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.

Pine Branch Park Redux

 ...or, back on track, again.

It is that time when I reflect on the accomplishments of the current year and look to the goals of the next.  However this moment, this time around, feels oddly familiar.  It occurred to me that I've been here before, in a way.  Let me explain.

Back in 2018 when I started building my current railroad I wrote the blog post, "Pine Branch Park" (click the link to read the post).  In that post I discussed the name itself and showed a revised plan laying out the track, street and structures, but the bulk of the remainder was devoted to a sort-of inspiration I found in a series of articles in Model Railroader back in 1991, "Just for Beginners".  

In that seminal series the MR staff and contributors built the Cripple Creek Central.  I was inspired not only by the railroad itself, but more so by the progressive, sequential way in which they constructed it.  So often these project railroads begin with that glamour shot of the finished road and the declaration that you too can build this!  But not the Cripple Creek.  No, this was an evolving, changing project, altered by the whims of its creators and guided by the shape of the thing itself as it grew.  

I like planning, but I also like that evolutionary approach.  The dioramas I've built over the last two years are proof of that.  So too the Pine Branch Park model railroad.  The layout is bound to change as new ideas come along and new ideas come along as the layout changes.  New vistas open up for possibilities unseen before that moment.

In 2018 I speculated that I could complete this railroad in two years.  Five years later and it looks much as it did in 2019 - bare soundboard with mostly ballasted track, well edged for a clean presentation, and some cork strips in place where the paved roads will go.  But I still believe it can be completed in two years.  Not as some deadline hanging over my head but as a matter of consequence from continual effort (fun) spent bringing that world to life.

We all know what came along in 2019 (yes, public acknowledgement didn't really come along until 2020 but the virus was called COVID-19 for a reason).  And personally that was a challenging time - a challenge which I met and overcame thanks to the support of my family.  The death of my father in 2020 followed by helping my mother move in 2021 and then again in 2022 now feels like a rapid succession of events in hindsight.  

But while the work on the layout stagnated, model making did not.  In fact, the first NMRBO diorama I built included structures which will soon find their homes on the Pine Branch Park layout.  Building those dioramas in the midst of a major transition was instructive.  It reminded me just how much I love building highly detailed scenes that tell a story.  

So that's what I'm going to do, and that's what this blog will focus on.  Reviewing this blog itself reminded me of the importance of one aspect of "blogging", that is, keeping a web log as an archive.  So if for no other reason than that I will keep sharing my progress though perhaps not as frequently.  I've kicked around the idea of making videos but my hobby time - as generous as it is - is still somewhat limited, and editing takes up far more time than the model making itself.

But I'm not complaining.  I'm caught in the middle between caring for teens and a parent with some health concerns, but I'm surrounded by a wonderful family.  I've got a long list of honey-do home improvements but we live in a neat old house in a nice community.  I don't make much but I do get paid to make music two or three times a month instead of being stuck in a miserable job.  Each challenge comes with a blessing.  

So too my hobbies.  I've been able to make good connections with like-minded folks around the miniature war-gaming community and while I haven't found any folks in my town with an interest in trains, that's okay.  I'm genuinely happy in the quiet moments of the morning sitting at my workbench building a model, or stealing time during the day to run a train.  And of course sharing my progress with you, dear readers.  Thank you for your continued support of this blog, and best wishes for your own hobby endeavors in the coming year.

The afternoon winter sun, low in the southwest sky, shines on Ocali Creek box car 1603.

Diorama Design and Composition - NMRBO23

 

 

Click on the image above or open in a new tab to see a really large version.

The top-down image above offer a good view of the overall layout of this year's National Model Railroad Build Off diorama.  The main idea driving the design is the flow across the scene from side to side, primarily left to right, interrupted by elements that break that flow.  Elements that run from one short side to the other are the lakefront, the track and the road.  Elements that interrupt that motion are the bends in the road, the stream and bridges crossing it, and the trees.  The houses and larger trees at the back of the scene are adjacent to or behind these longer, sweeping elements, and are almost interesting background features in and of themselves.  More on them in a moment.

Let's start with the water.  Since Woodland Scenics Deep Pour Murky water and a plate girder bridge were two required elements in the product bundle, it made sense to make them primary features in the design.  I placed the bridge front and center with the water making a V towards the bridge.  The small 'surface rocks', also required, point along that V toward the bridge.  (Another line of surface rocks points toward the concrete arched bridge, but it is secondary to the railroad bridge and serves another compositional purpose).

