This layout and layout building forum seems like the proper place to discuss layouts that appear in Model Railroader. Monroe Stewart’s Hooch Junction in September MR has some impressive modeling and scenes. It also is an interesting and in fact highly developed example of the use of display loop running. The article did not seem to address this part of the design.
DISPLAY LOOPS
By “display loop”, I mean a loop of track on which a model train can run unattended indefinitely, round and around. The EXTREME case of this would be a loop with no turnouts, spurs, etc. A “train racetrack”. (I once built a layout like that with a twice around loop, crossing over itself by grade separation. I needed a layout in ten days to demonstrate at a non-modeling show, which could run for hours with no operator in attendance. Avoiding turnouts allowed quick construction with little chance of track glitches.) Most amusement park trains follow a display loop scheme, with one or two turnouts to allow storing trains offline. Another prototype example of display loop would be a track run in front of the viewing grandstand at a “Railroad Fair” where locomotives can run by
Interesting how two people can look at the same thing and come up with two completely different interpretations!
When I looked at that plan, what I saw was too many ways to confuse basic staging-to-staging operation. You saw the possibility of setting up ways to have lots of wheels rolling at the same time. I will instantly concede that yours is the better approach for keeping non-model-railroader spectators happy. My concept of proper operation (strict adherence to published timetable,) while fascinating to me, will bore most non-operators to tears.
The Hooch Junction is a clever and well done `adaptation/improvement of a very old plan that appeared more than 50 years ago (maybe more than 55 years) in Model Railroader, in an article by Linn Westcott entitled “If I had a Million” – the HO layout he would build if cost was no object. It is one of the truly classic articles of all time.
The idea of those central peninsulas was quite novel at the time, old hat by now, but still a good way to add milage without doubling back through the same scene. The layout has to be judged by the layout standards of the time, which featured lots of running, often by timetable, but not necessarily disciplined running with waybills or switch lists. The concept of the “sincere” layout where a train is seen going through a given scene just once was not yet fully developed and indeed some track planners of the era took pride in how many times they could loop around themselves. The old “Layout Doctor” articles in Model Railroad Craftsman provide a good indication of what in the 1950s and 60s was considered top notch layout design. Few would built to those plans now, at least not without major rethinking and alterations.
That was in the days of self contained multiple loop layouts where trains all originated and terminated on-site (often in the same yard), where a car picked up from one on-line industry would be delivered to another on-line, often just a few feet away, and so on, although Westcott was ahead of his time in advocating hidden holding tracks – sort of like staging yards. It is interesting to think that Westcott was thinking of DC cab control not DCC for running all those trains, and that was the day of the central control panel, not walkaround control (although Westcott also advocted a progressive cab control that involved certain walk around factors). That would have been miles of wire! Some of those old central control panels were (are
By golly, Dave, you are correct! I knew I had seen essentially this same trackplan somewhere before but it would have been a stretch even for me to pick up on its association with Linn’s “If I Had A Million” layout design of half a century ago. I’m going to have to pull out those old 1950’s bound volumes and look it up again. And as I recall, on first seeing that article in MR long ago, thinking, “Man, no one would ever build something THAT big and complex!” How times have changed, huh?
As we all know by now every layout, like every modeler, has its strengths and challenges. Hooch Junction, which for those who havn’t seen it was also featured on vol. 3 of the Dream, Plan, Build series of DVD’s, gives the first impression of being huge in scope. Beyond that, however, Monroe Stewart has show his engineering abilities quite well in his very impressive kitbashing and scratchbuilding abilities as well as his scenery construction. His stated objective of this large N scale layout was to see long trains (almost prototypically long) run through great scenery vistas. While his layout may a close inspection lack something for those who are intensely interested in operations by large groups, it certainly accomplishes the stated goals of the builder. I think it is a great example of some VERY fine work.
