Modelling on the South bank of a river- any thoughts?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Hello,

I’m giving strong thought to modelling the UP track in and around Portland, OR. Reasons include relatively close (I’m near Seattle, and have friends in Portland/Vancounver), desire for something a little “Greener” than much of UP’s territory, so forth. I’m currently thinking of an around-the-walls, two-level layout (perhaps staging on a third, even lower layout, but just two sceniced). The “shoulder-level” would have a yard/engine terminal, with a helix in the closet down to an “industrial/near-the-port” area. I’m thinking that the “river” would be in the aisle.

One thing which is giving me some thought is comments I’ve read in various track planning books (mostly from our host Kalmbach Pub.) have suggested some problems with modelling the South Bank- primarily:

  1. shadows- in the Northern hemisphere, being North of the tracks, shadows would typically be towards me, leaving all the nice details of scenary/trains either “in the dark”, or unprototypically lit “from the North”.
  2. a psychological tendancy (perhaps based on looking at maps) to think of “East” as “Right”, which would be reversed in the scenario I’ve described.

What I’m wondering is,

a) other considerations/ideas (sorry, I’m not as interested in BNSF, so the North bank is out [:D] )

b) has anyone out there tried this- did it “work” for you or not?

c) at least start a discussion- talk me into/out of this idea.

Thanks,

Brian Pickering

2

Regardless of season, but especially in the summer, the south bank of a river will be frontally illuminated in the early morning and the late afternoon.

3

Around Portland an overcast day would not be an unusual occurrence (we even have them here in Sin City occasionally.)

Under an overcast, the lighting is relatively ‘flat’ and mostly non-directional. Also, outdoors under an overcast is a lot brighter than even ‘sunlight’ in the usual layout room.

If you really want to illuminate the north side of a passing train, have your local scale model equivalent of O. Winston Link set up about a gazillion micro flash bulbs in reflectors along the riverbank while you catch the photo with your full-scale flash-equipped camera. (After all, why should Norfolk & Western fans be the only ones to benefit from Mr. Link’s thinking?)

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)