Okay, okay… I know other people have already discussed this, but I have to toss in my hat![bow]
Pelle Soeborg continues to be one of my biggest MR heroes.
Consider for a moment that: 1. I don’t heap slobbering praise very often and 2. my modeling interests couldn’t be farther from Pelle’s. I model Pennsylvania in the steam/diesel transition era in N scale. He models the western US in the modern era in HO. So why I am I starting a thread about him?
Pelle embodies everything I respect both in a modeler and as a plausible layout. His article this month was dead-on. It’s not the “amount” of details that makes or breaks the layout, but the right details in the right places. I’m an East Coast guy, but I’ve traveled all over the beautiful American West, and no modeler in my opinion has absolutely nailed the Western scene like Pelle. Add to that praise that Pelle lives in Denmark and not souteastern California, and it’s all the more impressive.
He’s a scenery craftsman extraordinaire. Moreover, those modern restaurants and motels on his layout are scracthbuilt. Not everybody realizes this, but he runs his own model structure company making these same modern structure kits to fill an obvious gap in the model market.
Everything on his layout works together to create an incredibly realistic, plausible theme. There are no distracting odd-ball models with a detailed backstory stretching plausibility. Everything is so normal, everyday, mundane that the effect is jaw-droppingly spectacular.
I’ll tell you what, every time I see his work I get the urge to abandon my beloved 1950s Pennsy and switch to modeling the modern big-diesel era. My wife would kill me if I did, though!
In summary, even this dyed-in-the-wool steam-era Pennsy N scaler is in love with Pelle’s modern UP/BNSF HO d
Okay, okay… I know other people have already discussed this, but I have to toss in my hat![bow]
Pelle Soeborg continues to be one of my biggest MR heroes.
Consider for a moment that: 1. I don’t heap slobbering praise very often and 2. my modeling interests couldn’t be farther from Pelle’s. I model Pennsylvania in the steam/diesel transition era in N scale. He models the western US in the modern era in HO. So why I am I starting a thread about him?
Pelle embodies everything I respect both in a modeler and as a plausible layout. His article this month was dead-on. It’s not the “amount” of details that makes or breaks the layout, but the right details in the right places. I’m an East Coast guy, but I’ve traveled all over the beautiful American West, and no modeler in my opinion has absolutely nailed the Western scene like Pelle. Add to that praise that Pelle lives in Denmark and not souteastern California, and it’s all the more impressive.
He’s a scenery craftsman extraordinaire. Moreover, those modern restaurants and motels on his layout are scracthbuilt. Not everybody realizes this, but he runs his own model structure company making these same modern structure kits to fill an obvious gap in the model market.
Everything on his layout works together to create an incredibly realistic, plausible theme. There are no distracting odd-ball models with a detailed backstory stretching plausibility. Everything is so normal, everyday, mundane that the effect is jaw-droppingly spectacular.
I’ll tell you what, every time I see his work I get the urge to abandon my beloved 1950s Pennsy and switch to modeling the modern big-diesel era. My wife would kill me if I did, though!
In summary, even this dyed-in-the-wool steam-era Pennsy N scaler is in love with Pell
He’s been featured regularly in MR since about 2005 or so. He has an article in this month’s (April) MR. He also has a book about building his layout produced by Kalmbach.
I totally agree with you. Mr. Soeborg’s work is inspiring. He’s in my top five list of favorite modelers.
I particularly appreciate his approach to scenery vs. track–give the scenery some room and keep the track to a minimum. It’s kind of a Zen-like approach to model design. With Soeborg’s work, you feel like you’re actually standing trackside watching trains.
Amen to the above. I model the southwest and can’t even come close to his level of realism. I bought his book of course, I hold it up in front of my layout and realize how bad I’m doing. I don’t let it depress me , I let it spur me on to do better. His work also leaves me in awe , Dave. And as you said , he lives in Denmark , god , I lived out in the west my entire younger life. His ideas in this article really hit it dead on, for all of us. Less is more.
I’ve been through the town of Mojave, Calif., many times. When I first saw his layout featured in MR, I thought that I’d NEVER seen a modeler nail the look and feel of a prototype community any better.
There was a neat follow-up to his feature story in the magazine, which must have gotten a fair amount of attention in that town. Pelle’s depiction of the local motel had some non-prototype palm trees added along the side of the building. The motel management saw the article and liked the look so well that they ADDED real-world palm trees to their property! It’s maybe the best example ever seen of life imitating art.
Well said, Dave. No matter what era or scale you model or prefer, there’s ALWAYS something to learn from someone else. I have admired Pelle’s work since his first article in MR.