Guys I take no credit for recognizing the If I Had a Million in the Hooch Junction – it was mentioned in the previous coverage of this layout in Great Model Railroads a few years ago – which also featured different scenes, different ships that Monroe Stewart has built, etc. Well worth hunting down if you like the layout. I really should have mentioned that fact in my previous post.
I think the key to the Westcott/Stewart approach is that sheer size accomplishes much of what hidden staging and/or view blocks and or very high benchwork do for a smaller layout – provide the notion or illusion that the trains come from somewhere you can’t see, do their work or pass by, and then go on to somewhere else you cannot see. You cannot take it all in in once glance. If you can see the entire layout at a glance this kind of realism is difficult to convey.
Just to mention one more Westcott/Stewart link – when N scale was pretty new, Linn Westcott wrote an editorial pondering where this new scale would go: I am paraphrasing here but might be close to his language. His question was, would modelers use this new scale to build true approximations of major railroading or would they use it to build the same dinky little model railroads we’ve always built? I think it’s still a good question. Stated another way, one implication of his question is that maybe N scale layouts should not be just HO or O layouts made half or a quarter of the size. Maybe N scalers should take HO or O layouts and build them to the same size footprint, but with more space around tracks and between cities etc.
Another lesson to be learned from Monroe Stewart is just how much detail is needed to make a structure or a ship or a scene look superdetailed, without really being superdetailed. Dean Freytag is another master of this. You look at the stuff and think man there
This is a very important point and one reason why I switched to N scale. Many complain that with N scale you cannot superdetail models as in HO. I suppose this issue relates to one’s personal goals in modeling, but to me one of the strengths of N scale is the ability to suggest much more detail than is actually, therefore usine a certain level of detail to trick the eyes and the mind into filling in the gaps and seeing more than is really there.
Art Fahie (Bar Mills Models) is another master of this sort illusion. In particular, the City of Amherst on his N scale Niagara & Pearl Creek contains a great many large kitbashed structures. If viewed very close up, many of the corners or joints between buildings don’t really mate up, the application of details is a bit irregular, etc. However, from a normal viewing distance from the layout, the city appears magnificent, perfect, and totally super-detailed!
Should you ever get into studies of the eye/brain function, you will find out the mind only registers about half the info the eyes provide in an image and the brain essentially fills in the rest from memories of similar scenes, vistas, or experiences you’ve had before (the old situation of a person seen at a distance being taken at first to be an old friend, only to have you realized at their closer approach to be a total stranger who doesn’t look l
This eye/brain aspect you bring up can work both ways. Sometimes detail can actually be excessive and detract from realism. For example, I happen to think that most plastic models of wood boxcars, passenger cars, and reefers have far too great a space between the boards.
When you see a photo of a prototype wooden car you do not focus on the individual board and the gaps between boards as you tend to do with most plastic, and even wood, models. Some of the more realistic looking wood reefers I have are actually printed car sides from the 1940s. A printed line suggests the separate boards. (some printed car sides had a slightly embossed line as well)
You take in the overall effect but do not get distracted by oversize detail.
Ditto many brick buildings – I think often the mortar is far too pronounced. When you look at a brick building from say 200 feet away you do not focus on the individual bricks as you tend to do with model buildings. That is why some cardstock buildings can look pretty good. It is also why I think some guys overdo it when making the mortar white versus the red or yellow or gray bricks.
Or the famous Frank Ellison “stone” bridge that was painted flat cardstock. Ellison had to keep repainting it because guys could not resist touching it to see if it was really textured or painted.
Absolutely correct! Unfortunately, there is a whole “school” within the hobby which over-weathers, or accents the sort of detail you are pointing out, to an absurd degree. Indeed, mortar lines are only rarely visible at all at 300 feet or so (and then only if recently pointed up - they are not a glaring feature visible at 200-300 yards!), prototype sheathed freight cars normally look as if they had essentially smooth, flat sides from any real distance except in very oblique lighting, cracks in concrete are typically invisible at a few tens of yards and tar and gravel roofs are definitely not composed of rocks the size of your fist! These are basic mistakes hobbyist make repeatedly