Perhaps some of you older farts recall an episode of Twilight Zone where people froze in place. Reminds me of the people on our layouts (except for the animated figures).
Since our layouts are frozen in time, with an unchanging backdrop and very little movement except for the trains and some accessories, time of day becomes quite important.
Most layouts I see model daytime, between about 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with overhead lighting and normal blue skies and white puffy clouds.
However, there are other times of day that are equally modelable. Let’s examine these a bit more.
Sunrise/sunset: would require a bit more painting skills for the backdrop and angular lighting would be desirable.
1 hour after sunrise or before sunset: very few have modeled this time of day but, IMO, it is equally as spectacular as sunrise/sunset. Angular lighting comes into play. The sky is a tourquis or azure, clouds are becoming tinged with color but still maintain their bright white appearance. These are my favorite types of day for modeling.
Night: usually, modelers simply turn off the lights and presto: night! But, IMO this time of the day–or even better, an hour before sunrise/after sunset, could be eminently modelable on a lower shelf layout by painting a dark, hazy (perhaps foggy) backdrop, and turning on some streetlights and house lights. The benefit of this technique is that you wouldn’t have to worry about lighting the lower level!!! I’ve never seen this done before but I don’t see why it cannot be done.
All times of day/night: some elaborate layouts use 3 separate red, green, blue bulbs each with dimmers to cycle through the day and evening. This has to be the best of all possibilities.
I have heard…not verified, that one of the clubs in the LA area runs lighting that corresponds with the fast clock…dims at “night” so lighting in buildings and such becomes visible…
Wow, Bruce; the difference is as great as day and night! Pardon the cliche.
It would be nice to see some layouts with scenes like you photoshopped.
Reg. the sunset picture, the effect also is stunning just an hour earlier. One technique, if you don’t want to paint the sun, is to hide it behind some clouds; possibly allowing some rays to shine through.
Check out the Aberfoyle O scale layout. They run a day-night cycle as well. You will have to navigate to the right part of the site yourself - since they use frames, I can’t give you a direct link. Enter the site, and click on the “Themes” tab in the upper right. Go through by clicking “Next” and you will get to the day-night explanation after a few pages.
I usually just shut the lights off for my night runs and turn them back on for day right now. With my new layout though, I would like to use some sort of a timed dimmer device because the train I’ll be modeling almost always runs starting when its still light but ends in the middle of the night.
MAbruce, I like both of those, I bet both would meake good backdrops.
The layout in the LA areais located in Alhambra, and I am assuming it is still there, as I visited it when I lived in SoCal approx 10 yrs ago. They had a fast clock and the daylite to nitetime was timed in conjunction w/ the fast clock. Nice layout and friendly folks, too.
Aren’t those layouts at Balboa park absolutely incredible. I last visited there just before I moved from Orange County about ten years ago. My family was fortunate to get a rare behind-the -scenes tour of the layout and it was interesting to see the Techachipi Loop layout from the side not normally seen either in person, or in magazines. Pictures do not do it justice. Thanks to my persistent 10 yr old son for making that happen!
Incredible is exactly how I’d describe them. Even my wife, who could care less about seeing one more train, set of ruins or battlefield in her life, was impressed.
The idea of a layout set for very specific yet static time of day, such as near sunsrise/sunset, would detract significantly from any realism on the layout. Since, in the real world, trains typically take an hour or more to traverse any significant distance, time could not believably be made to stand absolutely still while the trains go about their normal, protracted, schedules. Likewise, the necessity to produce the long shadows and reddi***inge of sunset time (or bluish for sunrise) would be a highly complex and very expensive task in its creation.
On the other hand, the usual nondescript summertime-blue-sky-full-daylight background of most layouts can be taken as any time between say 8AM and and 7PM. This is far more acceptable and logical and the seeming passage of time as trains operate, reasonable. It’s little wonder that most of us go with it.
Choice of a sunset background alone is not an acceptable means of portraying a sunset scene - it simply doesn’t work. MAbruce’s nicely done photo composite has a most definite surrealistic air about it because the mid day colors (particularly the greens) of the foreground are totally out of character with the sky colors. You can not fool with Mother Nature and get really believable results.
I should have addressed Dave’s additional suggestion of a nighttime setting for a layout in my previous post so here goes.
In fact, I have seen a few layouts set for night operations only and the recreation of such a scene, to be believable, is even more highly complex than for sunset/sunrise.
Since humans see mainly in black and white at night under low levels of illumination all vivid colors on the layout must be highly supressed. Absolutely everything on the layout needs to be strongly weathered in greys and to a lesser extent blues - locomotives, rolling stock, structures, everything - except in areas that would be well lit (loading docks, billboards and so on). Simply painting the sky dark (vaguely orange in a modern city!) and turning down the room lights does not make for a believable night scene except for the very naive modeler.
Hi
I do know of a group that used to get together ocasionaly and would run a full twenty four hour time table on a very large home layout in real time.
One of the group had knowledge of stage lighting so his layout used stage lighting techneques to get night and day.
regards John
Not having a layout yet, that leaves me a lot of time to think of different techniques I will probably use on my future layout. One of these is the lighting effects. I plan on modeling all time of days, mind you, I’m not a prototypical gal, so if I want to run train during sunrise time all day long, that’s my choice, I just want to have fun.
What I’ve thought of doing is tu use different colors of incandecent lights, white, red(or orange) and blue, in the right proportion, with dimmers. That way, I could give the layout the reddish illumination of sunrise/sunset, and the bluish lighting of the night. If the room’s lighting is off, then the bluish lighting should tone down all bright colors and give the white and black impression of a night sky. I’m also tempted in making a backdrop lighted in the back, with tinny holes, it could give the feel of shining stars in the sky.
Lighting for day and night effects is something I have always planned to do someday. I installed lights in buildings and poked wires down through the layout when I placed the buildings but it is a major hassle to get to the underside of the layout. Everytime I work on, I damage something else. FUTURE layout will be more accessible below, have curves gentle enough to run trains w/o derailing and hopefully some lightning effects.
Through LIGHT, not painted sunsets. In cinematography, we learn to paint with light. Here are some 3D computer renderings I did for Karankawa passenger terminal on my dream layout.
Texas Chief arrives in evening after dark, overnights in Karankawa (based on Galveston) leaves for Chicago about dawn. My version of combination of station and railroad office building have about 6 stories to prototypes 10 or 12.
Karankawa (Galveston) is an island seaport. Lights in port cargo warehouse buildings paralleling railtracks. Port bldgs could hide staging tracks, ships visible over top of cargo sheds.
YOU can have variable lighting - if you want to spend the money to get it. (Most don’t.)
Our club (Columbia Gorge Model RR) spent $24,000 for Sunrise to Sunset.sequences, and we did all the installation and design .
What’s lighting worth to YOU? Too few are willing to invest money for even a lighted Valance with Daylight’ phosphorescent tubes. (Recommended). What say you ??
My layout is portable, and when it’s not hanging on the wall, I set it up in the living room where there are two large picture windows. Luckily, the afternoon sun shines through, and I get a natural evening look. I installed night lighting on the layout, too; but, by the time it gets dark, my wife is usually pestering me to put the layout away so she can sit and watch TV in peace. Some people!
