Breaking New Ground

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Bouncing back and forth the other day, between trestle bents, and landscaping, and painting, and vegetation, and ballast…I got to wondering about how the modelling greats, got to be great in the first place…

I doubt seriously that any of the MR legends got to be legends simply by building a layout from a kit, or from one book, or video, or how-to. There are lots of “standard” layouts around, “WS by the numbers” start to finish, and none of their owners seem to be icons of mythical proportion in the hobby.

Nothing wrong with that, we get a lot of pleasure from out plaster cloth/ground foam layout, but still…it doesn’t answer the question…how does a good modeller become a great modeller?

Well, in any endeavor, a thorough knowlege of what others have done before you will save you time and mistakes, but again, there are lots of modellers who own every book and video ever sold and still they never rise to the ranks of immortality.

No, I think the great ones are the ones who break new ground, and pull it off.

After a while you can look at a layout and recognize most of what you see, the techniques that were used, the influences at work, but what really catches your eye are things you’ve never seen before, things that look so real you’re asking yourself, “HOW did he DO that?”

So, waiting for glue or paint to dry, switching from one task to another, iIexplored this idea.

In the end, I came up with two basic conclusions.

One, if you want to break new ground, you have to try new things. Things you never saw in a book, or read online, or watched in a video. “Foam-plaster-gravel-paint-Envirotex-Gloss medium” might yield a perfectly acceptable river or lake, but it’s not going to look much different than any other foam-plaster-gravel-paint-envirotex-gloss medium lake, and it just isn’t going to stand out fr

2

Well…this seems to be a philosophical question, although I understand its pragmatic applications, too. I suppose it is that putting order, in the many ways that word can be defined, into something is much harder than putting disorder into it. In other words, the universal tendency is toward disorder, or entropy, and not the other way around. So, to create heretofore untold order will require extraordinary effort and insight…which few of us are capable of, or are inclined to do if my first assertion is wrong.

I can bust up a layout in about one hour, but it takes hundreds of hours to generate something that I can appreciate. It would take another set of hundreds of hours to put into effect the strokes of genius that history tells us we rely on to get the quantum leaps in ability and in understanding.

Besides, reading an article on how to dismantle something is not very interesting.

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“Try new things. Some of them might work.”

I recall putting the above into a post some time back. The obvious implication is that some new things DON’T work - about 50% of them, in my personal experience (including things that work for other people.)

So, the next step. If the newly installed (fill in the blank) isn’t working, and isn’t responding to corrective action, take it out! When it comes to things that impact keeping the trains on schedule, “Good enough - isnt.”

So, how did the great model railroaders become great? Most of them were lucky enough to get published in the model railroad press, because of the quality of their work. A good many equally skillful modelers were never recognized outside their own little circle of friends. Nobody ever became known as a great model railroader by advertising their failures. Just as a professional model or actor knows which angles photograph well and which don’t, craftspersons of all types show off their successful masterpieces and dumpsterize or drastically modify their ugly ducklings.

Becoming a “great” model railroader involves luck. Becoming a Master Model Railroader involves long study and hard work - and more than a few of the NMRA’s roster of MMRs are unfamiliar to most of us.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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I like to try new ideas and I show what goes bad. That is the advantage of the web, I can have articles with the warts and all. An idea I will someday work on more is mylar film for water.

I probably never be one of the greats since I have devolved into a truely minority area of modeling, Sn3.5 in the 1870’s. Magazines don’t like the offbeat.

Our 1870’s oil transfer facility in S scale under construction. Click image to enlarge

I like doing things different. Like making igneous rocks from ceiling tile. Visit:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/volcanic_rocks/

Thank you if you visit

Harold

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I see where you’re coming from, and you’re right, creation is much more difficult than destruction.

But utter destruction wasn’t what I had in mind. If you tear something out because it isn’t good enough, then you are pretty much by definition looking to improve the layout, not reduce it to the stable quantum flux of entropy, or quark soup, if you will.

