I’m a big believer that every model railroad hobbyist is free to pursue whatever style or interest gives them the most satisfaction. But when a layout charges admission, I figure it’s fair game.
Yesterday we were up in Jim Thorpe, in PA’s Pocono Mountains, to ride the excellent Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway . After, I decided to check out an HO display on the second floor of an old commercial building, right next to the train station. Well, it was a dramatic demonstration of the fact that big doesn’t mean good.
It features over 1000 feet of HO track . . . and no turnouts. That’s right: no operating possibilities here: you got 14 continuous loops, and when they turn on the layout, playing a canned audio track, each has a train going around and around. The scenery is vaguely urban, with buildings and blocks plopped around, with no rhyme or reason. The streets are disconnected loops of slot car track. Let the pictures speak:
I was curious and wasn’t expecting anything wonderful. So I got my $4 worth of curiosity satisfied. So, has anyone seen worse?
Looks pretty impressive to me, especially with all the lights on. It’s a display for Joe Average and the kids to enjoy. Not every big layout that charges admission has to satisfy your demand for prototypical operation and scenic fidelity. Lighten up.
It is a “display” layout, the HO equal to a Roadside America or Choo Choo Barn. And as such, based on your three photos, does not look bad at all.
The great unwashed masses that know nothing about our hobby are often bored silly by our freight yards, prototype operations, or prototype based scenery.
Think “Christmas Garden”, as as they go it looks OK to me. True, not what I’m building but people may not want to pay money to see that either.
I was very disapointed when I went to see Northlandz, but others love it, go figure.
Non model railroaders watching a layout want to see lots of trains go round and round. Goto any train show and look at the display layouts the clubs have there. Trains are just going round and round. You know that’s not what the club layout looks like for the regular ops sessions.
The late Bill Schopp, aka ‘Layout Doctor,’ strongly recommended that display layouts should have several continuous loops and that no turnouts should operate while open for public view. He even suggested that a complex junction should be undergoing maintenance (gandy dancers, MOW train, etc…) as an acceptable excuse for NOT switching trains to alternate routes.
I have seen a large (HUGE!!!) HO layout being operated exactly as the prototype actually operates. Being a railfan and an operator, I could appreciate the near-perfect rendition of the joint BNSF-UP route over Tehachapi Pass. The mundanes would take a quick glance, then move on to something else. Fortunately, in the rail museum at Balboa Park, there’s lots of, “Something Else.”
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - layout not intended for public viewing)
A display layout designed to attract the attention of non-modelers (and maybe some modelers as well) and possibly increase attendance at the host’s function. The prime idea is to let the largest number of trains possible run at the same time for the general public to see. I’ve seen similar layouts in other parts of the country. If you ever get to the Marblehead Penninsula in Northern Ohio, there’s a large layout of this type called Trainorama. Strickly a tourist attraction that has been operating for at least 35 years. Many areas with small vignettes, mostly in HO, and a few long runs, but with a smattering of Z, N, S, O, and I think even some old #1 and what used to be called Standard guage. Also a lot of static displays and even a small hobby shop. Visitor’s book is signed by people from all over the world. At one time there was a similar but smaller layout being built in one of the museum type buildings at the Cedar Point Amusement park. In fact, the ride at Cedar Point that supposedly has the highest number of riders a season is a large narrow guage loop around the park (a very large model railroad?) called the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad. Some interesting facts about the numerous fairly old, mostly coal fired, steam locos they have running can be found on Google. But, even though they haul passengers in 3 or 4 open coaches each train, they still just run trains around a loop, two at a time. Not much different, really, than the subject mrr?
Several times in the past when my Model Airplane club put on an annual mall show, we had a local MRR club put up a modular HO display, that while it did have switches, was by it’s very nature of independantly constructed modules, devoted to runnng several trains at a time around a large multi-track key shaped layout, with a few action accessories thrown in. Sometime a minimum of operatrion in the form of staging was used. A
I agree with what has been said. This is not a museum piece or museum-type layout, but it is an attraction. Due to its size, it needs to be simple so that it needs little in the way of paid or volunteer ‘help’ or monitoring. And the intended audience, on the basis of paying or merely appreciative viewing volume, is going to be, not informed modellers, but Ma, the kids, Auntie Barb, Cousin Joe the computer geek, delivery truck driver Dan, and so on.
Northlandz can best be described as a model railroading semi controlled disaster there is nothing that even resembles prototypical operation or even armature operation but it draws people in like fly’s to honey (and notice I am being nice here) but every person I have spoken to around here who knows I am into model trains or if it comes up in conversation like it did last week at a neighborhood BBQ people ask have you been to Northlandz oh you have to take your son he’ll love it. Thats who it appeals to as many of the display layouts do. I wouldn’t go as far as calling them the great unwashed but I did get a chuckle out of that comment. We go to layout like that one and study the heck out of them, first off it’s part of our DNA, maybe we’ll pick up an idea or see something cool we might want to model but when we realize what it is we kind of back off on the enthusiasm and maybe get a little critical. I heard Tony Koester once tell a story about visiting a guys layout he had been corresponding with along with a couple of friends. It turned out to be a bowl of spaghetti on a couple of pieces of plywood or something along those lines. After they left the layout he asked his friends what they got out of the layout and the response was a couple of snickers and laughs. His response and I am para phrasing well thats your own fault you can always learn something from looking at other peoples layouts you jsut didn’t choose to look for it.
