems in keeping trains fresh for kids today. 

Wow, I never knew that Lionel was thinking of this, that long ago.

Great idea, though, with general rules to give people stuff to do with the trains other than just run them as fast as possible in a circle.

You can easily go too far with it (I know of layouts who are run with tighter rules than real railroads, I have the analogy of going to a civil war reenactment and spending all weekend peeling potatoes, which clearly isn't fun), but a light adherence to operations can give you a whole new tack on having fun with trains.

bigtruckpete posted:

Just found this gem in a box while cleaning out my parents' basement!!! The booklet has all sorts of great bits of info on how real railroads run and how you can incorporate it into your model empire. Enjoy!!

 

BigTruckPete,

Actually for all the years I have been collecting and operating trains I have never seen this.

If you refer to page 20 of the latest CTT you will see my commentary about where we all thought the hobby was going 15 years ago and where it actually went.  A book of rules was one of the topics I thought would become part of model operations.

Regards,

Lou N

I have seen those books before, I have one around at home someplace, and I think it was to get more fun out of the trains, have kids use their imaginations and so forth. Obviously it also is a marketing book,  since it is a lot more fun to 'run a railroad' when you have a layout with sidings to switch, grade crossings to whistle through, signals to obey, etc

bigtruckpete posted:

Just found this gem in a box while cleaning out my parents' basement!!! The booklet has all sorts of great bits of info on how real railroads run and how you can incorporate it into your model empire. Enjoy!!

 

 Great find, these go back to when Lionel was trying to teach us how to have fun operating our model/toy like a real railroad. Realistic play instead of just using the train as a battering ram against Lincoln Log forts built over the rails.

Bogie

Bob Rumer posted:

You can get the book here: http://www.thortrains.net/52rules3.html

All the pages are present. Save to file or simply print them.

I did that and took the liberty of converting it into an 8-1/2" x 11" PDF booklet attached here. 

I found out only recently that the owner of the Thor Trains site passed away. Very sad indeed.

Clevedale

Thanks for the pdf

Pete, I love it!  Thanks for sharing with us. 

I wouldn't have guessed that so many could try to create drama about it, but that is where we seem to be these days.

The well-run operating sessions I have attended in the last few years are the most fun I have ever experienced with model railroading.  I always knew that there had to be something more than just running trains in endless circles.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it does get boring after a short while to me.  And creating scenery and building models is a lot of fun, but it too gets boring after awhile.

Great hobby and an interesting thread!

Art

Come on.  Everything's got rules.  If I wrote the book I'd put a few basic rules in,  Such as:

The tracks need to line up.

The wheels stay on the track.

Only working couplers need apply.

Spouses are like tunnels.  They should both be kept in the dark.

One must struggle with defective merchandise rather than send it back.

Buy reading glasses.  You'll eventually need them.

Command control is both new and old tech.  It's new for trains; old for when your wife wants something.

Treat your boxes well.  They're like coffins.  You'll eventually need one.

Don't operate under the influence.  It's just gonna cost you more money.

Anyway, that might be a start for my opening chapter.

I'm open to more rules being proposed.

Alan

TM Terry posted:

gunrunnerjohn posted:

There are no rules for model railroading!

The Only Rule for Model Railroading:

If you are not having fun, you ain’t doing it right.

Wiring to me is just plain work.

I would like to suggest a rule.  Never tell your wife how much you really spent.

Interesting! I didn't know there was such a book!

I can see how some would want to avoid learning about prototype railroading and the idea of implementing aspects of it that appealed to their imagination into their modeling.

On the other hand, as a kid, I would have ate that up. It would have fired-up my desire even quicker to learn what I could about railroading. (The desire to learn "railroading" didn't come along until later in my "train life".)

In view of model railroading, for decades I've been of the mind set that I can't imagine going to the effort to build a layout without having in mind operations that emulate the prototype.

John Allen:

Many would be surprised to learn that John was a stickler for realistic operations, and did indeed have structured operations complete with "rules". However, he wasn't above having fun, either.

I guess it all boils down to finding your happy place in model railroading. Some like to expand their knowledge of actual railroading with an eye on implementing "model-able" features of same, others prefer to keep it more simplistic. Fun is where you find it.

Andre

Clevedale, thanks for putting together and posting that. It was clever of the folks at Lionel to put together, in the theme of a railroad employee rule book, some of the very basic practices&procedures of real railroading. The intended audience was obviously kids who had no knowledge of how real trains work. Real railroads are assuredly run by rules, starting with simple things like a universal whistle code, and the degree to which modelers do or do not follow prototype rules&procedures is [also] assuredly a matter of personal preference&disposition. Personally  I tend to be interested in the spirit of the thing rather than the letter-of-the-law but different strokes for different folks.

Don't you just love those city names on the timetable?

Jim Policastro posted:

Amazing what some on this forum can make out of a simple thing!

It was simply a guidebook produced in the early 50s for those who had just purchased a Lionel train set. It contained ideas on how to expand the set and build a layout of some type.

Real railroads had "Rule Books" so Lionel simply chose to use this railroad terminology for their latest guide book. (Come to think of it, maybe it is a rule that you have to connect two wires to the track to make the train run!!!!) 

I think some could have more fun with the hobby if they didn't look for drama and angst where it doesn't exist.  

Jim

Totally agree. Lionel did not mean for the word “rules” to be taken literally. The book is obviously a book of suggestions to those who might want to run their trains more realistically. Hence the first few words “Here’s a suggestion.......” 

I subscribe to the Outback philosophy: "NO RULES,  JUST FUN"!

geysergazer posted:

Clevedale, thanks for putting together and posting that. It was clever of the folks at Lionel to put together, in the theme of a railroad employee rule book, some of the very basic practices&procedures of real railroading. The intended audience was obviously kids who had no knowledge of how real trains work. Real railroads are assuredly run by rules, starting with simple things like a universal whistle code, and the degree to which modelers do or do not follow prototype rules&procedures is [also] assuredly a matter of personal preference&disposition. Personally  I tend to be interested in the spirit of the thing rather than the letter-of-the-law but different strokes for different folks.

Big, older kids, too!     I was really soaking up this info. like a dry sponge when I stumbled upon it sometime within the past year.  Gives my LC+ locos something to do with their whistles besides activating the crew talk.

Sipping on adult beverages, readin' the rule book, and running my trains in endless circles............................. now THAT'S some great entertainment!!! 

Never had a plan or a set gauge with my model trains - (AF S, HO, O, LGB, live steam G) just jumped in whenever I got the urge! Strictly emotional! Later, running REAL steam and diesel locos, that did REQUIRE very strict rules!

I have standards rather than rules on my railroad. For example I would plan to ultimately have all of my operating equipment have metal wheel sets rather than plastic wheels. I would also rather have all scale sized couplers rather than the oversized  hi-rail couplers. These are all standards that I am working toward  and any equipment that presently has hi-rail wheel sets or non-scale couplers are not prohibited from operating.  My goal is to work toward all equipment that will ultimately conform to my operating standards.  Bill 

bigtruckpete posted:

Just found this gem in a box while cleaning out my parents' basement!!! The booklet has all sorts of great bits of info on how real railroads run and how you can incorporate it into your model empire. Enjoy!!

 

I recently acquired this same book at a local TCA Division auction.  It was very informative.  Thanks for sharing it here.