I have been noticing lately that alot of modelers’ model a certain year, or a certain month and year.
It got me thinking, and I was curious to know if anyone has ever thought about modeling a story consisting of years instead of just one. Kindof like in real life, things change everyday. Why can’t the model?
Now this is just from my observation, and from my reading. But there are alot of modelers out there that want a prototype railroad, or want it to operate like real life. Then shouldn’t the layout change as if it was real life. Instead of having scenes, figures would be moved around, and cars would be moved around. Tree limbs would break or fall over.
Now I can only imagine that this would require alot more time and detail, but wouldn’t that make it more prototypical? Kindof like following a storyline. Keeping records of all the changes and stories to go with them.
I know, I know it’s amazing that I haven’t hurt myself yet by thinking this way, but it was just a thought and I figured that I would share with you all, and maybe hear your thoughts on the subject…maybe add alittle to it…thanks for taking the time to read this.
I’m building my layout as dual-era, mid-30’s and mid-60’s. Besides the obvious swap-out of locomotives, most of the rolling stock and the automobiles, I’ve considered scenery changes as well. Right now, the only thing I’ve gotten around to doing is the gas pumps at the Star Garage. I’ve got one set of pumps for each era, mounted on a styrene “island” that I can swap off. I also set up the City Classics grocery store so that I could exchange the windows to keep the right sale prices for each era.
I’ve considered this concept as a way to continue building and detailing my layout even after all of the scenery is “finished.” (No layout is ever “finished,” of course, but there comes a point where the track is all ballasted and there’s no longer any pink foam or other structural material visible.) The site now occupied by Burns Coal and Oil’s tank farm will be scaled back to “Burns Coal,” and the tanks will be replaced by a skating rink. I may also add some coal-oriented structures to my engine service area, which would no longer be there in the 1960’s.
Many model railroaders do this. Eric Brooman’s Utah Belt is one that comes to mind. Seems they recently broke the “all EMD” roster and added GE units. I believe the CAT mountain also keeps rotating rolling stock & power to keep up with the times.
Our club sort of does this, but we are making up the stories going backwards into time as to how the layout got how it is now.
My road is a fictitious “what if” but does follow a story / time line that is based on real places, trackage and history, that I hope gives it a creditability.
I don’t really have two eras, so to speak, but do try to depict a period of years with the power (steam and diesel) and rolling stock. I have also taken modelers license and compressed some time frames.
I model northern California SP and steam logging in 1909. I have included a 30 inch gauge logging show along the SP line. I have developed a time line for the 30 inch freelance section which begins in 1900 and ends in 1936 when the saw mill burns down. I have modeled several fire hazards each of which could lead to this end.
I once developed a story of how this all could be intergrated and sent an article to MR with my ideas entitled" Time Sharing". It was turned down as being too complicated and for now, I will remain in 1909. But, I intend to refine my ideas further at some time in the future.
About 20 or more years ago, I read an article in one of the smaller publications, Railroad Modeler maybe, that had modular drop in scenery which would allow time changes to the layout without destroying what had been there. It was an interesting concept and I considered it for my layout but ultimately decided against is. I’m having enough trouble getting it done to represent one year, much less two or three.
Besides the obvious changes to rolling stock and automobiles, advertising signs are a great way of dating a layout and they would have to be swapped. Types of businesses come and go and that would need to be addressed. For example, small mom and pop type businesses such as grocery stores, hardware stores, or drug stores have for the most part been replaced by large chains or big box stores. On the other hand, a 1950s layout wouldn’t have a computer or cell phone store. The biggest challenge would be to replace a rural scene with a developed area. This is where the drop in scenery would really come in handy if one wanted to be able to shift back and forth.
The V&O and Utah Belts are two famous large layouts that would periodically update their era to keep operations more recent. As I understand it, they only shifted time forward, never backward.
As for me, I want to remain stuck in the 1950s. I might someday get the urge to occassionally run more modern freights and Amtrak passenger trains, but I can’t see going to the trouble of updating the scenery. I’d just run the modern trains through my 1950s setting and use my imagination to block out the things that didn’t belong.
My fictionalized area of Japan, Kashimoto-ken, has a multiple-page written history that starts before the Tokugawa Shogunate, explaining who did what to whom, who owns what and how certain things got the names they have. When it reached midnight and was about to cross over into October, 1964, I looped back to midnight at the end of August, 1964, and isolated September, 1964 as a closed, permanent loop.
