A recent science news story about researchers studying a mountain range in Antarctica mentioned, in passing, that research camps on the continent were served by “a small train” installed by the Chinese, running from one of their bases to the top of “Dome A” (an ice mountain) with “several depots along the way.”
Well naturally I went hunting for more information at once. Unfortunately, it turns out to be trains: yes, railroad: no. Cargo trailers are linked up train-style behind a tractor that runs on a snow road. Oh, well.
However, it made me wonder if anyone has modeled layouts of imaginary-- specifically, fantastical-- railroads in unusual or extreme landscapes. I suspect that everyone who becomes interested in this hobby must have thought about it at some point (for example, after seeing the cartoon where Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam play chicken with two locomotives on dozens or hundreds of tracks all crossing the same canyon at different levels).
Have you ever indulged a real wild-eyed fantasy on a layout? Whether it’s a train in Antarctica, or one going through a town under attack by Godzilla, or spiralling up a mountain like that scene in the “Polar Express” movie-- or anything truly fantastical.
I realize this sort of thing is officially frowned upon, but I’m planning on a fantastical scene with a waterfall at one point on my next layout (it’s not apparent on my track plan). Has anyone else done something outrageously unrealistic but nevertheless really cool on a layout of theirs? (Not just unrealistic in the sense of necessary compression.)
Several years back in an April issue, Model Railroader featured a tongue-in-cheek article about a lunar railroad-- used to haul some kind of ore on the moon. They so far as to build a small diorama portion of the layout for a photo.
The movie Total Recall with Arnold Schwartzanegger had a scene with a train operating on Mars.
Our local PBS station has been running a promotional spot for a nature show. Part of it involves a researcher studying prairie chickens, IIRC. She send a decoy female prairie checiken out along a track from the blind that hides her and the camera. The track looks like it’s G gauge, with the scientist moving it back and forth by radio control. Eventually, “she” derails and falls over, but apparently the “female” is good enough to fool the males, who come out of the scrub and do their display of inflating the pouches in their chests.
Yeah, no particular prototype, but it is a railroad.
Hey Goodnight… If someone’s “frowning on it” then they don’t get it! It’s your railroad to amuse you in any way that does it for ya. If someone’s frowning… ignore 'em.
[:D] Don’t misunderstand me! When I say it’s “officially” frowned on, I don’t mean anyone’s frowning at me in particular! I just suspect-- even though we generally talk about prototypes and realism-- that there are modelers out there who have some honest-to-goodness, no-excuses flights of fancy on their layouts, and I’d be interested to see them. And since it seems unlikely that the pages of Model Railroader magazine will ever have an article featuring photos of the old “Wildly, Unrealistic & Cool” RR, maybe we could see them here.
I doubt that anyone’s devoted a whole layout to that kind of thing, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that a lot of people have something tucked away on their layout somewhere. Maybe just a stray dinosaur roaming the woods. Or maybe something wilder…
Anyway, if you’ve got something like that, let’s see it! (I’d post some pics of my own, but right now mine are just in my imagination. But I’ll share once they exist.)