I believe adding scenery to our model railroads is one of the things we all like to do. But there are only so many mountains, tunnels, farms, industries, towns, and cities you can model. Even with our creativity and vision they all start to blend together with a look alike sameness from layout to layout.
Well how about using our creativity to model special little unusual mini scenes.
Maybe scenes created after a total eclipse of the sun or a few to many cold drinks. And then letting go of our inhibitions with unique scenery like;
Hobos are common. But, how about a hobo in a yard, trying to hitch a ride, and falling under a box car.
Or maybe a glowing plutonium reactor with some strange looking emploies.
Convicts fighting in a prison yard and being shot with tear gas.
How about a nice mountain scene with a family camping out and a bear eating the father.
Perhaps Police Officers waiting for the red light saying “Hot Fresh” to go on in a donut shop
Officers outside of a bank, waiting for the robbers to come out.
Well you get my drift.[swg]
If you have any strange, unusual or unique mini scenes how about showing them to us. Or if you have some of your own strange and unusual total eclipse of the sun scenery ideas. Let us hear from you.
My opinion is that everyone already does waaaaay too much of that. Maybe one or two scenes on the entire layout, but mini-scene after mini-scene gets really old.
Boys knocking over an outhouse.
Dog peeing on a fire hydant.
Animals excaping from the zoo.
Woman dressing inside a window of a hotel with open curtains.
The bear & the picnic.
Skunk in the tent.
Racoons raiding the trash can.
civil war re-enactment.
Monkey stealing a sun bathers bikini top.
People doing it under a blanket on the beach.
birds (storks) nesting on the top of a smoke stack.
Hunter peaking around a tree into the meadow with all the deer looking at him from behind.
Vespine gas plant on mars.
UFO landing.
Cow excaping the stock yard.
Dinosaurs eating at the local hamburger stand.
yada yada yada. They all start to blend together with a look alike sameness from layout to layout.
I suppose if you have nothing else to improve on a layout, doing some fanciful or “fun” scenes might extend its life. Personally, I find that the vast majority of visitors to my layout forget many of the details. They swear I didn’t have (name it) last time they were present, and that it is new. So, the cutesy stuff would be for my amusement. I don’t need it since I have many more things on my list that are of higher importance. Take the next 40 trees for example…where are they already? No, really…when am I going to make them and place them to improve the green look to my mountainous layout?
I recently staged a crash, but that was for a photo challenge on another forum. I need to husband my resources carefully, including time and whimsy.
Well, on one of the display layouts at Timonium this weekend, they had a module that was “Area 53”, a secret military research area. Behind one of the buildings was a big Mech. And the Japanese prototype N scale layout - well, they had a Godzilla and Mothra.
Original is good - I’ve seen far too many of the “hunter doing his business on a log while the bear sneaks up behind him” scenes
I’ve got a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, two boys playing hookey fishing from a canoe and the Mayor’s son pulled over by officer Metzger for frequenting a ‘sporting house’ when he should be in high school. That’s about as weird as I plan on getting, LOL!
I have a few “oddball” items on the layout, many hidden from direct view and things that only family members and close friends would get… One I recently did is a scene of a still, as it mid prohibition on the Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western RR. The man working the backwoods still has evidently been sampling the product…
The Burns Oil and Coal Company has both a coal trestle (where my old Mantua hopper cars can actually unload coal through the bottom doors) and oil tanks out back, but you have to look closely inside the building to see Mr. Burns and his associate:
As you would expect, they’re up to no good. Right out back, God-Knows-What in 55-gallon drums is being buried:
But, this was the Transition Era, after all, and guys with Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dogs were singing in front of the Heartbreak Hotel:
My club has several small scenes like that, and more planned. there’s the obligatory “Bare Hunter”, the dog and hydrant, a guy in a seated position in a restroom. We also have a TARDIS (from the TV show Doctor Who) that wanders around the layout randomly.
I agree with the posts that state that those scenes look the same from layout to layout to layout, but I must add that they are not on our layout to impress visiting modelers. We hold an open house each year for the general public. THOSE are the ones who appreciate the odd little scene here and there.