There is always something of value in every layout no matter how big or how small. Heck I would be impressed that they could run a lot of trains that long without any derailments a big time goal for me. Your criticism wasn’t wrong, everyone has the right to their opinion especially if people are charging you to look at their stuff, but I think it was just maybe taken out of context and perhaps you just didn’t look in the right places.
I’ve never seen a model railroad club layout with anything beginning to represent operations. All that’s seen are members who have created their individual trains with 0-5-0s and operate them round and round. My impression is that club members just want to run (not operate) their own trains
Sorry your experiances are so limited. I know lots of clubs and round robin groups with well run prototype operation sessions of both timetable and trainorder styles of operation.
Hey, the layout looks pretty impressive to me! Its obviously built for display, and I suspect the audience is mainly folks that do not have MR as a hobby. IMHO, this layout is built to run trains, and to show them and the structures off to the general public. One other point, it is probably a lot cheaper (labor wise) to have trains running a set route than have an operator(s) running each train and doing car set outs and pick ups, holding up in passing sidings, and the like.
I guess what I am saying is that those of us with layouts often have a different purpose in mind for the end result. To some its to facilitate prototype operations, to others to run trains on various closed loops, to others to show off rolling stock & structures, etc., etc. Of course many of us have a combination of the above in mind, and that’s just great!
FWIW, enjoy the layout, and see what you can learn from it.
I’ve got to disagree with the assertion that clubs just want to run trains. At train shows, sure, that’s what they do, and the clubs that do little more than attend train shows may in fact do just that. Most of the clubs I’ve seen outside of train shows want to operate – some of them so much so that it can be very intimidating to attend an operating session for fear of doing something aprototypical.
But I have to agree that there is a vast difference between a layout that’s intended for commercial – or even informational – display, and one that’s intended for use / operation. If you have only peripheral interest in railroading, would you REALLY find watching a switcher take an hour or so to assemble a train at 2-3 mph fascinating? You might find it interesting to actually DO it… but can you imagine the chaos that would result trying to let people operate one of these huge commecial layouts? You can control access to your own layout, and if someone insists on treating your trains like slot cars, you can throw them out, or at least never invite them back. Not so easy to do that with a paying customer.
One of my favorite places to visit is a local pizza place. A local artist – Steve Cryan – maintains two layouts (actually one, because they’re connected by a long run of track along a beam at the back) in the restaurant. They’re beautifully done (Steve’s craftsmanship and attention to detail are incredible), but totally unrealistic. Planes through barn roofs, dinosaurs, the Stay-Puff marshmallow man, all kinds of silly vignettes, and two or three trains endlessly circling… Nope, I wouldn’t want it for MY layout, but it’s great to go look at every so often. When I go to see “display” layouts – whether they charge admission or are part of something else – or look at the club offerings at train shows, I’m looking at the level of craftsmanship and detail (not “realism”) and not
I don’t have a problem with continuous run operation when the railroad is an exhibit, but it seems to me that the creators of that railroad might have better served the visiting population if it was an educational exhibit about the kinds of trains and industries that existed in the area of Jim Thorpe (was Mauch Chunk), PA. There is a whole lot of RR and coal mining history there, and to provide only a gee-whiz exhibit with the same superficiality as Northlandz is doing the intelligence of the “great unwashed” a disservice. After all, the town wouldn’t have been there at all, if not for the LV, CNJ, the mines, etc.
I am planning a trip to the LV Scenic Gorge RR (the 1:1 scale RR) and will probably not bother spending any $ on this layout. Thanks for the tip-off!
From what I’ve seen of this type of layout, that would not be practical. Except for Train-O-Rama,I have seen little of no contact between the operators and the public. In fact, several of these exhibits have a glass wall between the trains and the viewing public. Even at the displays and shows I’ve seen, few of the people ask questios beyond things like “How much did something like this cost?” or "I’ve got some trains (from when I was a kid!) (For my kids!)(I set up at Christmas!). They rarely spend the time to get any kind of history lesson. Having spent many hours at my (Model Airplane, sorry) club’s mall shows, I have ususally found maybe 4 or 5 people will get into any serious discussion in a 12 hour day.
And, while this statement might get some people a bit upset, I’ve over the years found that only model ship builders are more stand-offish and hard to talk to, either at mall shows, or at club open houses, than model railroaders.
And I am a model railroader, model boat builder/sailor, and model airplane builder/flyer.
Work downtown, live just north of the city in Cheltenham township. There’s a decent local club layout, the Chelten Hills group. I keep telling myself I oughta join. Are you in the Delco Springfield, or Bucks?
You’ll enjoy the RR. It’s $12, which is not bad, for the regular cars, about an hour ride out and back. They usually run diesel power, but there’s a schedule on their website for special trains. Do check ahead of time, they don’t run all weekdays. The restored train station has a good information center and there’s plenty of other worthwhile attractions in the area.
Also of interest, there’s a group devoted to the old switchback gravity railway, with a dream of getting that back in operation. Probably a long way from reality, but what a concept!
