Finally began work on the room that will house my 3’ x 9’ N Scale LDE. Here’s the plan. I borrowed a lot from Bob Smaus.
It looks good. I like the indented design. Many people (myself included) have tried to make 3’ wide ovals, only to discover that reaching the far tracks takes some twisting, turning, and a vocabulary that I wouldn’t even want to have. Where you have the city on the right side, it might be interesting to put some tall buidings as a backdrop. I’m doing a large city as a backdrop for one of the areas on my layout, and it is most impressive.
Looks good. Is the area from Serrano Creek to the south end of the yard generalized to capture the essence of the valley? Will there be a refinery a Valley Oil or is it up stream?
I experimented on my last layout with photo backdrops of Wichita, KS and it worked great. Going to have downtown Fresno on the right before the tracks run under Highway 99. I also realize N scale looks better like Bernie Kempinski’s TENNESSEE PASS, if you keep the scenery to a minimum. Less contrived city scenes and more track and open area. Fighting the temptation to compress a lot of structures into the scenes. Like Tony Koester talks about in LAYOUT DESIGN ELEMENT. Only model the scenes, one by one. Like the layout the did in the new MR from Denmark with veiw block modules like musuem displays.
Here’s how Wichita looked on my last layout:
[tup] Thanks Eric - need all the help I get about SP in Fresno in the 70’s. Modeling specifically the area from North of downtown to Herndon. Citrus Cove will be like Aroyo on Smaus’ layout. Valley Oil will be in a badlands area with brown,dried out grass between Fresno and Aroyo called Quart. There will be tanks and a loading platform. I have some tanks leftover from HO Interstate Oil, gonna doctor em’ up with Plastruct N ladders and railings.