Modeler's Moment - A sign for everything

Railroads had signs for just about everything. Seen here in this private collection are signs that indicate locations where an engineer needs to blow the horn, vehicle traffic warning signs, a hazardous materials placard, and a few safety awareness signs.

Modeler's Moment - Another source of N scale vehicles

Here's another source of N scale vehicles that you may be able to find at your local grocery. The "Bonus Game Token" scales out close enough to N scale to work, even in the foreground (after they're painted, of course). There are 30 models available of different US prototypes from the 1950s to the present, but they're a limited production, so get them when you see them.

Modeler's Moment - Avoid a "rippled" sky

Backdrops are good, sky-colored backdrops are better. Even better yet are sky-colored backdrops that don't have large wood grain in them like can be seen in this NTrak module. The ripples will stand out quite prominently in photos using small apertures (which means a higher f-stop number and therefore larger depth-of-field like this image). There are a couple of ways around this problem, with the most simple being to use a smooth material other than wood as your backdrop material. Styrene sheet is available in large sizes up to 4'x8' at specialty plastics stores, and if you don't have a plastics dealer nearby, your local hardware store or lumberyard may be able to order it for you. Another option is to cover the backdrop with another material, which could include any of the preprinted backdrops that are easily available at almost every hobby shop, photos cut out of calendars from past years, or printed from your own printer on photo paper. The key to any backdrop cover is that it needs to be thick enough to hide the wood grain beneath it, so papers should be somewhere around cardstock thickness.

Modeler's Moment - Backdrops on small layouts

Adding a backdrop to even a small layout can make the layout look a great deal larger. This scene under construction is on a 4'x6' HO scale layout. Sure, there's a lot going on here, even without the finished scenery, but in hiding part of the layout, your imagination and sense of reality make you believe that there's quite a bit more on the other side.

Modeler's Moment - Careful backdrop positioning

Avoid positioning your backdrop images too high. If the horizon is above eye level, it won't look right to a person standing in front of the layout, and it especially won't look right when you put your camera down at track level.

Modeler's Moment - Forced perspective

Make your streets narrower and the details smaller as they approach the backdrop and they will appear longer to your viewers. You can also help the illusion by matching the angles in your backdrop image.

Modeler's Moment - Former grade crossings create instant history

It's said that "the only constant is change," and this tenet is evident in a myriad of ways in the rail transport industry. As model railroaders, we have an equally large number of ways that we can show evidence of changes on our layouts. Here's an example that I saw on the prototype over the weekend. The location in this image is Black Earth, Wisconsin, a town on the former Milwaukee Road line between Madison and Prairie du Chien. The mainline is still in use through this town by Wisconsin & Southern, but as we can see in this photo, the facility across the street used to have an industrial spur leading to it. The narrow strip of asphalt in line with the building covers the former grade crossing. Notice that the patch over the track location is slightly darker than the surrounding pavement? On a model layout, such a detail can be added to almost any street, even at a sharp angle to the layout edge, and as we see here, we can add this detail not only in the large cities, but in the small towns too.

Modeler's Moment - Former track alignments

Don't throw away the ties that you cut off your flex track when you're adding rail joiners. Bury a short row of ties in your scenery to show where track "used to be". These ties are at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wisconsin.

Modeler's Moment - Look beyond your borders for inspiration

Modeling ideas and inspirations can come from worldwide prototypes. For example, in this photo of Japan Railway's Senzan Line, notice the heights of the foreground foliage and how the colors and heights all even out as they recede into the background. Also notice that even though the track is at the bottom of a cut in the terrain, it's still raised slightly forming drainage troughs along each side of the roadbed.

Modeler's Moment - Paint simple backdrops

When you start your backdrop painting, remember that you don't always need photo realism for rural or mountainous scenery. Often just a rough shape of the mountain in an appropriate color palette will be sufficient. Closer mountains will have colors that appear similar to your layout's scenery. However, keep in mind that distant mountains on the prototype appear in progressively bluer shades until the mountain is just a "purple mountain majesty" in the distance, so you don't necessarily want to use the same colors as your foreground scenery.

