Model railroading is a cold weather hobby for me and most of this past winter has been spent building the town of Willoughby, a mythical lakeside resort in southern New York state which is at the end of a shortline that connects with my equally mythical New York, Binghamton, and Western RR. The thought hit me about halfway through this project that I have spent most of this past winter on a scene with almost no railroading in it. I have laid all of 6 feet of track. A single track enters this area and terminates at the depot which sits on one side of the town square. That contrasts with the approach which Tony Koester wrote about in his most recent Trains of Thought column in which he promoted the benefits of narrow shelves which model little more than the right-of-way. The backdrop provides most of the scenic element. Certainly this approach saves a lot in terms of both time and expense. I’ve read about an even more minimalist approach in which modelers conduct full blown operating sessions on The Plywood Central. Certainly with these approaches, the focus is almost entirely on the railroad. On the other end of the spectrum are legendary modelers such as John Allen and George Selios. When we think of the Gorre and Daphetid we think about the magificent mountain vistas and floor to ceiling scenery. With The Franklin and South Manchester it is about the fantastic urban scenes. The railroad certainly is a big part of these layouts but it is the scenery that makes them standouts.
So it seems to me that we fall into two camps. Model railroad builders and model world builders. The former places the emphasis on the operation of a miniature railroad while the latter makes the railroad part of a miniature world. There is no question that I get my joy from creating a minature world. I could have begun operations before there was much scenery but that really had little appeal for me. I wanted to see my trains running through realistic looking scenes. I spend far more time creating th
Of those options, I suppose I’m closer to the former. The areas modeled exist to set the stage for operations, and to establish the environment in which they occur.
In the process, some locations end up rather minimalist in nature, like this one where there’s not much besides the track. This was done to maximize aisle width.
This scene’s about a foot deep, again to make way for the operating aisles.
Another foot deep scene here.
I wouldn’t consider optimizing the layout design for operations to mean scenery or other elements aren’t important. However, there’s only so much information that needs to be conveyed to make a scene look appropriate to fulfill its role, so I tend not to devote much layout space to town or scenic areas much beyond the railroad and its immediate surroundings.
Don’t get me wrong, I like having scenery to run my trains through, but I focus more on operation than on scenery. Yes, I have (had) completed scenes, and at minimum “greenery” (grass mat) on my layout, so no plywood central, (or, in my case, blue/pink foam central) but if the operations are not there, I am not happy with it and adjust till the operations fit, then work on scenery.
Zero ballasting, zero buildings/trees/roads etc… until the trackwork is bulletproof, and there is operational interest. Then comes the scenery work. (Grass mat is just to cover the blue/pink foam, not for final scenery, as it gets covered by my final scene. I just really disliked having blue/pink ground… My railroad is not on Jupiter!)
My layout is areas I wished I grew up at. For instance I always wanted to grow up on a farm, so I have one on my layout, always wanted to live in a small town, so I built one.
The scenery does it for me, back drops are fine but they should just add depth to your scene.
My favorite RR is the UP and my layout is not any particular place but the scenes I built is what i fantasized as a kid. I wanted out of the ghetto so in my layout and life I achieved that fantasy from so long ago.
You’ve done a lot with that one foot. If I had just looked at the photo I would have guessed it was a good bit deeper. I’m having a hard time seein where the 3-D scene ends and the backdrop begins. You’ve really blended them well.
Having spent 36 years in transportation logistics, planes, trains and trucks. Model train operations do nothing for me as stress just doesn’t scale down. Getting a $15000.00 surcharge for the taxpayers, because you took a little too long to unload/load a 747 freighter makes for a bad day. Having trouble getting my boxcar uncoupled with my wooden skewer just means it’s time for another glass of wine.[(-D]
I am definitely in it for making my own miniture world as real as my talent will let me. I am still working on the talent part of the deal.[:S]
I love trains and RR history and especially the history of the CPR as it is interwoven with that of the country itself. A model RR adds just the right amount of animation to bring my miniture world to life. I usually have my 4-4-0 crawling around the layout when I am working on it. I just have to remember it will be coming by every six minutes or so.[(-D]
I am firmly in the lets’ get the trains running and then worry about the scenery. While I have started at least 8 layouts over the years, only 1 or 2 had any scenery. My current layout will have scenery after the trackwork and wiring are done and working.
A couple of thoughts. John Allen worked on his layout for 20 years and never completed the mainline. John Armstrong’s layout was 50 years old and still had some plastic building parts leaning against an unpainted cinder block wall.
First I am a railroad modeler and second a industrial modeler. My ISL will have weeds,scrub trees,bushes but,I focus more on Dumpsters with industrial waste,stacks of old pallets and chain link fence.
I knew that John Allen never completed the mainline so he could operate the railroad as he envisioned. He still had one major bridge that needed to be built before he could drive his golden spike. He developed an operating scheme to work on the uncompleted mainline. Essentially trains ran in reverse from Great Divide. They backed out of the station and then went from there.
It’s an exaggeration to say the G&D was 50 years old. There were 3 iterations of the G&D. I don’t remember the exact years for the final one, but I believe it was a little over 20 years old when John passed away. Sometime in the early 1970s if I remember correctly. In the mean time, I’m sure he and a lot of others got a lot of enjoyment operating on that uncompleted railroad.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to end up with the same fate. I thought when I retired 15 years ago, it would take me 5 years tops to complete the railroad I had envisioned. I am currently in the process of constructing the branchline, the last leg of the project. I had hoped to complete that this winter but I’m not even close. Everything I do usually takes me 3-4 times longer than I think it should. On top of that, model railroading can be mentally fatiguing. While theoretically I could spend 8-10 hours a day in the train room, in reality after about 4, my brain is fried fr
Well, that is an interesting way to define model railroading styles.
