This question applies to all scales-including the plow-pushers(G scale)[:)]. Do you enjoy making your layout full of train tracks everywhere? Or do you like having lots of scenery and buildings on the layout? Also what eras and settings(town, big city, county, mountain) do ya have?
Thanks, Stephen
I strive for balance, but tend to lean towards track-heavy–maybe because I’m modeling a railroad set in flatland, with lots of switching action. I do have a lot of buildings, due to my focus on urban modeling–buildings become scenery in the city, as do streets, sidewalks, and people. I model a medium-sized city, period is 1946-1966.
My focus is more on the trains than the scenery. I am striving for a realistic appearance, so I try to avoid having a jumbled appearance, but the trains dominate.
Enjoy
Paul
I have lots of track, but also create the effect of lots of scenery through forced perspective and lots of flats and half-mountains
It’s a balancing act for me. Without sufficient scenery for the trains to move through, things look fake. However, without sufficient track for operating, things get boring. So I keep trying to define the edge between the two.
I have enought track to run as many trains as possible on this layout. But compared to my last layout, this has much more scenery. So guess it balances out. Its actually like 2 parts track to 3 parts scenery.
Definitely scenery. Nothing makes a layout look less real than tracks everywhere, and I was not that interested in operation. My layout is about 11x26 and has exactly one town, the rest is all scenery. It’s nothing more than a glorified test track but I like it. [:)]
It seems to me that once the track is in place (design, installation, wiring, operations), the scenery is where the real artesrty and life of the layout takes place. When it comes to time allocation, more time can be spent on scenery very quickly.
I thought I had too MUCH track on my present layout until I started putting in the scenery. Now I realize that I have just enough track to balance out the scenery, and I’m a very happy camper. By the way, the scenery is California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, so my trains are always running between stands of trees, over fills, through tunnels or across viaducts. Amazing how long a 20-car reefer train looks when rolling through scenery as opposed to just a naked layout.
Tom
As noted, this is a balancing act. I have a rural area with just a large bridge over a river(8"above the stream and 27" long bridge), and I have a yard area full of track(needs of the business). I try to have at least 2/3rd’s of an area devoted to scenery, but then I have long 2’ wide stretches of layout(25’ by 20’ room). If I was limited to a 4’x8’ layout I know the percentage of trackage to scenery will swing to the trackage.
Jim Bernier
It all boils down to what you want from your layout. Some like to have lots of track to switch forever and ever. Some guys love to do scenery and have some track but work the hardest doing scenery. See me I do not really care of the switching too much, but I love to se a train travel at scale speeds of 70+ Mph as in real life. I love to work hard on scenery to achive realism so I wanted to focus my work on that not constantly adding track, cleaning track, and switching trains.
If I built a smaller layout I would have chosen switching so i could cram all I want inot a 4x8 layout but since my layout is fairly big I can make it more scale like for buildings, parking lots, and etc, etc. I would have had four or five sidings in that area rather than four or five on a 16x13. It all depends on personal preference in this case Scenery for some and track for others.
Balance, tipping towards less track. In fact, my idea of a “perfect” model railroad would be in a large barn, walkarounf style, where the single track mainline is five miles long between towns, and has at least two feet wide scenery on either side of it for the whole run!
At one time I would have said TRACKS. But now that I’ve built my road, it doesn’t look right or feasible in the way it is built. So now (much to my chagrin), I am seriously considering tearing it down (about 90%) and getting rid of a lot of hidden trackage that would have been a nightmare to replace when it went bad. I did that in one place that was very hard to get to and said never again. So now I’m looking at an almost level road around 3 walls and a 10 x 9 foot extension in the middle of the room with a view block down the middle of this extension with some sort of loads in/out capacity. That means I will be more into scenery since I will have more open areas than before. If it works the way it should, I’ll have 30% track and 70% scenery. I sure hate starting over at 58, but it will be much easier to work on. Ain’t it great!! Here we go again!!!
I model the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.
Archie
I have gotten into places around prototype railcars with inches to spare around my 18 wheeler (Dumas Texas Meat Facility comes to mind) or driven past miles of grain hoppers at the elevator. snoozed for a few minutes as my car rocked to the ground beat of a very long and slow manifest grinding towards St. Louis.
Any kind of train takes room. To model the “stuffing” between buildings and towns as well as the scenery is a art where big things must fit in inches with room to spare. I probably would try to plan the track, just the needed track and not one inch more. Then push and pull the buildings, trees hills etc etc until everyone has room for something.
For example a walthers barge at the harbor will be several feet long. What a monster. But when I think that barge will serve a “Off table” steel mill, power plant, food market, refinery and other very large real estate eating industries “Down town” I would be very happy at the space savings.
I am BIG on scenery and detail. I detail everything on my layout as much as I can to make it look as realistic as possible. I model a warehouse district in modern times, so you know what kind of detail I am talking about.
jeff
Pictures! We need pictures! [;)]
I like the same amount of tracks, and scenery
I like the idea of having plenty of operation challenges, but scenery puts the life into the layout. There nothing finer than seeing a passenger or long freight winding through the mountains and valleys. So I am trying for a good balance that will provide good operation opportunities, but provide a realistic setting.
REX
I must admit, I lean towards the track side.
Reed
Off Topic to Aggro…
That’s a really good looking cab forward in your posts.
On topic…I enjoy doing scenery, so there’s plenty on my layout.
m