Will I ever achieve the level of detail that Pelle has on his layout? I highly doubt it. However, I can still allow it to spur me on to greater efforts in achieving realism on my own layout.
Good post there, Dave! Your post - and some outstanding responses - reflects my own admiration for this man’s modeling.
I, too, am impressed with Mr. Søeborg’s modeling; I got my April MR in the mail yesterday but I have only had time to browse Mr. Søeborg’s article but he has always, to me, hit the right flavor of detail on his layout. This right flavor draws my attention and I find myself giving close scrutiny to his published photographs. I always look forward to more of the same.
I subscribe to the concept of KISS; Mr. Søeborg’s, Dave Barrow’s, and even Allen McClellan’s and Tony K.'s layouts are impressive because things are kept relatively simple with a few very superdetailed scenes. As much as I enjoy the Franklin and South Manchester I acknowledge that I really do not entertain the energy for that measure of detailing which I term "busy!; to each his own! I guess. I will own up that I do sometimes question whether this reflects a measure of laziness on my behalf. I guess I will soon be finding out; I have acquired a space of approximately 300 square feet and in the near future I will commence construction of my Seaboard and Western Virginia Railway in its first permanent location since I dismantled my last home layout in 1990.
I too, admire Pelle’s layout very much, and I appreciate the effort, time and talent that went into building it. That said, I would not be happy with it in my basement simply because operations is my main interest. That doesn’t mean I ignore the scenery, but it means I do need a railroad that I can operate. His industrial base is very small, and other than running from staging to layout to staging, there isn’t a lot of operation in the sense I enjoy there.
Probably, there is no one railroad that will meet all of the criteria of each one of us with our varied interests in the hobby, but all those different interests are what make model railroading, whatever that really means, alive, interesting and creative.
Excellent Posts by everyone. A craftsman is a craftsman is a craftsman. As an East Coast urban modeller I too am very far removed from Mr Soeborg’s choice of location and era. But I have admired his work since I first saw it MR Magazine several years ago. He contiunes to be an inspiration to everyone who can appreciate what it takes to make a layout that realistic, that believable and to look that accurate.
I’ve been through the town of Mojave, Calif., many times. When I first saw his layout featured in MR, I thought that I’d NEVER seen a modeler nail the look and feel of a prototype community any better.
Same here. As a matter of fact, I actually lived there as a kid for a couple of years in the early 50’s (Mojave was much different then). The thing about Pelle’s “Daneville” is that it captures the look and feel of the town without trying to model every building and every road junction. The point is not that the Motel 6 at the junction of Rte 58 and 14 is not modeled, it’s that anyone who’s every been through Mojave in recent years will get the feeling that they’ve seen “Daneville” in real life.
here I am reading this praise of this fellow modeler and I am amazed as to what some folks can do with there hobby. I think I live in a bubble or some kind of time warp, I just keep putzing around my small laylout trying to figure things out and hoping I don’t blow up the place or break the bank…
Pelle,I am very impressed with your layout and workman ship,you are an asset to this hobby.I have read and seen all the work you have put into the layout.I model the Milwaukee Road Iowa Division in N Scale from 1979-1980 at the time of the embargo of the Iowa Division,and can only hope my layout turns out half as good as yours.Great job! Steve Church Milwaukee Road Iowa Division
Add my vote to the landslide in favor of Pelle Soeborg’s modeling. I especially like the way he inserts people where they could reasonably be expected, not all over. A crowd would completely destroy the realism of a somewhat somnolent small town, but two men discussing the quality of a stack of lumber…
I do take minor issue with a couple of the, “Dikte Soeborg,” not because I think he’s wrong, but because one size does not fit all.
He wrote, “Avoid the temptation to install unusual trackwork…” As it happens, I model a prototype that, at one station on a single track railroad, had a distorted diamond crossing, one corner of which was a double slip switch. There was one other turnout in town, to a seldom-used (in 1964) freight shed.
He wrote, “A roster full of … gigantic tank cars detracts from your efforts to build creditable layout settings.” On a recent drive through the local industrial area (to the plastic recycling center therein,) the ONLY rolling stock I saw were several strings of weiners on wheels, parked at propane distributors’ unloading racks. Again, it depends on the prototype you’re modeling.
Again, that (and other things I didn’t include) does not invalidate his thesis. It just proves that the Mojave Desert in the very recent past, the Broad Way half-hidden by coal smoke and Central Japan in 1964 were different places, and sometimes different rules apply.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Mojave Desert garage)
Hain’t got mine yet. Sounds cool. I’m going to model a freelanced Appalachian-crossing RR set in modern day. However, the newest diesels i’ll run are SD60s.