Generics and Specifics

Some scale models don't really model anything specifically. The most common case is a steel 40 foot boxcar. How many of these have we seen? In fact, the manufacturer will often claim that the same model is in fact three different prototypes! Hence, for these models, and for those which may be accurate representations of SOME kind of prototype which we have not yet identified, we have 'generic' vehicles.

I also have used these generic vehicles when I am too lazy to research and enter a vehicle. For example, with heavyweight passenger cars, I will often just use the "Heavyweight Pullman" vehicle as the prototype rather than try to figure out which of 100's of different Pullman plans was used, create an entry and then link it.

However, these 'generic' vehicles can exist side-by-side with the more accurate vehicles we create. Hence, Larry created a generic reachstacker under the 'global' region which can serve any model of a reachstacker that it is unclear which prototype (if any) is being modeled. However, in the case of the Fujimoto model I just added, the manufacturer made it very clear which model (in this case a TCM Container Loader from Japan) was being modeled by their product. So just like we can have a Pullman PS-1 live side-by-side with a 40 foot steel boxcar, we can have a TCM Container Loader (region: Japan) coexist with the generic reachstacker. Soon I will also add a new entry for the Raygo Wagner PC90 Piggy Packer which is also a reachstacker and modeled by Wheels of Time - which will have region 'North America'.

Now please don't go too crazy with this. We don't need a separate Ford Fairlane for every model year. The vehicles database uses the 'Image Gallery' field type which allows you to add multiple images to the same item, so you can have 20 Ford Fairlane images each with a caption describing the model year in place of having 20 different entries in the vehicle database. If you really love the Fairlane that much, we can create a database just for the Fairlaine, as I created one for the Porche 356.