Summer Challenge 2026

Not the most exciting title, I know, but I'm working on it.  

The most recent Walthers Flyer included this year's National Model Railroad Build Off contest details.  As usual, there's a freelance diorama category.  In this category the modeler builds a large diorama that can feature any subject, in any scale, as long as it isn't part of an existing layout and fits the 2'x4' size limit.

I have no intention of entering this year and yet, the idea still appeals to me.  When I entered in 2022 and 2023 I really enjoyed the four months of focused work that resulted in a finished scene, from soup to nuts.  It puts pay to the tired trope that a layout is never finished!  When I entered in 2022 I knew we'd be moving soon and the layout work would be put on hold indefinitely.  Before then I had been building real momentum working on the layout which I have yet to recapture since.  It is time to get that back and make significant layout progress again.

So here's the plan.  

I'm going to complete approximately 8 contiguous square feet of my layout instead of creating a diorama for the NMRBO.  From June 1st to the October 1st deadline I'm going to build all the scenery, structures, trackwork and details in that area.  This is the same time period entrants in the contest will be following.  Here's the area outlined in red with salient features added:

The red zone includes structures, sidewalks, street track and an orange grove

If you've been following the blog recently you may notice that the Ensminger Building is already (nearly) complete - this would disqualify me from the Walthers contest were I using it on a standalone diorama.  Note also that the area isn't a rectangle.  This delineation makes the most sense for the content of the space while loosely keeping to the 8 square foot area.

I'm going to start with the street and sidewalks, including the streetcar track since it is part and parcel of the roadway.  The sidewalks need to go in before the structures, though I can work on the buildings at any time and probably will.  In previous challenges I've kept two or three work stations full, shifting from one to the other as necessary.

Here's the caveat: if I don't complete the area fully, that's fine.  I'd rather err on the side of quality and produce a result I'm pleased with than rush something just for the sake of an arbitrary timeline.  However, I accept that "letting the perfect stand in the way of the good" doesn't help and is a trap I've fallen into before.  An imperfect model completed will always bring more satisfaction than a perfect model delayed indefinitely.  That's a significant aspect of this challenge I take to heart.

If you can think up a better name for what I'm doing than "Summer Challenge 2026" please comment below.  Also, if you've got 8 square feet of layout that needs completing and would like to join in, let me know.  I'll be sharing my progress here on the blog and on Instagram.  Before that, however, I've got to complete a couple overdue projects and clear off the workbench.  Thanks for reading.

Geissel Got It

Recently my attention was directed once more to the Chester Valley Railroad of J. Harold Geissel. This was the “Layout of the Month” in the November 1939 Model Railroader. That original article wasn't the starting point this time around, rather, it was the article by editor Russ Larson exactly 30 years later in the November 1969 issue. “What makes an outstanding layout?” asks the title. The author answers in the text below:

“I feel the basic ingredients for a good layout are:

• A good track plan

• Authentic structures
• Attention to scenic detail
• Realistic operation, including the selection of rolling stock
  

The final product must be judged, at least partially, on how well the modeler blends these basic ingredients together. It also takes an intangible something extra. To create an outstanding layout you must, I believe, go beyond what is commonly done and develop something better in at least one of these basic layout qualities.”

Note he begins by describing what makes a “good” layout before leading the reader to the answer to his question, what makes that layout “outstanding”.  I appreciate his points and think they're not bad at all.  And yet...

I think he missed one crucial ingredient; the concept.

