How far will you go for realism on your layout?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
21

I have a different take on this.

I like well detailed accurate models when practical, but there are a number of issues I consider more necessary.

Broad curves with easements - my minimum mainline radius is 36", most mainline curves are more like 40" and above. I am building a relatively simple layout in a large space with big curves and big features to capture the “immensity” of the prototype.

Realistic train lengths - my freight yard will be 22’ long, my average mainline train will be 35 to 50 cars. Very realistic and only slightly compressed for my 1954 era. The layout will stage about 24 trains that length.

Passeneger cars must be close coupled with working/touching diaphragms - all of my passenger cars have American Limited diaphragms that touch and work, yet most of my passenger cars are selectively compressed 72’ cars from Athearn and ConCor. They have been upgraded detail wise, but the slightly compressed length combined with my large curves give the moving passenger train that “gracefulness” of the prototype.

Deep scenery - the new layout I am getting ready to start on will have scenes 3’ to 4’ in most places and as deep as 8’ in one spot. Trackage will generally be near the front with a good “scene” behind. I tried the “shelf” concept, and the double deck “concept” on the last layout, I was not happy with either.

I like well detailed structures - being a building designer and construction professional I appreciate and know the correct details on structures.

Lighting and night scenes - will be an important part of the layout.

Signals and CTC control - a must have.

What I don’t need or don’t do:

Every car does not need full brake rigging.

Every car does not have to be exactly correct, it just has to be reasonably representive.

I have a lot of fine detail cars and locos, some RTR, some I built or super detailed.

22

One of the major benefits of this hobby for me is the great diversity of activities it offers. One day you’re using carpentry skills, the next it is artistic persuits, or kit building, electronics for car or structure lighting, DCC sound installs then historic research to find out what signage may be found on a city scene or billboard.

Another activity is photography and this is where I feel my “detailing” skills are put to the test. Things show up in a photo that you don’t seem to spot by looking into the actual scene on the layout.

PH-D_Mather by Edmund, on Flickr

This is where I’ll compromise a bit, such as with wheel tread width, coupler size, grab iron or handrail diameter. Such things are unavoidable and not worth fretting over.

Union_Sta_departure8 by Edmund, on Flickr

I admit that I’m behind on some of my weathering chores. I prefer light to moderate weathering depending on the “age” of the car or structure as represented in the era of the layout.

EM1_7600_tone by Edmund, on Flickr

I like to see crews in the cabs, unless the diesel will be primarily a trailing unit. Eventually I’ll have drivers in most of my vehicles.

PRR_diner by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/gmp

23

Sheldon, I’m curious. How do you plan to build all of those trees?

Or will the deep scenes have a lot of buildings?

24

Ed

As long as we’re showing off observation cars here’s mine.

The figures are not Mel Castings, they are NOCH ladys of the night.

EDIT:

I did make molds of them for future ladies.

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

25

Both in various places.

Imagine this scene, 22’ long freight yard wraping around the corner of a room with two gentle 45 degree bends. Turntable and roundhouse in the “corner” behind the center of the yard. At a higher elevation, behind the freight yard, a four track thru passenger station with tracks over 12’ long. Behind that, the city. That section of the layout will be 5’ deep, and in the corner behind the roundhouse, from benchwork edge to the curved backdrop about 7’ deep.

Sections of the city in the back will lift out for access, creating a 20’ long access aisle, but most trackage will be within 30" of the front.

Under the passenger station and tracks, accessable from underneath and easily worked on with the city sections removed, one of the hidden staging yards.

Trees, nobody does a big forest with all actual individual trees. You only need actual trees for the visable front, then you just model the tree canopy.

The first time I did that I was only 15. I was part of a team that built a historic diorama of Harpers Ferry WV.

Around the whole layout most visable trackage will be within 24"

26

I refuse to use the pre-fab Z-scale anthills on my Z-scale layout. They don’t look realistic. I make my own.

27

It varies from model to model at times. Hre are some recent examples.

