Realism

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

How much do you let realism slide?

I have a steel mill on my layout. My intention was to have iron ore and limestone delivered from “someplace.” I’m now thinking about trying to fit a quarry in for the limestone supply but the places that I have room for it won’t be very realistic. What I mean is that digging would be into an area that is near track, tunnel portals, or bridge supports that wouldn’t be done in the real world.

I know it is my railroad and my decision but I try not to do things that are going to look stupid. Would you not worry about this or would you scratch the idea?

2

Rick.

While not exactly a quarry, I did have a sand and gravel pit on my corner module with a crusher/screen plant on another module. My scale track was on another module. The modules would do the train shows around eastern Massachusetts for about seven years. I still have them but not set up.

Pete.

3

Here is a short glimpse of my gravel plant and the haul road to the pit at the 1:20 mark.

https://youtu.be/hyL2Tjhu2W8

Pete.

4

I let it slide a lot.

Not just talking about the fantasy roadnames, but the actual presentation.

I want my model trains to look like model trains. I want photographs of my model trains to look like model trains. I want me scenery to look like a model.

The trend of hyper-reallistic model railroading photographs is something I find incredibly boring. This results in everything just looking the same.

I am striving for character and atmosphere. Character requires leaving some reality on the doorstep, so to speak.

My version of 1954 will not be a time machine, but rather a filter. I have studied 1954, and it was in fact a very ugly time. None of that ugliness will be represented in any form in my train room.

I like brighter colors than were used in 1954. I like my scenery to look like a diorama. I model no particluar place at all.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

Hopefully my photographs convey the look I am going for. It is a fantasy, and hyper-realism can be left for others to pursue.

-Kevin

5

Hi Rick. Having a quarry, mine or whatever to model realistically needs a lot of space. Space, modellers do not have. Therefore it is a case of being clever with what is available.

A true case here in the U.K…

There are two quarries near to each other; Barrasford Quarry and Gunnerton Quarry.

When the Border Counties Railway was built, both quarries took advantage of it.

A siding was laid from the main line to take the quarry stone away.

For trains to take the stone away both quarries had a narrow gauge rail line transporting the stone from the quarries to the siding.

To model that scenario all that is needed is a siding off the main line; a short narrow gauge line to ‘off stage’ and a small loading/unloading area. No actual quarry to build as it/they are three or four miles away. Simple, yet realistic.

As an aside. Anyone modelling a railside company do not forget the ‘weekly boxcar’ with ‘other neccessities’. Stationery for the office staff, coal/oil to heat the building, foodstuff for the workforce, new uniforms etc. etc… Adding variety to train running.

David

6

I personally like as much realism as time permits me to put into my layout. But, I admit that building and detailing are the part of MRing I enjoy the most. Operating trains, though certainly enjoyable, is of secondary interest to me. Offering well weathered structures with lots of details to see are what get me going. Finding that small little item on the layout (like the cat in the window sill of a building or trash on the ground around a trash can) are what visitors often respond to - and what I enjoy providing.

Our club recently had an open house and it was the small details that we often heard the most comments about from visitor. And along those lines, when we are running trains at the club, the locomotives and cars that are weathered just seem to fit in and look natural whereas those that are “fresh out of the box” clean and new, appear jarring in their appearance and seem to yank me back to realizing I am just viewing models.

I don’t think either way (hyper realism vs a relaxed approach) is wrong or right, just an example of the hobby offering different things to different people. And as long as the “big hand man (or woman)” is happy, that’s really all that matters.

7

Realism can be a very slippery and flexible concept, and I’d also say it is a concept that has changed since I first became a model railroader. particularly in the matter of track plans.

Back in earlier days and continuing really right into the 1960s, most layouts/track plans felt a need to make clear on the layout where the train(s) originated and where they terminated. Thus there was hardly a layout without the obligatory roundhouse (almost invariably tucked into a main line curve) and turntable and some sort of yard, may be right next to a tunnel of all things, even if all of that was at the expense of modeling the actual money making part of railroading that being industrial customers out on the main line. Cramped layouts were the rule – they didn’t look very realistic and often there was not even a small scene that could be photographed to look rather realistic. But they were “realstic” in that locomotives were serviced, fueled, trains were made up, all on the visible part of the layout.

So which version of “realistic” wins out? The functional realism, or the visual realism? These days I think more and more modelers follow the notion that the locomotives are serviced and trains are made up and eventually end up at locations far far away and we model the stuff in between: the towns and cities, the steel mills, factories, grain elevators, coal mines, whatever.

This kind of comparison can go on forever. I’d just add that many of our British counterparts prefer to find their realism in a different area – capturing the very realistic appearance of the track and right-of-way. We are doing more of that, in my opinion, but I think the Brits are still ahead of us on that angle.

Dave Nelson

8

Thanks for the feedback. Probably a better word for me to have used is plausible although I think most of you understand what I was asking.

As was mentioned a situation that comes up often is track going into a tunnel just for the sake of using a tunnel. In my situation I have room for track to the quarry and a structure (Walthers Glacier Gravel.). I am struggling with the conveyors and then a digging scene. I looked things over again and I can pull it off by making a pit and running the conveyors down to it but they will be at a very steep angle (another unrealistic situation.)

9

My imagination likes to be kept busy, so I put it to good use in my train room. Between illusion and imagination, I get to enjoy my trains the way I like to.

10

I let realism slide alot…for starters my model is 1/87 the size of the real thing…it is made of plastic…the locomotives are electric and draw current from the tracks… there are no crew aboard…trains are no longer than 20 cars and run around a loop… everything other than the trains are completely static…even the rivers are frozen in place. Yet I’m told I should add weathering and tagging for realism…

11

I try for realism when I can, and I also believe in details that add to the realism, like trash cans in alleys and weathering.

