An Opinion on Mixing Your Eras
Mixing eras is one of the things that seems to separate the serious hobbyist from the casual hobbyist. It’s pretty easy to maintain a singular era when you are working with a single train, more so if you bought that train with the cars and track as part of a kit. However as you add to your collection of cars you may start to find that you are adding cars from eras that may not necessarily match with era of the engine. In the grand scheme of things this is a pretty insignificant nit to pick, and as always you should build the type of train that is most enjoyable for you. However, as you find yourself getting further absorbed into the hobby of model trains and railroads you will find that you want to strive more and more for era authenticity.
Another factor that can cause disconnects in era authenticity is in your scenery, this tends to be even a bit more subtle as scenery is the secondary concern for most model train enthusiasts. If you’ve decided your era to be round the 40’s or 50’s but have a Ford sedan in a 70’s body styling things will seem to be a bit off. It usually easiest to at least go into the model train hobby with at least some kind of idea of what era you seem to gravitate towards, is it the majestic steam engines of yesteryear or the modern efficiency and understated elegance of today’s diesel work horses? Regardless of which era you prefer there are multitudes of cars and scenery accessories that you can purchase to stay within your given time period. Below you’ll see a piece of scenery where the creator has worked to ensure that his scenery maintains a the proper era between road cars and buildings. Small vignettes of activity like this in your model will help you make sure that your model keeps and overall consistency in its time period.
Era specific scenery
