[jason taylor]

Model Railway Convention of Vland:

One of the favorite Terran recreations adopted by Vilani was Model Railways. Despite having never had similar technologies in their history-by the time they were in fact capable of it they had branched into other paths-the hobby appealed to their philosophy of order. It first became popular in the conquest of Nusku and spread outwards. In fact model railroading has had more of an impact on the Imperium than actual railroading which was largely rendered obsolete by grav transport, although to be sure there are a number of systems which still avail themselves of railroads either because of their low technical capacity or as a tourist attraction.

Any sophant with an interest in the hobby who has proven their skill with layouts may enter though a disproportionate number of Bwaps have taken an interest. Most layouts are in fact team projects. Winning layouts are videotaped and the dataholders sold at auction in hobby clubs throughout known space while the layouts themselves are stored at the Imperial Museum of Vland. Dataholders and original layouts are protected by Imperial Copyright and it is illegal to make a duplicate without permission. Claiming a duplicate as an original is liable to a charge of fraud as with any artwork.

Despite that it is possible to legally get duplicates as hobby clubs often provide funds by selling the right to copy a dataholder of a layout found at the Museum. Copies of winning layouts are often used as gifts or bribes by High Nobles while lower ranking ones, though still expensive are might be found in the hands of a reasonably rich citizen.