Oh yes, this is one of those contrary articles in which I espouse my fervent belief that the concept and the plan are distinctly different elements. What Larson missed is what Geissel explicitly stated in his article from August 1939. (The November “Layout of the Month” article shows the track plan which was reprinted in Larson's article while the August '39 article is by Geissel himself and includes photos, also reprinted in '69.) Quote:

“The Chester Valley is now in its third location as an operating layout. While the basic idea carries along without change, each layout has been different; the track plan has been simplified, curve radii have been increased, and real railroad practice has been followed more closely." p.386

Sorry Uncle Russ, but it all boils down to the "basic idea", i.e., the concept.  Geissel's article begins with a description of his rationale for choosing a short line - an idea that had remained with him since childhood.  Once a good concept takes root in your mind, grows, blooms and drops seed, it can be nigh impossible to dislodge, should that be desired (it most likely will not be).  How the concept is executed can change with income, location, skill, energy, etc. but a good idea - a good story - can call forth creativity for a lifetime, or at least until it has run its course and been successfully expressed.

Tired Tropes or Tried and True?

Do you ever think about those tired hobby tropes?  You know the ones, "We've got to get kids interested in the hobby! (or it will wither and die)" or "A layout is never finished" (though if that were true custom layout builders might never get paid).  Recently I was perusing the 1941 Varney catalog, as one does*, and I came across this passage:

    "Did you ever stop to ask yourself why the small boy never had a chance to play with his electric trains on Christmas day?  I say it was because it took his "old man" just about that long to put it together, make it run, and get tired of it.  It is too easy."
    "At some risk of frightening a newcomer, I would like to say that, a MODEL RAILROAD is no pushover.  If it were, the children would have it, and it would fail to hold the adult interest."

SP drew it, never made it, but Varney did!

The bug will bite a kid from time to time and due to their disposition or an early start with some tools and paint they may turn into model builders sooner than later.  But I suspect they're the rare case, not the average person who may have a mild interest early on that lays dormant until much later when time and funds become available to pursue the hobby in earnest.  I'd say Varney was making a statement in direct contrast to those "toy train" manufacturers that so often depicted kids on the floor, grinning from ear to ear as their grinding metal beasts clanked around the Christmas tree and the family looked on, beaming with pride.

The passage in the catalog continues:

    "A model railroad has yet to be built and finished.  That is one of the nicest things about it.  It's never done.  Virtually every model railroader who starts a layout, tears it up and starts over again almost before he has the bugs out of his first loop of track.  There are thousands of model railroaders who have temporary 'layouts,' or systems which are in effect only test tracks for the equipment which is being modeled.  The real layout floats nebulously in his mind like a mirage in the desert, to be reached some day, somehow."

The first commemorative car offered by Varney in 1948.

Keep in mind these quotes are from a Varney catalog, a company that sells trains, not structures, scenery, track or anything else for your layout.**  They also extol the virtues of how well their equipment runs and complies with NMRA standards so of course it was in their interest to encourage modelers to build something on which to run these trains.  But I think the quote above is for those folks whose layout doesn't look like more than a test track on a table top.  Perhaps it is also aimed at the person who resists buying more equipment because they don't have room for it.  Keeping the dream of "some day, somehow" alive creates a convenient justification in the mind of the buyer.

I suppose I resemble that remark.  Currently I have a small model railroad by most standards.  But that doesn't stop me from buying more trains.  Some day, somehow I'll have that big space for long trains.***  But I'm also that weird kid that got bit early and never let college, girls, career, etc. get in the way of spending some time at a workbench with a model train or structure kit.  Maybe you are too.  These tropes exist for a reason and sometimes they're even true.

The other commemorative offering, Varney, 1948.

*This post was prompted by a recent purchase.  Varney is not a sponsor, (LOL), but I do appreciate their contributions to the hobby and think their early card-side equipment is really cool.

**Varney does recommend you build a layout, and they even offer the barest of suggestions on how to do it.  I did find it particularly interesting that while no track or transformer brands were mentioned, they did exclusively recommend Ideal structures!

***Back in the real world, I do have an actual plan to build a nice storage system that not only protects my investment in rolling stock but makes them easily available to put on and take off the railroad.  I have already shown in this post here that it is possible and even fun to simulate a larger railroad's operations on a small pike.

The Italians Get It.