My operating scheme, now only partially implemented, is to operate all the trains that would have run during that 30 days, then start over. Since I am a solo operator, I suspect it will take me an average year of pretty regular operation to run a full month - longer if I get involved in major superdetailing of anything.
I know that Joe Fugate has a sliding time window type of system where he repeats the same 10 years of the 1980’s era and repeats each year again every 10th year. I’m sure he could explain the process better, but he swaps out locomotives and rolling stock based on the year they were acquired and used by the SP. I would guess that some of the operations change over the years too. Not sure about the structures, scenery, and trees though.
I am attempting to fashion a similar sliding time window system that models the Southern, Norfolk & Western and Norfolk Southern merger of the 1980’s - 1990’s over a 20 year period.
Mine too. I had to go back and build the Wabash & Erie Canal “backwards” (to Toledo / Lake Erie first and to Lafayette IN second - because transportation routes that don’t link up to the rest of the nation are expensive flops) in order to get Ft Wayne IN to be an industrial powerhouse city by 1900. But what I learned inthe process was a lot of fun.
I have another alternate history timeline that allows the Penn Central to survive and thrive. I had to start making changes from during WW2 and really edit the past from 1955 on - to get the railroad to earn $1400 (a W&E Canal figure, by the way) profit for 1976.
I do a “fast calendar” so to speak, shifting earlier locos and rolling stock into hidden staging and newer equipment out as a session (or sessions) progress.
It helps that the area my layout is set in doesn’t change much scenery-wise.
I was going to do the timeline thing, certain place certain time, etc etc. That when out the window less than half way thru the building process, oh, it could all fit, I have pleny of room for the original idea, but- it had a hollow ring. what about all the places around the world, that had trains and scenery I miss, my favorite spot to watch trains as a kid? So, no timeline or even a location. Just scenes of memories. Old English harbours, African velt, the place I rode my bike to hoping a train was due. Do purists care? Don’t know, don’t care. Do friends and visitors care? Absolutely not. People are so awestruck at layouts in general, no one ever cares if it is a jumble of scenes, and a mixmatch of trains from different eras every few minutes, the public doesn’t care at an open house at a club, no one you know will have a clue, some people admire the idea of family or historic scenes in model form, the type of train rolling thru it doesn’t. But I try not to mix match the equipment, foreign power with their specific cars, early steam with wooden, no old billboards with diesel, that sort of thing, works for me…people building a particular ‘historic diorama’ for a museum absolutely must have everything just so- for…say, 1pm may 10th, 1869, but you don’t have to… I once was told this is suppose to be a soothing hobby, not an obsession!
I realize that a few well known hobbyists actually do have layouts that “evolve” with the passage of time but most of them do it in a more or less superficial fashion. However, for the typical hobbyist, including even the most serious modelers, such a practice as you suggest is highly impractical if one attempts to do it authentically. The only thing than might remain fairly static on such a layout would be the general terrain and, at least in the modern era, even that in many instances would show signs of being altered by man over the passage of years. Most hobbyist have difficulty in finishing a layout…probably more than half never do. Likewise, the periodic changing-out of equipment, vehicles, structures, signs, roads, lighting, land usage, even to a degree forestation, would be equal to the expense of repeatedly building your layout anew every few years and ecomonically totally impractical for 98% of hobbyists, easily running into the tens of thousands of dollars in the case of even some well detailed, modest-sized, layouts.
CNJ has a major point here, space and money. I haven’t done this yet, but did made arrangements for options by building scenes (buildings and landscape glued as a unit) on lightweight poster board thin sheets. Rigid but light. The same real place can have two or more periods in time modeled on different sheets. Your town- 1870. 1920, 1970, etc. Pick them up and change the time period as the mood hits you. Storing the others in a safe place is the next problem. CNJ brings up the point of vegetation, i.e. New England in the 1880’s was virtually denuded, by the 1980’s tree branches were looming over mainlines. And again as CNJ mentioned, try to ‘finish’ the layout, no matter what ideas may crop up, this is what really impresses friends and family, the whole thing coming together and running well.
The nuisance and expense factor of major changes over time is why I decided to confine my modeling to a single month, rather than trying to span years or decades. In the back-country places I am modeling, nothing much happens over a span of 30 days. Even a house under construction is unlikely to be completed. (The concrete ties got put in over the summer, but the welded rail that was laid out during the last week of August is scheduled to be installed during the first week of October.)
There is also the little detail that I know what the area was like during September of 1964. That was the time of my only reasonably lengthy visit.