We once got our grasses chewed by a salesman…seems he had charged a client $1700 for gutting his house and we had it down to a bare shell in two hours, made it look like we were overcharging (and having too much fun!).

Total destruction, I can handle.

No, if you’re going to experiment, and you know going in it may not work, then the trick is to get a failed effort back out of there without messing up any extra terrain or area. Let’s see…ideally, you would be able to effect the quickest removal to a bare slate, i.e. pre-experiment status, without increasing the chances o

6

“Good enough, isn’t”.

True in the long, or even medium term, but not necessarily today, in my opinion. It comes down to priorities, doesn’t it?

I have a spur that suffers intermittant electrical supply. I never use it, since the layout isn’t “there” yet for ops, just a little “round and round” between work sessions. Gotta test the track, you know?

I’m assuming you’re ok with that, because otherwise…you are saying that you’d rather not have a layout at all u

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I definitely like exploring new ground, and working on new techniques. At the same time, I don’t care to re-invent the wheel on every aspect of the hobby. So, I watch and learn, borrow and steal, but at the same time I try things on my own. Of course, when I decided to model a subway system, I went out on a long, thin branch all by myself. I’m hoping to do a few really original things with my models.

To paraphrase George Orwell, “All model railroads are unique, but some or more unique than others.”

To me, Harold, you’re already there. Your modelling is consistently excellent, you’ve pioneered new techniques, and you’ve shared your secrets with the rest of us. Thanks.

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Harold, I’ve been watching your layout for a long long time, since we model a similar era, and since you’ve done so much of it online. I’ve seen enough to know that you could write a book on efficient tearout, just some of your upgrade projects I remember include the new tunnel portal, the cut for the wagon road, and the new rock face using the ceiling tiles.

I’d be interested in reading that book if it ever get’s written.

While I’m here, I’ve got to say that the way you matched the perspective of the mountain behind the large rock face, from 3D into the backfrop, is as well done as I’ve seen yet. The anlge looks perfect, and imminently believable.

Question…how does it look from other viewing angles? Can “one size fit all” or do you have to sacrifice one viewing angle to make another one look that good?

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jeffers_mz,

Note the quote - “Good enough - isn’t.”

An additional quote, from the same source (me) - “Perfection is approachable, but never attainable.”

I don’t demand perfection, but I do work to a high standard of reliability. As a result, my layout construction will never challenge anyone’s ‘speed per square (fillintheblank)’ record - but what I build only gets built once.

FWIW, the two things I insist on (in my own work) are precise trackwork and bulletproof electricals. Any deviation from those standards is hunted down and corrected NOW, not left to cause problems later. Other things (like contest-level superdetailing and absolute fidelity to prototype) take lower rungs on the priority ladder - rungs so low that they’re out of sight under the floor.

In my years as an aircraft type, I never saw an aircraft that didn’t have open discrepancies on its maintenance forms. If we had demanded total perfection, the only things in the sky would have been birds.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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Ok Chuck, I see what you mean. I’m normally the same way about track and power, it has to work right this time and every time, but we may differ on the priority. Effectively, the whole layout is “down” right now. It won’t be “up” till the expansion track is laid, and wired, and the sound wired.

To manage that, I’ve got to finish a trestle, ballast about 6 feet of track, assemble three sections of bench (components are cut), and design, acquire materials for, and install a rack for the sound PC, the mixer, the sub, and a keyboard, then lay and wire the track.

Space is ectremely limited here, room for the layout, room for a nice shop elsewhere in the house, but only room for one or two sets of tools close by the layout. Getting things accomplished is really like a ballet, the tool and material flow have to be choreographed or else certain minimums, (like walkways and fire exits) are compromised and that just can’t happen.

I’m interested in your statement that you only build things once. zi’ve seen some of your work and posts, you strike me as a serious modeller, how do you manage to build things only one time? I do a lot of research, read MANY how-to’s before a job comes up to the top of the list, but there are some things I just don’t KNOW going in.