Well, at least this fellow.  By "get it" I mean grasping the crucial concepts that make a model railroad bridge the gap between strict prototype adherence and playing with toy trains.  I've discussed some of these concepts before on this blog and they're my opinions, naturally, but I believe they have value for anyone seeking to better enjoy the hobby by understanding their own motives and how they derive pleasure from this activity.  Take this railroad, for example:

When I view some non-English-language videos on my laptop I can see the captions automatically translated.  This is especially helpful in this case as it allows me to understand what's being said as the videographer interviews the layout builder.  The modeler describes some of his rationale in creating a pastiche of scenes from his past, all tied together by a track plan that allows him to run a variety of equipment including a narrow gauge section and streetcar.

But even if you can't understand what's being said, the video itself does a pretty good job of showing what's there.  There's a connection to what must be a staging yard somewhere.  There's a large visible yard with facilities for servicing (displaying) locomotives.  There's a Parade Route for watching those trains glide along a graceful curve.  There seems to be a desire to strike a balance between track and scenery, though there's plenty of track.  There's no divider on the peninsula; this grants an unobstructed view across a deep scene allowing the distant section of railroad to provide a natural backdrop, tying the visible railroad together as a whole.

There is another side to this coin, however.  The shelves of locomotives lining the walls illustrate a common "problem" I suspect many model railroaders have; we're collectors and we end up with more equipment than our layouts can hold.  I'd be curious to know if the layout builder in the video runs this equipment or if they're simply on display.  Even so, this type of layout does a good job of managing many trains, cycling them on and off the visible portion of the railroad and offering each a chance to make an appearance or do some work.
 

Stand-ins

The drug store project has led me down a path I hadn't intended to take just yet.  Well, two, actually, but one (LED lighting) is the subject of another post.  I put the under-construction drug store in place on the layout only to find its presence altering the way I perceived the rest of the scene.  That is, I'm really happy with how it looks, where it looks; a tall, ornate gem on a prominent corner where the detail can be appreciated.  But Strickland's Service Station suddenly didn't look right across the street.  The Purina building adjacent to the drug store didn't fit right either.  Hmm.  

Two things were at play.  I had grown accustomed to seeing the Purina building and Strickland's on their diorama.  That setting was more rural and both structures were in different orientations to their respective streets as well as having a bit more room to spread out, so to speak.  On the Pine Branch Park layout the orientation was different and the setting more urban.  Strickland's sat on a corner on the diorama and that suited its odd porch/drive-through design.  The Purina building was on a dirt lot, set back far from the road.  

The white demitasse cup stands-in for the bandstand. Note the trolley on the street.

It was an easy decision to replace Strickland's with a bandstand.  I had already found great photos of Winter Haven, Florida in which a city park, complete with bandstand, is bisected by the Atlantic Coast Line main, complete with station.  A block of storefront businesses stands nearby.  I can put the (Campbell) bandstand at one end and the old horse-car at the other.  Voila, a trolley park located along the Orange Avenue line.

On the left, pool hall, lunch counter, ice factory.  On the right?

But the Purina building...that's harder for me to imagine a replacement.  Both structures could easily find homes on future versions of the Ocali Creek.  But the problem remains; what to do about the current situation?  In order to help me parse out a solution I decided to bring in some old structures I've been storing from previous layouts and, well, lay them out as stand-ins.  That's what's shown in these pictures.  

The tan paper behind the Purina building is the instruction plan for a pipe yard.

Each structure has its own story and some will get dedicated blog posts, no doubt.  But even this hurried-together approach has shown me I want to push the scene into a more urban direction.  Sure, in many towns there was a feed mill right near downtown, so there's good precedent for keeping the Purina building as is.  But even pushed back from the street it just doesn't fit.  What this location needs is a rail served business with a storefront that faces the street(s), right on the sidewalk, preferably two stories tall.

