Hi all, I am building a BNSF inspired Fictional railroad. I made a mistake of looking at google maps [in map mode] and thinking ‘right across there will look good for my route, so Ill draw a line here’ but then a few days later, when I loaded the same area on satellite mode I was a bit surprised. Satellite view showed that my original route runs through some rather hilly and rugged terrain. Never the less, I am sticking with the route, I just have to make it look like it will run between the hills. I chose to freelance my layout with a prototypical inspiration. I wanted to model BNSF’s Marias pass, but I couldn’t work out a plan to fit everything in that I wanted. The idea behind the layout is what if BNSF built a short cut across Montana, direct from Spokane Washington, to Havre Montana to cut down on transit time. I know it has some flaws, and it probably would not be feasible to build in real life, but this is why we freelance, is it not? At present the layout plan is being made up as I go, I never could put pen to paper as I would just hit a mental block. Progress is slow, but it’s a start. And I can say I now know the satisfaction of getting something built, even if it is only the start of a very long build. Head over and check out my blog, even it is a work in progress. http://bnsfmonnashsubdivision.blogspot.com.au/ Cheers, Anthony.
Gidday Anthony, At least you have a good idea on what you want to achieve, and while you might think that your progress is slow, from looking at your blog I would have to say you’re doing rather well.
http://bnsfmonnashsubdivision.blogspot.com.au/
Took the liberty of making your site clickable.
Keep Having Fun, Cheers, the Bear.
Good morning, Anthony
I checked out your blog, and it looks like you are making good progress. I look forward to following your work. Realistic freelance is how I approach this hobby as well, and your statement about not being able to fit in everything we want is common to most of us. Selective compression is our cross to bear.
Have fun,
Philip
That’s the way to do it. A bit of research and a reasonable possible route doing what you want it to do. Fanatasy roads do not have to be all that fanciful. They can be real, reasonable possibilities that just never happened in real life, but could have, given new or different circumstances.
Doing this kind of research and work always pays off in that it makes you feel a bit better about your road as so much of it is based on real facts, real geography and real possibilities.
I spent a year dreaming mine up and am still doing research on the realities of the era and area.
Richard
Sounds like fun. As a writer, I enjoy making up the stories that go with my proto-lanced layout as well as building it.
I had a similar idea when I started planning for my current layout. I wanted to “create” a fictitious short line running bridge traffic between the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific somewhere in California. I also ran into problems finding a location that made sense. After lots of research that got me nowhere, I finally stumbled onto a real short line in Southern California that interchanged with the Santa Fe and was eventually bought out by the Southern Pacific. The entire history of the Santa Ana & Newport fits between 1890 and 1900 so there wasn’t much information available. As I prefer modeling the transition era, I created a fictitious history for this line assuming it stayed independent and solvent through the 1950’s. Best of all, it allows me to model geographical areas I am familiar with and also allows my layout to include the SA&N, the AT&SF, the SP and the Pacific Electric.
I’ve always enjoyed the Southern, but didn’t want to be tied to a specific line and location. With the small space I have there is no way to convincingly model a real location, which if I did, there was bound to be someone who just knew that town X didn’t have business Y at location Z so by freelancing I avoid that trap. Instead I go for the “looks familiar, but can’t quite place it” concept.
The good thing is the upstate of South Carolina had a lot of small and regional lines in it’s history, some of which include the Carolina and Northwester, Lancaster & Chester, Piedmont & Northern, Buffalo-Union Carolina, Columbia, Newberry, & Laurens, not to mention a bunch of 1800s short lived railroads. So it was easy to slide a free lanced railroad into the mix. Then the fact that the Southern owned/managed some railroads, using SR painted equipment, but with the smaller railroads name on the equipment (C&NW for example) gave me the best of both worlds. Strong tie to a prototype, but enough confusion to be plausible in the real world.
Now just need to find a way to slide in the bridge over Stamford creek to give a little tie to the original English 8 lords proprietors to add some more plausibility.
I am fortunate in this regard because the area of Orange County, California I’m modeling has changed so much since the 1950’s that few visitors to my layout would know “that Town X didn’t have business Y at location Z.” As long as my scenes look familiar enough to get people to recognize a location, I’m happy. So far though, the only person to recognize much on my layout was a former mayor of Santa Ana who just about drooled on the floor when he spotted my Santa Fe Santa Ana station I scratch built from a few photos (his pet project while in office was getting the current station built). He also recognized my Holly Sugar plant in South Santa Ana (modified Walthers Greatland Sugar Refining kit) and Triangle Square in Costa Mesa (all scratch built structures loosely based on photos). Most everyone else has needed an explanation of what they’re looking at so I guess I’ve got a bit more work to do. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the relative modeling freedom that my layout’s fictitious history has provided.
That’s the thing about the south, and probably a lot of rural areas of the country, they don’t change much at all. We recently took my daughter on a college hunting trip back to where I went as well as the town I grew up in. I was like nothing had changed except 30 years have gone by. The only thing that really changed in all that time is jobs – the mills closed so people have begun moving away looking for work. Read an article a few months ago about someone who took a canoe trip down the Broad River in SC. He called it “rewilding.” Nature reclaiming what had been mills, farms and towns and returning to what it was a couple hundred years ago. In many ways that is what I’m trying to capture - a way of life that has come and gone.
The best thing so far is that I have found some locations that I would like to model just for the scenery, that I can blend into the layout, the Missouri River is one thing I won like to fit in. On my layout I have a swing out section across the doorway which will have a large bridge across a river. There are some other scenic spots I would like to include, and I will try to blend them into the back drop somewhere. Another thing I will do is have a winter scene, something I have always wanted to do. The annoying thing is the time it is going to take to build the layout, but in the end it is worth it.