What are some things done in modeling in scenery that you would never see in real World? I see some layouts and it’s amazing but can’t imagine in real World situations. For example, a clump of bushes that looks neat on a layout but in real life, it just would not happen.
Water with dust on it?
One of my pet gripes are the over used Sedum “trees”. I’m never quite sure whether they look Art Deco-ish, or just surrealistic. Either way, they don’t look anything like real-world trees to me.
CNJ831
Some guys will make Messy train yards and engine service facilities on model railroads.
In real life, due to hazzards and safety concerns they are not messy, but neatly organized.
CNJ:
They do look like elm trees, which are unfortunately not as common as they once were. Elms have that vase-like shape.
They also resemble a type of oak that grows at certain elevations here in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. And believe it or not, they resemble some of the maple trees out here that were brought out by New Englanders during the Gold Rush and have adapted to the mountain weather and elevations at about 3,000 feet above sea level. They also tend to turn ‘color’ all at once for a peak of about a week during the Fall. In fact, my home town of Nevada City, CA, which was settled largely by New Englanders in 1850 has an annual ‘Fall Tour’ during ‘peak’ color season that has become extremely popular out here thanks largely in part to those ‘adapted’ New England maples.
Sure wish they were ‘Sugar Maples,’ though. Yum!
Tom
Sedum does look like the American Elm, the problem with using this plant is people tend to leave the trunk far too long, shorten the trunk and position them closer together for a more realistic look.
I personally think figures (as in people) don’t look right.
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Way too many people out in the country. We see people re-enacting civil war battles, photographers, people fixing a flat tire on their car, people on picnics, people hiking, children building a tree house, children knocking over an outhouse, hunters, road crews, fire crews, farmers working the fields, cattle roundups, off road motor bikes, etc. If a layout had about 10 square miles of rural territory it seems there might be room for one of this sort of thing. If the real rural world in the USA was as populated as our club’s layout, I think we would have more people living in Kansas than the entire population of China.
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Wild life. In the past three months I’ve probably driving close to 10,000 miles. I’ve seen a lot of hawks, a flock of turkey’s, two herd of deer, several single deer, three skunk, and several pheasant. If I had been driving on the layouts that I am familiar with I would have seen thousands of deer, more moose & bear than currently live in Yellowstone, enough skunk and raccoon to be considered a plague, but the only birds would be pigeons.
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Then don’t even get into the extraordinarily high percentage of cutesy stuff one finds on layouts. My daughters 2x4 HO modular has no less than 10 cutesy mini-scenes on it. Groan.
I think people in the correct places look good but overdoing it is not good. I have a UNION STATION so there will be people there and a fewat the truck station. Everywhere else, I dont know. Mine is in the City so I guess I could use a little more people.
The one thing that is missing is garbage. I only ever saw one layout with garbage done to a reallistic degree. A final touch needs overflowing garbage cans in lanes and bits of trash blowing down the street. Trash left by picnickers in a park or at a highway viewpoint. Grungy areas behind a gas station with old batteries and mufflers and tires piled up. How many farms have their own garbage dump out behind the barn. A lot of us get the railyards right only to have a too prestine town. As unappealing as it sounds putting garbage on the layout adds as much as a good weathering job.
Brent
Too much traffic on small country road. Road looks more like moonscape.
And the sphagnum moss pretending to be a tree—without a trunk[xx(]
Then you’ve never seen a farmers pond after the wheat harvest![:D]
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Suburban stations without any advertising posters. Usually the platform is lined with them.
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A station that’s too small for the traffic level. For example, the Atlas suburban station represents a structure that’s too small for a line significant commuter traffic.
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A town with only one church. A typical small town has a lot of churches grouped near each other.
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The vehicle population isn’t representative of the real world. For a modern era layout, there are too many BMWs and not enough Toyotas.
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The railroad goes out of a tunnel and onto a bridge.
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Too few flags.
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Lack of specific references to place. For example, if your layout is set in Chicago, there are no “City of Chicago - Richard M. Daley, Mayor” signs.
HO truck wheels on engines that are about 40% too wide. Can’t they thin them to be closer to many of the better drivers out there?
“Lichen” in place of trees…puhleese!
Shiny spandex clothing on every human figurine.
BTW, #5 listed just above my post, I have a photo on the CPR line in the Fraser Valley of just such an arrangement. Not only that, but the famous Kettle Valley Rwy just 40 miles SW of that location had no fewer than three tunnels with two bridges between 'em!
-Crandell
Selector, I immediatly thought of that tunnel bridge on the CPR, Plus we have the old Camas Prairie raikroada here with several situations like that ,including a tunnel making a 90 deg. turn inside the hill.
Way Off? Well, too red rusty rails,rows of bunch grass instead of random patches,Dust is not weathering to quote something I saw recentlyand Oh Yeah sprinkles of brightly colored little dots to represent flowers etc. Unless its a field of rape or mustard your hardly gonna notice flowers from the air. BILL
Rivers in the desert Southwest with waterflows that look like the Mississippi in full flood! We’d cut off our left . . . . . . . . . . arm for that much water! Instead we build dams to insure that everyone down here has enough water to take a bath every Saturday night!
Someone once described the Platte River as “Too thick to drink and too thin to plow” while another description was “A mile wide and an inch deep.”
That ain’t dust!
Was that the N. Platte or the other one?[:-^]----and was that in full flood mode?[swg]
Bright green grass for a late fall day—no golf course nearby----[:-^]
A 1960’s style burger joint on a purportedly 1920’s layout—[V]
Too much Lichen—not enough trees—[banghead]