Modeler's Moment - Paint the backdrop

If you do nothing else to your backdrop, at a bare minimum, go down to the local paint store and buy a quart of mistint flat sky blue paint and a wide brush. The exact shade isn't important, just get something that looks like a sky blue. By looking through the mistint (the "rejects") shelf, you'll often get the paint for very little. Most skies that occur naturally don't have wood grain, so a simple step like this can immensely improve the appearance of a layout in its beginning stages. While you're at it, get a grass green, dirt brown and street grey for the rest of the plywood plains too.

Modeler's Moment - Scenry colors

What color is green? When you're adding scenery to your layout, slight variations in the colors will help give a more realistic appearance. This photo was taken in late May 2003 from the back of the Algoma Central's er Wisconsin Central's um Canadian National's train through Agawa Canyon.

Modeler's Moment - Signs can convey history

When you're adding signs to your layout, add a couple older logos and slogans for your railroad on some bridges to give the layout a sense of history. This bridge was photographed along the waterfront in Toronto in summer 2004.

Modeler's Moment - Tank car unloading at small industries

Ever wonder how tank cars are unloaded when they are delivered to industries and how to model such an unloading facility? It can be quite simple, really, as we see in this photo of a siding at a local styrofoam manufacturing company. The receiving industry attaches a hose to a drain valve on the tank car and pumps the liquid out. In this photo we can see the hose the industry attaches to the tank car, and the outer edge of the pump is visible in the lower left corner of the picture. The track is far enough away from the industry that a person can walk between the building and the car in order to attach the hose. Also notice, that when the industry is not actively unloading the car, the hose is detached from the car and out of the way so the railroad can perform switching without damaging the unloading equipment. At some industries, the pump is completely inside the building to deter vandalism or to keep it out of the weather, so sometimes the only visible item is the hose; of course, there are other industries that bring the hose inside also when it's not in use.

 

Modeler's Moment - Tunnel portals

Install your tunnel portals before you add the plaster and other scenic materials so you can better integrate the portal into the surrounding scenery. Unless the tunnel prototype you're modeling is brand-spanking-new, you shouldn't generally be able to see every edge of a portal that's at the bottom of a cut. Plus, you'll be able to fine-tune your train clearances more easily.

Modeler's Moment - Use details to set the era

With careful planning, your layout can be built in a way that you can model several different eras by just changing a few details. For example, the scene pictured here shows a layout set in the 1930s, but it could easily be changed to show a layout set in the 1950s by simply changing the vehicles on the road. With newer vehicle models, it could also represent an even later era, perhaps the 1980s by also changing the sign on the structure and adding a stop sign at the grade crossing. If you build your layout with removable structures, you can replace Victorian architecture with Art Deco architecture to further enhance the era change.
 

Modeler's Moment - Use structure mockups

When you start on building the scenery in your city or industrial areas, make some cardboard and paper mockups of the structures that you want to include. The mockups can help you determine if the structures you want are the right shape and size for your layout; if you use the DPM wall templates, you'll even know what you need to buy to build them.

Modeler's Moment - What's supporting the pier?

Water features always make interesting scenes on model railroads, whether they're models of lakes, rivers, harbors or just puddles. When they're at the fascia edge of a layout, the modeler can make the water a little deeper and embed things in the water material to make it look even more realistic. However, this can also work against the modeler if something doesn't extend below the surface of the water when it should. The HO scale fishing pier shown here is a prime example. Is the pier really as light as an insect that it doesn't break the surface tension of the water? Plan your details before you start pouring the water material.
 

Modeler's Moment - anything can be a statue

We've all got items in our junk boxes that just don't fit anywhere in any of our model building projects. Take a closer look at them. You may find that they would work in a park as a statue, like this monkey statue on an HO scale layout that I recently visited. The thing is, when you create a center of interest on your layout, make sure that the model people around it are all upright and not tipped over like in this picture (especially not flopped over on their faces like the gentleman on the right).