I was watching a history channel special called “Toy Trains” and there was plenty of old vintage footage from the 30s to the 60’s of various scales of trains and their accompanying layouts. One thing I noticed is that even the old american flyer and lionel layouts from back then looked stunningly nice in black and white.
Here is a prime example of what I am talking about.
I feel that even these so called “toy train” layouts of that era surpass the detail found on many of today’s modern HO layouts which I have seen in person. Or do you think the black and white footage simply hides the lesser details of the larger scale railroads? There is just something about that kind of footage, a feeling that can’t be replicated today. Watching it, you feel like you are back in time at an actual railroad, whereas today, a lot of layouts, no matter how detailed, feel somewhat impersonal and detached in my opinion.
Does anyone else feel the same way? Please share your thoughts.
Those may have been great in their own time, but I had no problems at all making it out as a toy. There are many modern layouts that I have to look at twice to see if it’s real or not. Another thing that helps the video, it’s moving, quite rapidly in fact, and that makes it very hard to see the finer things.
I think what the film really shows is that a train in motion doesn’t need a lot of detail. If you focus on the cars and ignore the motion you’ll see that the detail is relatively crude. The poor quality of the film helps hide this, but the motion along with the low level angle is the key.
But really model trains are a lot of fun. Each of us decides how much detail and what level of detail we want on our layouts. But when I go to trains shows I love the toy train layouts as much as the Ntrak and HO layouts.
Hypnotic! As one of the comments to the YouTube vid points out, evidently the camera is held still but the layout is a circle on an axle turning at the same speed as the engine is “moving” --the Museum of Science and Industry used to demonstrate – well don’t recall anymore – some scientific Newtonian principle or other using a large scale toy engine on a moving circular layout.
I do not think the video demonstrates that older toy trains look more realistic than modern scale model railroads. I think it demonstrates that the mind filters out (or inserts) all sorts of stuff if the imagery is interesting enough, as this surely is. And that IS a notion we can make use of in our modeling. Anyone who ever attended a Dean Freytag clinic knows the magic of his adding a couple of plastic bits from a paper punch to a couple of other plastic bits on a cheap toy nicely painted, and your brain convinces you it is super detailed when it is no such thing.
Black and white film footage has a funny way of convincing your ‘subconscious’ eye that it’s seeing actually MORE detail than is actually there.
For instance, before CGI, when a lot of Hollywood ‘special effects’ were done not by computer, but actual constructed models, a miniature in Black and white generally always seemed to look much less like a miniature and the real thing, as opposed to the same miniature in Technicolor.
Two good examples in movies: The scale model trains used in two Cecil B. deMille epics–1939’s black and white epic UNION PACFIC, and the miniatures used later on in his 1952 Technicolor epic THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. The several miniature train shots in the older film look very authentic (even the wrecks), while the miniatures in the Technicolor film look just like what they are–very cleverly detailed MINIATURES. And that big, gigantic color Circus train wreck in GSOE, exciting as it is, still looks to me like someone slammed a bunch of super-detailed Lionels around in slow-motion, LOL!
Color brings out scale details that black and white, by its very nature, tends to blend and often obscure. And I’m saying this as a motion picture Buff who thinks that great B&W photography is often even MORE expressive as far as conjuring up a particular ‘mood’ than color photography. But I think it’s just the nature of B&W photography. The eye automatically transmits to the mind an Impression of something, rather than the Actuality of it.
Concidering the materials they had to work with, there were some excellent layouts. We are so used to seeing things in color that we forget there other things in life. As mentioned, black and white let the imagination see what the camera could not record in those days.
Must say, I think film making has improved over the years.
Well, I do agree that there were some great master builders back in the very early days of the hobby, like Minton Cronkite, who built some fantastic layouts before WW2.
However, note that the footage you linked to are outtakes from the American Flyer Boy’s Club (or whatever it was called) TV show from the late fifties, they’re not from an early private model railroad.
The scenes are shot on a cyclorama - a big rotating circle where the whole scene spins one direction and the train runs the same speed in the opposite direction. If done well, it gives the effect of pacing a train at speed. The scenery shown there was probably built by a professional model maker from Hollywood or the theater.
If you could really examine the layout, you’d notice the dried and dyed lichen trees and bushes aren’t really up to today’s standards. The “grass” is probably dyed sawdust. It probably would look very nice in color, but I wouldn’t go so far to say it would surpass anything done today. The average modeller today has access to many more scenery products, easy to build, well detailed kits, etc. and on average a typical layout of today is probably much better than the typical layout of 1960.
I would advise extreme cautious to all who might make sweeping statements either way regarding the general quality and realism of today’s layouts compared to those of a differing era, be they scale or tin-plate.
Quite honestly, from what one sees on the Internet it can certainly be inferred as probable that a high percentage of today’s HO layouts are only slightly, or perhaps no better at all, than their counterparts from 40 and 50 years ago. At least with regard to forums, when one examines the names of the layout image posters, it quickly becomes obvious that one is seeing largely the same small group of individuals posting week to week, as well as forum to forum.
