I am wondering how many modelers have shifted the era the railroad represents. Obviously, the easiest thing to do is swap locos and rolling stock but there is much more to it than that. Anyone who has revisited an area that they hadn’t seen in 10 or 20 years can appreciate how much a town changes over time. New buildings appear where there was open land. Old buildings are razed, replaced, or repurposed. Additions would be made to some and others would be repainted. Old industries disappear. New types of businesses appear. Who would have a computer store on a pre-1980 layout. A two lane highway might be replaced by a freeway. A steam era engine facility would give way to diesel era servicing. The roundhouse would likely disappear. A wood coaling tower would come down or a concrete one might be left in place as an empty shell with all metal parts removed. The turntable might be an empty pit or filled in to make use of the real estate.
The Virginian & Ohio and the Utah Belt are two famous layouts whose owners periodically updated the era they were running. These layouts fully commited to moving forward in time with no thought of returning. To me the real trick would be to design a layout where you could shift forward and back in time. About 20 years ago, I remember one of the magazines featuring a layout with drop in scenery modules that could be interchanged with scenes from another time. Has anyone ever tried this approach?
Ive actually got a layout planned that mixes the 2 layouts. The 40-50s in one part, and the late 80s is the second. The tracks cross and 2 points, to give that "lookin back at the past, “look foward to the future” look. With steam and diesels running side by side. Not quite what your talking about, but close.
I’ve never changed era’s on a layout. However, the idea of replaceable buildings sounds like a good idea if the layout is built with era change in mind. That would be fine, but seems like a lot more work for the small details that make a good layout, like oil stains and such around engine facilities, road signs and markings, signals and such. If most modelers are like me, we build with one era in mind. I’m modeling in the 40’s-50’s era, however, if the occassion arises, more modern equipment will be temporarily run on it with no concerns about scenery. Ken
I remember here and there over the decades articles in the model railroad magazines about people who would era shift for different operation sessions - most buildings remained the same, they would change out some signs and automobiles (the most noticible of the era definers), and would have several scenic views (buildings + solid base + ground cover/sidewalk/driveway/details) to switch out between eras (e.g an old railroad car type diner becomes a modern stainless steel one). And of course the locomotives and rolling stock are changed out for the other era’s style, and then changed back for a different era session.
Vaguely I remember one person who shifted his layout forward by a decade every so often (perhaps every real year of time), and then reaching the (then) current time (80s?), shifted back to the 40s or something. Anyone else remember that?
I know several noted modelers have backdated their layouts, although Tony Koester’s no longer exists. I never considered anything like it, I stick with the modern era, though I am sure there’s something uniquely challenging about modeling the past.
Ian Rice has some good idea about changing buildings and scenery that would work really well with the era changing idea. In this day of foam scenery one could just leave a block open and fit different ones in. Maybe the whole top of the layout could be individual pieces of foam fit like a puzzle and be interchangeable except for the track. It would open opportunities to mdodel 2-3 times the number of structures you could handle on one layout. The individual pieces could be displayed off the layout as dioramas. Sorry to get carried away but somewhere in this rambling theres a hint of reality.
The magazine article I refered to in the original post showed just that kind of arrangement. These dropin modules were very similar to lift out access hatches that MRRs have used for years to get to hard to reach areas of their layouts. The difference was these were near the front edge. In some cases they were different versions of the same kit, showing changes to a building over the course of time. In other cases, a vacant land module was replaced by a developed area. Just the kind of changes you would expect to any real life scene over the course of time. If memory serves, they were liftout panels about 1.5 to 2 feet square. I don’t believe they were made of foam because I believe this article predated the use of foam base, at least on a wide scale basis.
I’ve thought about incorporating this kind of flexibility into my own layout, but it really seems like a daunting task. The real problem is what to do with my transition era turntable and roundhouse. I could simply remove the bridge from the TT pit and cover the center hole leaving an empty pit. There is an empty pit in Port Jervis, NY and I’m sure a number of other places. I have two roundhouses with a total of 14 stalls and it would be impractical to move them but it would be unlikely they would have survived into the modern era. It would be interesting to know how lon
check out the camas prairie rails website. There are fotos there of a diesel locomotive being used to demoli***he roundhouse here at Lewiston ID. Talk about a change in Eras.