DSC03728 by wp8thsub, on Flickr

This truck is a 3-D printed Wheels of Time kit. I added etched mirrors and wipers.

DSC03691 (2) by wp8thsub, on Flickr

This boxcar was a “kit” from Cannon & Co., which amounted to laser cut styrene sides, and a bunch of commercial parts from other manufacturers, to build most of a car. Many parts required modification per the instructions, and there was a lot of extra detail to add - things like etched crossover platforms, rivet deals from Archer, home made running board brackets, door tracks and operating hardware built up from styrene strip and rod, plus plenty of other stuff.

Not everything involves that much effort, or I’d never get much done. I choose to do extra on some things here and there for the challenge of it.

DSC02366 by wp8thsub, on Flickr

One area where I rarely compromise is scenery. I like to model plausible drainage features and excavations, along with natural elements modeled closely from photos.

I do all of this because it’s enjoyable. If it wasn’t fun I wouldn’t bother.

28

Ants?

29

I returned to the hobby in my 50s, after 40 years of moving boxes of trains from one home to another, thinking, “some day.”

I discovered I loved the creative side, plaster casting, kit building and so on. I kept doing it. A four-walls-and-a-roof kit would take me a month of painting, decaling and detailing. I really like putting lights and interiors in structures, and I seek out those kits with the big windows that make my interior scenes visible. There are passengers in my coaches, engineers in my locomotives, and riders in my buses.

I’ve set up working crossing gates and grade crossing flashers. My railroad signals are just turnout position indicators. Are grade crossing gates realism or gimmicks? I don’t know, but I like them.

Weathering is important to me, but I haven’t painted my track or ties. I am meticulous about perfect trackwork, wheels and couplers.

30

Hi Rob,

The scene with the river running beside the track is really well done!

Dave

31

I had some nice scenery on this layout, but Cat #2 and Cat #3 each separately took their toll. My nice cornfield is being slowly eaten by Tiger. He already was eating a bunch of the trees (resulting in the removal of trees from the fall scene), and he has attacked the pumpkin patch that took a lot of time to assemble and get looking “right”.

Fortunately, some of the layout is basically barren Mojave Desert…but Tiger took a toll. Maybe in the next house…

I try to get my rolling stock correct within a timeframe (son has a mix of rolling stock). I made an oops and acquired some Genesis Twin 45 flat cars, then learned that 45’ trailers did not become legal until 1982. Since I have Alco motive power that was finished by Thanksgiving weekend in 1979, Twin 45 flat cars are just too late to run behind any Conrail or surviving patched predecessor Alcos. I need to have all elephant style flat cars with the bridge plates mostly intact. Already have some replacement correct flat cars.

The others will get bartered to a friend and/or sold on Ebay.

All my rolling stock, and most of my son’s, was in existence, in reasonably good to new condition, during the 1970’s. He has some exceptions: a cut of 14 NS Top Gons and a few later Autoracks, mostly BNSF orange. Oh, I am cheating with 3 Arrowhead Railgons, new in 1980.

The rest of the rolling stock, and all my diesels save one B36-7, belong in the 1970’s. Two big 4-6-6-4’s are also in Johnny’s roster, and two DM&IR 2-8-8-4’s are coming, but that’s it for steam. We have a few just because…

I opted for ease of layout construction to get trains running quickly. I have a couple pipe culverts, but no streams, and tunnel portals are too wide and too high (located on curves) so that lots of big stuff can pass through them, and I can reach my hand inside when there is a derailment.

My layout of abou

32

Here’s my own philosophy for realism.

Practicality comes first. Everything must work first before I even think about details. For example, I have a steamer without a headlight, bell, or tender coal load. They must match actual engines on the PRR roster and the prewar/postwar headlight is where I get really picky. Layout set in 1944, so clearly prewar headlights only.