The last required element in the product bundle was "Aunt Lucy's House", a two-story wood house kit by Walthers, (nee Faller).  This structure might get its own blog post, as there's much to talk about there, but the topic for this post is about how to use the design of the diorama to highlight the required elements.  To draw the eye to Aunt Lucy's house I put a bend in the road and placed the big white house at the end of it.  I then put parallel elements in front of it which reinforce its location, connecting the street to the track to the fence to the driveway and finally the roof of the house; there's even a line of surface rocks between the track and the fence.  See the blue lines in this image below:

Note also how the other house on the left relates to the curving road, track and lakeside over against the strong parallel lines at the farmhouse.  In "reality" the home would have been the last thing built - the lake being there first, the track coming next, the road after that, and then the house.  But for the purposes of the design composition it is the most eye-catching large element on that side of the diorama, and the shape of the elements in front serve to reinforce its location.

As I implied in last year's analysis of my diorama entry from 2022, balance is important.  The weight of things influences how the viewer sees the scene.  So far the discussion has focused on a top-down view, but this year I added more vertical gradients to the diorama.  The lowest elevation is the lakefront and stream, and the highest the ground level under the mission-style bungalow on the left.  However the tallest structure is still the white farmhouse.  The paved road is the only leading line that changes elevation; it is above the track on the left, level at the crossing, then below it on the right.

Finally the trees play an important composition role.  There is one more (broken) horizontal line on the diorama - the trees across the back.  I had originally planned to include a printed backdrop but decided late in the construction to omit it.  I had even considered using a small mirror to give the illusion that the stream extended back further into the distance but disguising it with a tunnel of trees would have changed the overall feel and balance of the diorama, putting too much weight in the center instead of out front on the bridge.  

I firmly believe that nature, whenever appropriate, should dominate our modeled environments.  Big trees should be big, maintaining the relationship to other structures, trains, people, etc. as they do in reality.  My Bald Cypress trees are 60-70 feet high; this is about average for this species, but still tall enough to cast a long shadow over their surroundings as a model.  

The palm trees dotted throughout are mainly there to set the locale but also serve as punctuation marks, places to interrupt the flow and keep the eye in the scene a bit longer.  As painter Ian Roberts notes, strong lines across a composition tend to take the viewer outside the scene, so elements that keep the viewer in the scene need to be placed to do just that.  It would be easy to follow the paved road right off the right side of the diorama, but that big Cypress says "Stop!" and keeps your eye at the lakeside "beach".

Thanks for keeping your eye on this longer blog post.  I hope these thoughts inspire you to consider design and composition in your modeled worlds.

Lessons Learned

In this post I'll share a few lessons I learned from building a diorama for the Walthers National Model Railroad Build Off contest.  While building a diorama may seem like a simple, straight forward thing to do, it really challenged me to think differently.  The process also made me realize a few things about myself and my approach to the hobby; beliefs I had held but never clarified into solid ideas. 

This is a BIG image if you'll click on it, then open the picture in a new tab for the full size.

First off, this diorama taught me that I could fully scenic a 2'x4' space in only four months, from ground cover to scratchbuilt trees, four feet of brick street, two feet of hand-laid track, three craftsman structure kits, a kitbashed structure, a Jordan vehicle, a kitbashed streetcar and numerous figures, all hand painted.  My current model railroad is only 4'x6' - that's just three times the area of the diorama.  Plus, the Purina Mill, Strickland's store, streetcar, billboard and orange grove all have spots already marked out on the railroad once I decommission this diorama.  If I were to work at half the pace I did to get this diorama done, I could have the Pine Branch Park railroad scenicked in two years or less, to a very high standard of detail and realism.*

Four feet wide

In this contest the focus was strictly on two parameters as defined by the rules; creativity and skill.  I set out to tell a story about a place in central Florida in 1914.  My model railroad has a similar goal, but is set in the late 1920s and includes operating trains as part of the storytelling.  Both use creativity and skill, but the diorama is a more limited setting.  Instead of operating the trains to provide action that tells the story, the setting itself has to do that task.

Why is this man sleeping behind this sign?  Some stories raise questions.

In truth our models, apart from the ones that move, all face the same challenge; how to imply action without motion.  While building my horse-drawn streetcar I realized one possible reason for why more folks don't model this mode of transport; it can't be made to move realistically.  A powered streetcar pushing a lifeless horse down the street would look odd, yes?  Some modelers don't like to use figures that are in an "action" pose, as if time is frozen, because it looks strange next to a train that does move.  On a diorama with no moving trains this matters less, if at all.

Is this a train?