I am easily a balance of both.
I don’t like the vast scenic depth of the Franklin & South Manchester, nor do I settle for the 2 foot or less modular shelf look - at least not for the whole layout.
Scenery should be deep enough to be interesting, and close enough to be seen…
Operational scheme and track plan needs to fill two specific rolls - good display running - puting me squarely in the “minature world” camp, but should also allow good operating sessions.
I do like signals, CTC, full blown operating sessions, but I also believe is things like simplified CTC panels and streamlining some of the “prototype” jobs.
And I do like building scenery with all those “non railroad” real life details - towns, roads, farms, parks, play grounds, etc.
If you look at what I currently have, I am definitely modeling a railroad. Lots of track, specialwork puzzle palaces, running the main prototype’s schedule TTTO 24-30 for one specific month in the ever-more-distant past…
If you look at the planned future, the ultimate goal is to capture the ambiance of a specific place when my family made some wonderful memories there. In the ‘Later construction’ file are specific scenes, buildings and vistas, including a very compressed version of the ‘single track hanging by its fingernails’ Ome-sen extension. The Reader’s Digest version of the Tzu-Li-Shan spiral (Taiwan) is in the ‘someday, maybe’ file - it’s on a 762mm (30 inch) line that may never be built.
So I’m not either - or. Rather, I’m a moving mark on a line connecting the two.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - more or less)
I’m attempting to model two railroads, with shared assets, operating through an urban industrial area, not unlike the town I grew up in. As envisioned, I cannot have one without the other, so I model the railroad(s), and the industries they serve.
I kinda do both. My layout had its mainline up and running in 3 months but all the other track work and scenery took two more for a 15x30’ dogbone layout. It takes more time to build buildings and bridges than anything else. It is coming up on the three year mark and I still need a 1/2 dozen buildings built and some final finishing on some others.
I will second jecorbett’s compliments on your scene/backdrop blending skills. Excellent modelling.
Although I don’t have my layout under construction yet I think I fall more into the miniature world category. For example, I plan to have a detailed town/city mainstreet which will only have limited train operation. Also, I am as much into scratch building structures as I am into working on locomotives and freight cars and building critters. However, I have also planned the layout so there can be lots of operation going on too.
I have recently completed drywalling and painting my train room and am now three weeks into the building of the frame.
I ran my first locomotive last night!!! From staging. For the first time ever, I set a determined course and got the staging done first…no leaving it until ‘later’. I spent the afternoon and evening cutting and stripping the ends of feeders, baring the two insulated wires in my Romex bus, soldering the feeders and joiners that mattered, and ran a train. Not the first onel…it has a tether plug problem (brass Sunset 2-10-4). So I turned to “Tricky Engine No. 2”, my Trix GG1 with its high pantograph, and ran it up the ramp to Ground Zero Level. Worked well. Ran my Rivarossi Allegheny to check side clearances (it’s engineer’s injector overflow will scrape anything within about 3/4" of the outside rail on a curve).
For me, that was heaven. I like my trains to run. I would not settle for plywood for long, as my photos of yesteryear would demonstrate, but I can do it for a while. I need my trains, not so much all the operations and minute details. Some hills, a bridge, some trees, a skyline…weathered tracks and a working train and I’m in heaven. [8D]
But, first and foremost, I’m a modeler. I like to create scenes for my railroad to run through. I enjoy railfanning on my own continuous-running layout, maybe weaving a switcher through the perpetual motion machine of looping trains.
The Franklin & South Manchester is far beyond anything I could achieve, but I look on it for inspiration. Now, that’s a model railroad.
My layout is a coffee table quality table, molded into a book shelf. There’s some very spartain scenery, and what does exist, exists simply to emphasize the train.
My layout is certainly an operator´s nightmare - just a loop of track and a siding, the whole thing wired in three blocks. Not a passing siding, nor any staging (which is a big mistake I may have to correct with an “off-stage” fiddle yard). “Operation” is reduced to letting a train chase its tail on this rather small (3 by 5 ft) HOm (for metre gauge) narrow gauge layout following Swiss prototype. Despite its small size, the layout has some dramatic scenic features making it my little slice of Switzerland - a slice along a line I have traveled a few times in my younger days.
I enjoy building this tiny layout a lot and find it very relaxing to just watch a train emerge from the tunnel and snake throught that bridge beneath the little church, just as the prototype does at Stalden (VS) - Neubrück near Zermatt.
There is a middle ground. I finally arrived at a track plan that will allow for realistic switching operations, with staging for inbound and outbound trains. And, my trains have to run smoothly.
On the other hand, I kept my benchwork as deep as the room would allow so I could build the “World” my trains will run in. No spaghetti bowl, either. I even tore out some hard earned trackage to lighten it up.
There is a reasonable amount of space for non-RR-revenue; a truck shop, a small hillside farm, a (planned) tire store…all of which give credible places to park my collection of HO vehicles (a hobby in itself), many of which are heavily 'bashed.
Admittedly, my roundhouse, TT, diesel shop, and whatever else is in the terminal isn’t there to enhance operations so much as it is to be a place to add atmosphere to the layout. I like BUILDING that stuff! And it’s a place to “park” the WAY out-of-proportion number of locomotives I have, and will build and modify.
I’d say it’s all more about “world” than operation, but it all works together. Dan