In any given year, on this by far the largest of the model railroading forums, you will see layout images posted by something less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent!) of the registered forum members. This is a shockingly low figure if one assumes the average hobbyist is modeling at even a modest level of sophistication. If they were, why would they not at least occasionally share images of their efforts? Today even the cheapest and simplest point-and-shoot cameras are quite capable of taking good wide-angle shots of one’s layout and the process of posting them relatively simple. The only explanation that I c
I currently have the vast expanse of the plywood pacific, and hope to some day get it looking even half as good as some of the scenes I’ve seen on the site here…
My last layout with track and wiring 2/3rds done is no more. Having moved over the summer, I currently don’t have a layout at the moment. I have a 5’4" x 12’ tabletop that I will set some tracks up on so I can run some trains. But the next layout requires prepping my unfinished basement first. I hope to get that done over the next couple of months or so and start the layout before Spring.
Howdy, I’ve been following this thread & it is interesting. I enjoy the opinions that are presented. I’ve always been one who appreciates B&W photos, & am akin to it in model RailRoading. So with that in mind, I’ll add mine. This is a shot of my OotB HOn3 Blackstone K-27 #464 with the snowplow. I added the doghouse, & what my Dad calls a ‘birds nest’ -spark arrestor on the stack, as well as the tool box ahead of the engineer’s side deck. This Photo may look familliar but it is a different model, I posted #453 (road pilot) a few months back. The only other non-box addition is a little brown powder on the plow, which does not show up in this B&W shot, -& that is why I tried that. I wanted to see what would happen to mild weathering in B&W, it washed out, due most likely to my shooting technique. I shot this with the following; (pulled out the big guns for this…)
Nikon (USA) D3S
Nikkor Micro 60MM Macro (full Frame, -not DX reduced)
An old SB26 flash with 20lb paper mask, connected with an SC17 curly cord
An old MC20 Remote, from my film F4
Crappy Tripod
Shot at 200 ISO, 8s Manual, 100W (tungsten) Light bulb at Engineer’s side High at 3:00, & masked fill flash head on, slightly high. (hence the plow washout.)
The Nikon D3S allows a Monochrome conversion right in the camera, & I did that, & this is it!
Very old PhotoShop, +10 Contrast, -10 Brightness, & cropped to 1024w, a 34% reduction from raw
Yes, as previous posters said, I am 1 in that 100 that posts a scratch built Dio, & yeah it is small (an 18" shelf actually), & I’m still proud of it. I used it to learn & modify my building & design style for better things to come. And, yes, it is a repeat offender, with me you either get the container trailer stack or this dio, for I have not started building my 4’ x 8’ sheet as of yet. When I do, I hope that it will be ‘the coolest thing I’ve done so far…’ & give the regular viewers something n
Uh, yes, I have to leave the doghouse & re-rail the pilot wheels! Sorry, she must have rebounded when I set it on the table or changed lenses! They are a bit flighty, but once on rail they go good though, at least for me so far. Dang, that kills the whole shot. Well there is at least one mistake in every thing I do… Ha hah!
Howdy, I’ve been following this thread & it is interesting. I enjoy the opinions that are presented. I’ve always been one who appreciates B&W photos, & am akin to it in model RailRoading. So with that in mind, I’ll add mine. This is a shot of my OotB HOn3 Blackstone K-27 #464 with the snowplow. I added the doghouse, & what my Dad calls a ‘birds nest’ -spark arrestor on the stack, as well as the tool box ahead of the engineer’s side deck. This Photo may look familliar but it is a different model, I posted #453 (road pilot) a few months back. The only other non-box addition is a little brown powder on the plow, which does not show up in this B&W shot, -& that is why I tried that. I wanted to see what would happen to mild weathering in B&W, it washed out, due most likely to my shooting technique. I shot this with the following; (pulled out the big guns for this…)
Nikon (USA) D3S
Nikkor Micro 60MM Macro (full Frame, -not DX reduced)
An old SB26 flash with 20lb paper mask, connected with an SC17 curly cord
An old MC20 Remote, from my film F4
Crappy Tripod
Shot at 200 ISO, 8s Manual, 100W (tungsten) Light bulb at Engineer’s side High at 3:00, & masked fill flash head on, slightly high. (hence the plow washout.)
The Nikon D3S allows a Monochrome conversion right in the camera, & I did that, & this is it!
Very old PhotoShop, +10 Contrast, -10 Brightness, & cropped to 1024w, a 34% reduction from raw
Yes, as previous posters said, I am 1 in that 100 that posts a scratch built Dio, & yeah it is small (an 18" shelf actually), & I’m still proud of it. I used it to learn & modify my building & design style for better things to come. And, yes, it is a repeat offender, with me you either get the container trailer stack or this dio, for I have not started building my 4’ x 8’ sheet as of yet. When I do, I hope that it will be ‘the coolest thing I’ve done so far…’ & give the regular viewers something n