Though my railroad is still just a dream, I already developed a basic scenery philosophy from experience in clubs. Starting off, it’s all about getting the railroad operational with only important structures and cardboard forms for mountains. I’m modeling a prototype, so my approach would probably be different from someone freelancing. Enough detail to set the scene without being too cluttered. (after all, my layout is set in 1944, so there wouldn’t be too much scrap metal, etc sitting around anyway.) I’ll have some highly detailed scenes, such as near bridges or in engine terminals.

For my freight cars, they need to be accurate in terms of matching photos of similar cars, etc, with appropriate weathering. In my case that would include coal dust, soot, and general road grime.

When it comes to the structures themselves, most would have been very old by 1944, and likely would have been in some disrepair. Everything in the modeled area was covered in a layer of soot and coal dust from passing trains. So everything would have to be heavily weathered. A new-looking building would both look out of place and unrealistic.

I personally have to have engineers in the cabs, passengers in the coaches, brakemen in cabooses, and passengers on platforms. Sounds have to be right, as PRR whistles were very distinctive.

Rail size has to be reasonably correct, as HO Code 100 track would look very out of place in 1944. Ditches in this area, according to the photos I have seen, filled up with vegetation anyway, so no point going out of my way to model them. The line was unsignaled, so N/A o

33

Thanks Dave!

34

To great lengths, and for me there’s joy and satisfaction galore in continually pushing my boundaries. A master I may never be, but not for lack of trying. Lance Mindheim calls it “Attainable excellence,” the exacting attention to color and texture, neatness, sharpness, perpendicular, cross section and detail that are essential to the creation of striking realism.

Regards, Peter

35

I go to the limits of MY abilities. After all isn’t the goal to replicate a world at 1/87 its real size?

36

I agree with your comment about limitations, but it’s my world, not the real world. Like the famous model railroaders Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, I get to say what is real in the world.

Every Christmas train garden at every fire house has building on fire. Having worked in a burn unit, there won’t be burning buildings ever on my layout. No car wrecks, funerals, graveyards, alleys filled with trash, g******, which is a prohibited topic on the forum or homelessness either. Can’t talk about the h*** word either, but I think my uncle might have been one during the Depression, so I would not rule that out.

I once wanted to be a tug boat captain, but I got over that and I don’t need port or harbor scenes.

After WW2 there was the rise of neighborhoods. Who wants to model suburbia? Ain’t no trains there, but they are as common as dirt.

37

Hmmm… for me…

NO: Burning Buildings, Car Wrecks, Funerals, G******

YES: Graveyards, Alleys Filled With Trash

I have an excellent cast resin ACW era graveyard that will look amazing on my layout. I also have dozens of cast resin rubbish piles that need an alley.

-Kevin

38

Apparently not that far at all…no sound, no smoke, no lights (other than those lighting the layout room), no timetables, no multiple operators, mostly freelanced locomotives and ditto for about half of the rolling stock. I have no compunction about including rolling stock that’s likely a decade-or-so too modern to be seen in the late '30s. Most of my passenger equipment is devoid of passengers, the locomotive crews are, for the most part, amputees or otherwise horribly disfigured, as are most drivers and passengers in vehicles. Unemployment is rampant, as most businesses have non-working doors and all of my LPBs are homeless, as there’s not yet even one house on the layout.
The city services (water and sewers) are represented on the surface of some streets, but don’t actually work, which is just as well, as the rivers don’t have any real water in them to supply drinking water or to carry away the sewage.

In a last ditch effort to save my model railroading status, I have installed windshield wipers on “The BEE”…

I am, however, ashamed to say that they don’t actually work…just as well, I suppose, as my rainmaking skills are shot, and likewise for the blizzards.

Wayne

39

LOL!!

40

Thanks for the laugh Wayne!!!

Don’t you have a garden hose and a fan?!? If you were to use those you could model Port Dover in real time today!

(For those of you who don’t recognise the reference to Port Dover, Ontario, the town is on the shore of Lake Erie and was totally flooded earlier today due to extremely high winds and rain coming off the lake).

Dave