Another challenge I faced was whether or not to use a backdrop.  Modules or home layouts often include a backdrop and the Walthers contest did not require one.  However, the contest submission form called for photos of the "front", "left" and "right" sides of the diorama.  Oh.  I hadn't considered front or back, left or right when planning the scenes.  It was a diorama to be viewed from any angle, and engaged with by the viewer from any direction.  This arrangement made it difficult for me to designate a "front" of the diorama. 

You can't see this from the front.

As someone with an "island" style railroad (see more about that here) I've always built structures with an eye to how they'll look when viewed from all sides.  On a layout where the views are controlled structures and other scenic elements can be built to take advantage of that, omitting back walls for example, or only detailing what will be seen.  On my diorama different views and vistas would open or close as the viewer moved around the scene.  This is how I had begun to imagine the elements on my layout so naturally it is how I placed these elements on the diorama and why all sides received some level of detail as appropriate for the scene.

Did my design choices hurt my chance of winning the contest?  Perhaps.  Most of the entries that made the final cut were pretty clearly arranged with a defined front and back, though not all.  What about the railroad elements?  None were required for the contest, technically, though a train did need to be shown in the final photos.  I think a horse-drawn streetcar is a train and though I had no freight car on my spur at the feed mill, one of the finalist entries showed no train at all.  And the era?  Or locale?  Perhaps.  Very few folks model Florida and nobody I've seen models Florida in the teens or twenties.  This is new territory in our hobby, and sometimes the familiar scene will win out over the unfamiliar.

Figure provided for scale. ;)

Would I do it differently if I were to enter again?  Maybe...or maybe not.  My design choices were deliberate even though I wasn't fully conscious of all the assumptions influencing my choices.  A viewer can't see it all from any one angle, just like real life.  It tells a story through the composition of elements and placement of details.  The setting is unique and hasn't really been explored before.  It demonstrates skill and creativity.  But most of all I'm happy with the diorama I built - it makes me smile whenever I look at it. 

Thanks for reading - feel free to comment below or ask questions.

 

*Completing the current model railroad will likely take longer than two years.  As of this writing I'm still unpacking boxes and sorting my garage, and won't be doing any more work on the railroad in situ until I know the roof won't leak and rats won't be chewing the scenery.  I'll be following Bruce and Janet Chubb's example from their early modeling days, building models at the kitchen table until the train room is ready.

Set Back or Step Forward?

 

 

The new garage before the rest of the stuff arrived.

To answer the question in the title, YES to both.  First, the setback.  Despite all the difficulties of the previous garage home, I had grown accustomed to it.  I had made improvements to the space, mainly in keeping rodents out.  I could find a tool or supply in thirty seconds or less and had room to work.  There was a plan for building and operating the railroad, as well as other projects such as helping my son build a pan-tilt-zoom head for live-streaming or creating a diorama for the 2022 Walthers National Model Railroad Build Off.

Now, in a new space, I have to start all over.  New critters to keep out.  New holes to plug.  Dust and debris (just look at the pile of clay roof tiles along the wall!)  And, this space is detached.  If I want to get to the railroad I have to traverse the summer heat or winter rain.  At least it doesn't snow here.  In addition, I've got a long honey-do list and home renovation projects that must be done sooner than later.  That pushes any hobby space improvements far down the list.

...on the other hand...

This space is mine.  No need to get permission from the landlord to make any necessary changes.  Oh I had a long list of things I'd have done in our rental IF the place was ours.  Well, now this place is ours, and I can do what I want to make it wonderful.  I waited too long to improve previous places we've lived, and each time we moved I was a bit saddened that I should have or could have done this or that if only...  So this time I'm not wasting any precious moments.  Call it a mid-life crisis or whatever you will; I'm motivated to make it happen as soon as possible.

And while the layout will languish until everything is unpacked, modeling will not cease.  I've got an army to paint - Rebels and Storm Troopers and Speeder Bikes!  After tasting how fun it was to play a game of Star Wars Legion last Thanksgiving, I resolved then to get this game going in the near future.  That time is now.  I can set up a painting desk in the new house and enjoy a few moments each evening putting paint on plastic so that we can play an exciting tabletop game in our dining room.  

Finally, does this mean the blog is back?  Well, yes, but there's no guarantee it'll be anything remotely regular.  As I mentioned in the previous post from two months ago, I believe blogging is for fleshing-out ideas beyond what a picture can convey.  I will continue to use Instagram and link that app to Facebook to keep my family and friends updated, but if anyone wants to learn more this will still be the place to do that.  Thanks for reading.

"The only difference is that today, with what we know and what we're learning to do, we really can bring our dreams to life. It takes a lot of work, but the truth is, if we can dream it, we can do it." - dialogue from Horizons at EPCOT Center