I haven't forgotten my previous post on fitting in the Chero Cola bottling plant somewhere, so maybe this is the spot.  That was back in April of 2021.  My, how things have changed since then.  Things are likely to change again a few times before structures get mounted in place.  Stay tuned.

Horse Car Revival

Since the early planning stages of the Pine Branch Park pike, I have endeavored to tell a story.  That story is about the changes in transportation and its effects on the culture of 1920s Florida.  This transition period - not the steam-to-diesel transition period of oft modeled by so many - saw the shift from horse-drawn to horseless carriages.  By the late '20s the horse-drawn streetcar had been replaced by a horseless car of another kind, still on rails, but drawing power from overhead wires.  If not, then it was replaced by the automobile and its tracks in the street pulled up or simply paved over unceremoniously. 

Neatly paved street track in Jacksonville, 1920.

That ripping out of the old was what I sought to portray on the main street of Ocala Springs.  I had plans for a street crew to be digging out bricks (follow this link for inspiration in that regard) and loading them into a wagon, and rail being put onto a truck for delivery to the scrap dealer. This would be an interesting scene in itself, but when another wagon's wheels got bound up in the street track and tipped over its load, a traffic jam ensued - naturally, at an intersection, to cause the most chaos.  Now we're talking.  Humor and interest.  The old Horse Car was not to be scrapped, but instead purchased by that entrepreneur, Strickland, and placed on a display track as a tourist trap roadside attraction where visitors could have their picture made as a souvenir.

Horse car in Ocala; appears to be broad gauge.

But recently I've been considering the disposition of dioramas.  Last year's NMRBO entry was built around a brick street with the horse-drawn streetcar modeled in service, rolling down "Orange Avenue".  What if that track never went out of service?  Sure, the last horse car ran in San Francisco in 1913, and my diorama was set in 1914, but the Ocali Creek is set in the late 1920s.  Did horse cars survive that long?  According to J.H. White Jr., "...New York, had a few horsecars running until July 1917. Pittsburgh ran its last hay burner in 1923, and Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, shut down the U.S. horsecar era in 1926."  Well, horse-puckey.

So now I'm faced with a wonderful dilemma where both options are interesting.  Either I live with the anachronism and keep the old nag pulling her coach, or I proceed as planned and show the line as being removed.  In these sorts of cases I tend to look at the pros and cons for each scenario and make a decision after I've mulled it over a while.  In this case, I'm in no hurry, but this is the best time for this sort of cogitation, when there's no rush.  So I drew up a plan, or rather, modified the existing plan to include a rough indication of the functioning (or not) horse car line and a car barn with attached stable.  Here 'tis:

Click on the image to see it larger.

The horse car track is shown in red.  The curves are a bit sharp and would likely be eased a bit.  Though the car itself actually rolls, this won't be an operating model as I haven't perfected the miniaturizing gun to work on living tissue, beyond the odd pigeon, and I'm not sure what you'd feed a miniature horse.  The car barn and stable shown in orange would probably be either an ornate affair with some gingerbread or a simple shed.  There would also be a passenger platform (not shown) near the station so the horse car could make connections with local branch passenger trains.

Of course some of you may have already hit on the compromise I may inevitably take, to do both.  That is, to lay this track including a now-shuttered car barn and depict the line as being removed by the road gang.  But there is another option still.  I could install overhead wires over the main street portion in front of the businesses and place a cute little Birney there, as if the line were still in operation now converted to electricity.  Hmmm...maybe I'll have a bowl of oats then hit the hay and think about this in the morning.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

2023 Diorama Update - Farmhouse Layout

Entering the final lap, not quite the final stretch, for this year's NMRBO diorama.  Track is down, painted and balasted.  Bridges are installed and the road has been paved.  All the landscape structure has been shaped, plastered and painted (though not yet in these photos).  Now comes the planning stage where smaller decisions are made.  This post is about just one such decision - where to place the chicken house.

