A column in the most recent DEMU Update suggested it’s well past time to retire the term “Modern Image” as a description.
It made perfect sense in the late 1960s when used by the likes of Cyril Freezer in the pages of The Railway Modeller. Back then, the default “serious” model railway was the archetypal GWR branch line terminus. Only a minority of modellers attempted to recreate the present-day scene, and a generation of enthusiasts had lost interest in the real railway with the end of steam in 1968.
In 2013, “Modern Image” makes a lot less sense. The railway of the early 1970s bears little or no resemblance to the colourful post-privatisation scene of today. Indeed, a layout set in the 1970s is set as far in the past as a chocolate-box 1930s layout would have been in the 70s.
Reframing “Modern Image” to define models set in the past decade isn’t so useful either, There’s no strong cut-off point equivalent to the end of steam in 1968, not even privatisation. In the years 1958 to 1968, British Railways replaced their entire motive power fleet aside from some early electrics. While recent years have seen a lot of new equipment replacing life-expired trains from the 60s and 70s, we haven’t seen a wholesale replacement on an equivalent scale. An awful lot of the 70s and 80s ex-BR fleet is still in traffic wearing new liveries, such as those mid-60s class 86s in the photo above.
Older modellers whose interests are firmly in the steam era will continue to use the term Modern Image through force of habit, and there’s little point trying to stop them. But that’s no reason not to discourage its continued use in magazines or exhibition programmes.
Continental-style epochs never really caught on, but I think it’s better to describe layouts and modelling interests in terms of approximate time period. “Pre-Grouping North British”, “30s Great Western”, “1970s Blue Diesel” or “Post-Privatisation” are seem perfectly adequate descriptors to me.