Those things tend to be things that aren’t included on many layouts, some of the sound system complexities, waterall construction, etc.

Are you staying on safe ground, doing extensive testing beforehand, how do you push the edge, yet only do things once?

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Really far out experiments happen on the bench. If they work, they get installed on the layout. If they don’t, the parts go in the available parts inventory or the circular file.

OTOH, I’m working from well over half a century of hands-in-the-machinery experience, so a lot of things get built once even though I’ve never built anything quite similar before. I don’t consider anything ‘built’ until all the tweaking has been finished and the division super (me) signs off the work order. That includes yard throats with 3-way switches on curves and puzzle palaces of double slip switches.

Maybe I should rephrase that as, “Things that work only get built once.”

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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Naw, come on.

Being published doesn’t somehow make someone a great model railroader.

Nor does luck.

Danged hard work, done consistently and with an unwillingness to accept mediocrity makes someone “great” at this hobby.

13

Thank you, in that picture it looks reasonably good. I have thought about redoing it but will save that for another mountain backdrop blend. We have a new and last Wagon Road Creek tunnel portal for our Sn3.5 layout.

And if you are published enough you will become great no matter how unoriginal the thoughts you constantly publish and mediocre the parts of your large layout you really built.

Just a thought

Harold

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Okay, I have reduced your observations and musings to these few quoted statements…under strict license, of course. [:D]

I am like the rest; I prove stuff very shortly after I sit back and congratulate myself. If it doesn’t work, I don’t rest. Period. I have never had to tear out any wiring, but I have had to redo countless solders of the type under the layout, you know, the ones where you have to place newspaper directly under the area or…? I have torn out, by their wired roots, turnouts and sections of track that became useless after a while due to bad performance. Recall that I am in my youth in this hobby, and have much to learn. So, I learn many of my lessons the hard way, and have yet to relearn many of them.

So, you raise a good point. How to do a repair in place, or surgery if we can use that analogy. If I under

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Your post raises some good points, jeffers-mz, and one to which, perhaps, we fail to give proper note. I detect the essence of your post to be: Why do we do the things that we do and why do we do them in that particular way?

There have, indeed, been modelers and their layouts which have assumed near-legendary status; they have, I feel, become that way because of certain facets in their modeling. The originator of the Virginian and Ohio, Allen McClellan - I may have just mangled his name and I apologize if I did - is credited with originating the ‘beyond the basement’ concept of operation - have your trains going somewhere beyond the physical restraints of the layout - but he was hardly the first to do this. McClellan’s trains went off the layout into a storage area on the ‘west’ end to reemerge at a later time after a rendezvous with an 0-5-0 switcher. For the life of me I cannot remember the modeler’s name and I am unable at this particular moment to research it, but he had a layout in the late-'30s into the '70s called Delta Lines; in essence, he did substantially the same thing as Allan McClellan does on the V&O. In the mid-'60s Model Railroader reran a previous series on this layout titled The Art of Model Railroading which I read with considerable interest. Trains did not just run on the Delta Lines; they went somewhere and eventually they terminated at a yard. There was a through running capability and I will presume that it was used to effectively extend the length of the layout. Peddler freights worked along the mainline and had to keep out of the way of superior trains. Right smack dab in the middle of the line was a division point yard and here trains were switched before the cars proceded to their destination. This division point yard did, when boiled down, what modern hidden

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[quote user=“selector”]

Okay, I have reduced your observations and musings to these few quoted statements…under strict license, of course. [:D]

I am like the rest; I prove stuff very shortly after I sit back and congratulate myself. If it doesn’t work, I don’t rest. Period. I have never had to tear out any wiring, but I have had to redo countless solders of the type under the layout, you know, the ones where you have to place newspaper directly under the area or…? I have torn out, by their wired roots, turnouts and sections of track that became useless after a while due to bad performance. Recall that I am in my youth in this hobby, and have much to learn. So, I learn many of my lessons the hard way, and have yet to relearn many of them.

So, you raise a good point. How to do a repair in place, or surgery if we can use that an