At the same time, I carefully construct a rock in the bay with a mermaid on it, or the Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow and Dorothy in the Enchanted Forest of Oz.

12

Model railroading in any form requires a “Suspension of Belief.”
It is up to the individual as to what level of compromise is required to meet his/her goals/desires.

[2c] Cheers, the Bear.[:)]

13

I use realism as a guide, but work to the good enough idea. And also what reaswonbly works. The quarry on mine is just the business end. the pits arent on the layout at all. just evidence the rest of the quarry is just off the layout. I do have the main running along an old quarry cut wall. but the area in question has been quarry active for about 130 years now. that wall could be the original face from many scale moons ago.

SHane

14

Who is it going to look “stupid” to?

I ask this question because your layout should be designed for the audience. If the audience is only you, then you choose the rules. If you want to show your layout off to serious model railroaders, then realism is required if you don’t want to get nitpicked to death. If you are showing to the general public (train shows), a lot more “cutesy” is allowed. If you are looking to get photos of or articles about your layout published, then you have to have sections that look realistic. You get the idea.

A second factor comes in - how much prototype exposure you have, and how much you care about being prototypical. My parents gave me a subscription to MR for my 8th birthday (early '60s). I avidly read a lot about and saw photos of model railroads, but not very much about the prototype. Until then, we had had a giant Lionel layout in the attic, but the space was needed for more children, so the switch was made to HO. Eventually, I had a 4x6 (Atlas Simplicity and Great Plains) with no scenery to slide under my bed. So to me, a great model railroad was one that looked like MR’s project layouts of the '60s - a model of a model.

In reality, that’s probably what the majority of model railroaders do - model a model. The proto-realistic guys sneer at this approach, but if it’s what you want to do, have at it. I’m at peace with my decision - plausible free-lancing in my theme and mind, but not particularly accurate in my execution.

I have come to realize that if I just want to run trains, the joked-about Lionel animated accessories on a tinplate layout are more fun for me than a scale layout. Switching operations on a shel

15

How many cars per day will the steel mill use?

If you build a quarry, how many cars per day will the quarry be able to ship?

What area of the country is your railroad located?

Apparently limestone in large quantities where a quarry can be justified is not just found anywhere.

In my opinion you should have the limestone brought in by train from somewhere off the layout.

16

Having grown up and working in the aggregate business. The angles of conveyors can vary from level to very steep. There are belts with grousers that can work up to a 70 degree angle. Then there are the bucket conveyors that can go straight up. The Walther’s kit has covered conveyors that in real life expensive and rare. An enclosed conveyor would be used over foot and vehicle traffic. Miles long overland conveyors are expensive to maintain plus as the quarry grows in size, management makes the decision to either move the plant or more haul trucks. Moving the plant is usually more economical over more supporting equipment. Today there are portable crushers, screeners, vibratory feed hoppers and power generation equipment that rival and surpasses what a based plant can do. The last crushing plant I built was based on portability. It could be disassembled and moved and reassembled in a couple of days instead of months.

Pete.

17

While there are several large limestone quarries within a half-hour drive from my home, as much of the Niagara Escarpment is limestone.

I don’t have a quarry on my layout, but my railroad moves a lot of limestone in open hoppers, all of it from “elsewhere”.

Likewise, there’s lots of coal moving in open hoppers, too, and many of them are from the same “elsewhere” as the coal mines, usually somewhere south of the Canadian border…that also offers a good excuse for running a lot of hoppers from American railroads.
I have a lumber yard on my layout, but the lumber comes from either northern Ontario or from British Columbia. The lumber yard simply sells to the nearby locals, usually loaded on a company truck or picked-up in small amounts by nearby customers.
I do run flatcars, gondolas and boxcars loaded with lumber, but most of it is just passing through.
I was originally going to have a steel mill, too, but a single blast furnace, with its ancillary structures would take up nine square feet of layout space, and there’d be no more room for a stripper building, or rolling mills, coke ovens, along with all the other necessities needed for steelmaking - I spent over 40 years in a steel plant, and models of those buildings would overwhelm even a large layout.

I do have a number of reasonably large factories producing things, and they get materials usually by rail, and then ship out finished goods either by rail or by truck, depending, of course, on the products they offer.

I don’t, however, have much room to allow things like hundred-car-trains , even though I used to run 70 or 80 car trains, simply to determine how many locomotives would be needed to move such trains up various grades.

Nowadays, 20 or 30 cars are enough to make a reasonable-looking tr

18

Hi Rick,

Do you want to look at your railroad or run it? I have prioritized my allocation of space on my still under construction railroad according to what will get the most action. I don’t see any use in modeling beautiful scenes where trains will rarely run. You can use your imagination for off layout enterprises if not modeling them in actuallity will give you better operations.

[2c]

Cheers!!

Dave

19

This was at one time the largest portable limestone crusher in Florida.

-Photographs by Kevin Parson

Look at how young I once was:

-Kevin

20

Lots of good information. I think I spend more time in this hobby figuring things out and then building than actually running trains. I will never be published or take things to a show, and I don’t do operating sessions with others. Nobody else in the hobby visits and the only viewers are my wife and sons. Everythng I do concerning the layout is for my own satisfaction. I would say my goal is that things don’t look toyish.

Thanks for that. I won’t know the angle exactly until I build the kit and test fit but I think it will be around that 70 degree angle.

FYI - 933-3149, which match the conveyors included in Glacier Gravel, are not covered. It is easy to miss and I didn’t realize it until I saw where someone had put gravel in them.

You mentioned enclosed conveyors being used over foot and vehicle traffic. Are open conveyors