So even if one had oodles of space - would a layout built to exact scale be boring?
Just think - you’d have fewer industries, fewer sidings, fewer details, and boring things like parking lots would be more boring and take up even more space…
[^o)] As your premise is not space restricted, and providing it was nicely modelled, I don’t think it would necessarily be boring.
But “impractical” does immediately spring to mind!!
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
I would think you’d have just as many industries, but they’d just be further apart. You’d just have more room for scenery, be it railroad-related or not.
You would need a lot of Super Trees.
Why do you ask, or think that would be boring ? You’d have alot more scenery to do, but if you talk about “oodles of space”, you could have more industries, such as an industrial switching layout/industrial park, so, you wouldn’t have fewer industries, you could have more! along with scenic country areas. I don’t think you’d have “fewer details”.
Just remember as you design this, you need to have access to your switching areas, and, the trains running through all of this “built to exact scale” scenery.
Mike.
Yes. Too much distance to travel would be boring, IMO.
For the most part yes. Most railroads have miles of uneventful track. Assuming you are running at scale speeds, spending 15 minutes or more getting from one station to the next would get boring after the first one or two.
Paul
I’d say it really depends on what you’re modeling. Something like Bingham Canyon during the 1920s-1930s would have tons of cool stuff to model in a relatively small, confined space – multiple levels of track, lots of bridges, and tons of interesting structures.
There are other mining or industrial railroads that could be modeled in their entirety and still have lots of interesting track, scenery and structures.
Or you could model just a specific section of a modern railroad.
Having worked on a real railroad, yep. Remember it might take a train 8-12 hours to go between terminals and that most trains a railroad runs are through freights.
Yes, it will be boring and no, it won´t!
Whether a layout will be boring (I assume you mean either boring to operate or boring to look at), finally depends on the setting of your choice. Now, if you go for Australia, something like this:
certainly might be called boring, while modeling the Albula line in Switzerland, a narrow gauge line in the Swiss Alps, which winds its way up to the Albula pass is definitively more thrilling (and so would be a model of the Durango & Silverton RR):
Well, your biggest problem (literally) is going to be turnouts. The biggest we can get commercially is #10, but that is pretty small in the real world.
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Mainline running with no compression would be boring.
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An ISL with no compression would be amazing. The urban scenery would be overwhelming.
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-Kevin
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I always thought it would be kind of neat to model the Canadian Pacific Railroad from Vancouver to Calgary through the Rockies to scale. I have about three scale miles of track to simulate the same thing.
To do it to scale, it would be about ten real miles in length and what do I look like a Mailman or a model railroader. Of course, if I did model ten real life miles and wanted to follow my train as it went, I would take a dog along and kill two birds with one stone. Then again if the train was traveling at scale speed and we were following it along and we wanted our daily walk, we would have to start before we finished each day.[*-)][:|][(-D]
With unlimited funds available, you´d just have some one make prototypical switches for you, so that is no problem at all.
Why?
About the lack of industry, I plan to protolance mine. Actual railroad, but businesses will be backdated so they become rail served.
Selective compression. Yup, been there done that.
About ten years ago. I scratch built a huge steel mill Basic Oxygen Furnace for my layout. It measured 4’L x 4’W x 3’H. Which took up quite a bit of space even though it was compressed.
Lessons learned then will be applied to my new layout. Selective compression can work but you need to know your real estate limitations. Mine was built around the massive structure. Mistake number one.
A uncompress industrial lead with all the trimmings and many rail and non-rail served industries would be IMHO paradise on earth but,running between terminal A and terminal B would be quite boring.
When can we start building this Mother of all ISLs? [:P]
Boring to operate? Probably. Boring to build? Not for those who superdetail their stuff.
Simon
I would find the sprawling Washington Union Station layout I’d build way more interesting than the small industrial layout that it only took a few sessions to “solve” all scenarios.
I think if your entire layout was one big steel mill, to scale, that would be cool. But even if I had industries one mile apart, that’s some 60 feet in HO!
I designed a very compressed layout which included a tunnel, junction, bridge, and one industry with a small city surrounded by a huge hill.
The scenery is filled with pine trees with a single mainline with one passing track.
I like it very much but it need 1-2 more industries but it would hard to place without losing something.
As several have noted, choose the right protoype and it won’t be boring.
One thing it would be in most cases is pretty good exercise.