I try to make my scenes look as interesting and as funny as possible to start conversations on my layout. For example:
I have a farm scene depicted and with that I have a cattle pen with many cows populating it. Naturally, one or two tend to make thier way out (in real life) so I have a farmer (which just happened to be walking like a zombie) pushing both cows back to the pen.
Another scene that is slightly interesting is a hot dog stand that is depicted on my layout; there is a bench with two people sitting on it- there is a girl eating a hot dog on one side of the bench and on the other is a man eyeing her food.
I’m always looking for a funny way to incorporate people on my layout as to make it more interesting to viewers.
I sort-of agree with Chuck, but I don’t think asprin is anywhere strong enough!! Valium maybe? If you’re the guy portrayed on CSI making model murder scenes that may be OK for you, but we see enough grotesque things in real life without bringing that gore to our model worlds. [tdn]
The idea should be to do these things, but dont make them obvious, they should be hidden like easter eggs. I have a couple planned for my layout, like an R2D2 that will be hidden in the middle of a bunch of metal trash cans, and random collectable figurines placed in the crowds of people, like 3 figurines I have from the Japanese anime “Galaxy Express 999” that will be waiting in the train station. Being in large scale gives me access to a wide range of figurines and other items I can utilize.
I think there are plenty of everyday routine scenes that are fun/funny enough. Working in HR, I notice that folks spend a lot of time sitting/standing around and talking; I think it’s human nature, so I model that behavior. I like to have one guy working while 5 or so stand around watching. I also like to cluster people together with one person gesturing emphatically.
Looking at the real world, most dogs sleep most of the time and most wildlife leave humans alone. Most of the time a fisherman does not have a fish on the line; accidents are rare; real life R-rated scenes happen almost never (in public). On my layout there are lots of sleeping dogs, a few deer (off in the hills), fishermen rowing to a new spot, no accidents or broken down cars, and everyone has their clothes on.
Once in a while a visitor will notice one of the groups and “get it.” They comment that it is realistically funny to see all those people watching that one guy working, or they’ll see the person gesturing and comment “If you tied that guy’s hands he couldn’t talk.” I think we all take sincere joy in seeing the world depicted the way it really is; jokes told over and over do get stale, as do static comic scenes.
I did a small scene or two. A freight agent examining a mountian of crates in different sizes at the depot, a sleeping worker being approached by the Boss in a Apple Tree area. I had some expert help who deserves due credit. I’ll try to retrieve those images from my back up media later today and post.
Looking at the responses since mine, I notice a trend toward the, ‘appropriately cute,’ with which I entirely agree.
Modeling the St. Valentine’s day massacre might be appropriate, but it sure isn’t cute!
Modeling a hydrant showering down a dog would be a, “Whoa! What’s going on here?”
Note that the items I listed are appropriate to the time and place I model - and not particularly cute. Even the animated pile driver has a valid reason for its presence. (The route from Tomikawa to Takami is being double tracked, and the ground has to be stabilized before bridge abutments can be built…)
Of course, everybody has the right to put whatever wierd and wonderful details they want on their layouts. It’s just that I get enough of the seamy side of things from News Channel 3. In my play space, I prefer to be playful, thank you.
The sleeping apple picker looks more like a corpse - and is that the famous Bachmann Farmer w/ pail as his boss (I had one, it crumbled as I was trying to take the base off).
2.) This one looks more subtle - is the joke that the shipping tags feel off the crates and landed between the dock and the siding, or is there no joke at all (and the guy is just looking at some crates, and there’s litter by the dock - which is common enough in real life).
Put me down in the plausible vignette form of scenes, like a group of people chatting, a family on a picnic in a park, or a street musician playing a guitar on the corner (I’m still working on the portable battery amp…I’m not married, and don’t plan on asking random women for old pantyhose to use for the speaker screen mesh, so I’m stuck there) - those are cool. OTOH, if the ‘humorous’ scene comes pre-packaged in a Woodland Scenics or Lifelike kits (‘Outhouse Mischief’, ‘Accident waiting to happen’, the Cops & Robbers - count me out (of course, Woodland Scenics & Lifelike sell tons of stuff that is not cutsy, and I have no problem with that - hey, golfers, fishermen, automechanics are everyday items - but not jug bands)
