Model Railway Journal 303 finally arrived at the local newsagent, an ocean and a continent away from its presses. Even though I have no intention of ever modelling the railways of Britain, I find this magazine inspirational, informative and sometimes thought-provoking. Jerry Clifford’s editorial in issue 303 was in the latter category. He sums up his argument beautifully: “A sound, empirical, objective knowledge of the prototype will always be essential in finescale modelling and our pursuit of realism, but the extent to which we achieve it will always remain subjective.”
I will go one further. While adherence to the prototype is a keystone of finescale modelling, it has nothing to do with realism. That is why some freelance layouts can immediately transport us to their locales. It is why movies can invent whole fantastic worlds that suspend disbelief and suck us into their stories. It is also why a perfectly rendered model is inanimate until someone has breathed life into it with a coat of grime.
Adherence to the prototype, which I would call accuracy is all about details. Did this car have a Hutchins roof or a Murphy roof? Did that engine have four rivets under the cab window or six? Was the stock loading spur on the east side of the tracks or the west? By the time you’ve answered the question and put the effort into getting the roof right, the rivets counted or the spur laid, you will be one of perhaps a dozen people in the world who know or care (fewer if you’re modelling Pembroke Ontario in 1905). To them, your effort won’t necessarily look realistic, but it will look correct.
No, realism has nothing to do with the details that define accuracy. Realism emerges from the colours and textures that inhabit the spaces between those details. An observer who cannot identify the model beyond being a boxcar instinctively knows how rain and weather affects wood or steel surfaces. Even if they’ve never been to Pembroke or even Ontario, they recognize how grass and trees grow, and how industry pocks and scars the land it inhabits. If they have any exposure to Canada at all, they have a feel for the respectfully separated cadence of buildings.
Of course, each individual has a different sensitivity and experience with reality. So, Mr. Clifford is quite right: it is subjective. However, to achieve realism, slavish adherence to the prototype is neither necessary nor sufficient; to achieve realism in our modelling, we must sensitively observe and reproduce everything else!
Pembroke:87 
This tension between objective reproduction of the prototype versus subjective interpretation in modeling isn’t just a model railroading ‘thing’. Over in the scale modeling world (planes, tanks, cars, ships, giant fighting robots, etc.) there are nearly theological debates over building models only from reference sources, ‘too much weathering’, and so-called ‘Spanish school’ art theory-inspired finishing techniques. I tend to think of it as a tension between an art mindset and an engineering mindset. There’s room for it all, but as Rene points out, accuracy and fidelity alone don’t automatically add up to realism, so there must always be art—not just engineering—in a successful, emotionally resonant layout or model.
Ooh, thanks for adding a third dimension! Can a model be emotionally resonant (love the phrase) while being neither realistic nor accurate?
Look no further than John Allen, Malcolm Furlow, or (my favorite) Bob Hegge for emotionally resonant but not particularly realistic or accurate modeling from past decades. Admittedly, all three masterfully manipulated the boundaries of realism and accuracy, and therein was the magic.
I’d suggest that it most definitely can, but that emotion will be unique to the modeller themselves. As discussed we all have our trigger points for what we consider is realistic and/or accurate, therefore ’we’ must also have an emotional hook too. Easiest example I can think of is a locomotive given as a present to me by my late mother. It won’t be weathered, or modified etc, it just stands in its own right and runs when I want too, but it gives me a connection to past family, encouragement to make something, memories, all those intangibles that won’t sit in a technique or research toolbox. But it’s definitely a real connection to the subject matter and ‘life’…
Rene,
Agree 110%!
Maybe I should blow the dust of my “Macro/Micro Prototype Modeling” clinic?
Nah, you’ve basically summed up the core idea far more eloquently than I did.
And your post reminds me I need to get the last few issues of MRJ.
Marty
Thanks Marty.