In the first photo you can see the little red shed behind the main house, with a pale green wagon next to it.  Ditto the second photo, but I've rotated the shed and wagon 90 degrees counterclockwise.  Right now I'm leaning towards the second orientation.  But I've been cogitating over this one for a while.  I had thought about a barn in that space but it was too much competition with the main house.  The chicken house is just the right size but getting it placed has been more challenging than I first thought it would be. 

...the concept and plan...

...but not the whole railroad.

From "At The Throttle", Model Railroader, January 1962, by Linn Westcott

"OUR TOWER OF BABEL FALLETH"

"We model railroaders have many names for the same thing and sometimes several things for the same name.  For instance, is a 'loop' an oval or a baloon-shaped thing?  What is a block?  Sometimes we wonder which end of the train has markers and which has classification signals.  Last year I had the pleasure, along with Whit Towers (our chairman), John Allen, Heube Heubenthal, and others, of serving on an NMRA committee to dig out the various meanings of model railroad words and to assemble them into a glossary.  The result of the first year's work is now in the back pages of the NMRA yearbook.  The work is by no means completed; we may have overlooked many important words and our tendencies to narrow some meanings may not meet with general approval.  For instance, we felt 'layout'* should mean the concept and plan but not the whole railroad. (emphasis mine).  Take a look at the glossary and let the committee know if you feel things are wanting."

I found this editorial while reading through the MR 75 years collection.  Were there responses to this editorial?  I hope so...they should make for interesting reading.

*You may or may not know my thoughts on the word "layout" (click the link to find out). 

Layout Alternative

When did a model railroad become a train layout?  I'm no model railroad historian, but I bet there was a time before we called it a "layout".  I've seen it described as a "pike" and this term seems even more dated, as if I should be wearing an engineer's hat with my shirt and tie and smoking a pipe as I run the trains while my family gazes on adoringly.  If I told a non-model-railroader I'm building a train layout in my garage, would they know what that meant?  Would they wonder if I were planning to set it up for a while then take it down, like a train around the Christmas tree? 

As someone who has worked in a field with specialized language, I also recognize that some words don't mean much to the average person.  If you go to a traditional church on Sunday you probably enter the narthex before going into the sanctuary for worship and perhaps afterwards spend time in the fellowship hall.  However, you didn't go to church, you went to a campus.  The church is the body of people, not the building they meet in, but how many folks know this distinction?  The narthex is the foyer or lobby or entryway and the sanctuary is the auditorium.  The fellowship hall is a different auditorium, but sometimes resembles a gymnasium or large meeting hall.  Some churches work hard to eliminate "churchy" language and label their spaces accordingly.  Others stick with traditional names and expect newcomers to learn them.

Dictionary.com offers TEN variant definitions of the word "layout" and NONE of them reference model railroading.  Not that this is inaccurate for our use, as most of the definitions refer to the arrangement of elements in a space whether on an advertisement or in a room.  I don't think "layout" presents the same difficulty in understanding, but I wonder if there are better words that describe what we're building and perhaps even what we're doing.  Language is important and if we model railroaders want to share our hobby with a non-modeling public in a straight-forward way perhaps some more useful language is in order.  Even within our ranks it might be helpful. 

Miriam Webster does include a reference to model trains in their definition of layout, but there's an issue with that one.  "Something that is laid out".  Sounds like something that is set up only to be taken down later.  When we build our model railroad do we do so in a temporary manner?  Very few times have I seen articles about model train setups that are meant to be run then put away by taking the thing apart and putting it back in a box.  And, I'd bet we wouldn't call those things "layouts", but train sets or something similar.

So what is the alternative?  What about simply calling it a model railroad?  If we are scaling down reality or some version of it, and running scaled-down electric trains through that setting, then we are modeling a railroad and railroading in miniature.  In light of my previous post on a track plan, I'm going to make a conscious effort to change my language from now on.  I'm not building a train layout in my garage.  I'm building a model railroad.