As you may know a new car sits where my railroad once was . As I am in between spaces, the modules sit neatly stacked against the wall in my basement. Sad? No way, because I have been able to do something that I was not able to do before . I am "standing back" from the railroad, looking at each module individually. By doing this I am able to see little (and not so little) problems that were not evident when the entire road was together. Although I don't have time right now to correct these problems, I am noting them in the re-build notebook. One way to do this for your own road...short of taking it all apart, is to use a piece of cardboard and "block" scenes on your railroad. The blocked area should be pretty small, say no more than a square foot. Now, look at the area...does it make sense in isolation? Does it look realistic? What do you expect to see in an area like this in the real world? I think you will find that you can improve your scenery and possibly the performance of the road if you look at the layout in this way. This technique could be used anywhere (protype as well as freelance) but in freelance it is critical that things look "right" because our universe does not model a real railroad or railroad setting. The closer you get your layout to look natural, the more believable our made-up scenario. Try it...its fun ! John
JCater you are just full of little challenges aren't you. I think you should take this a little further .I suggest doing as you say then doing a larger area to see if that scene blends in with it's suroundings. I have done this on my NTRAK modules OOPS! that don't belong there. In other words ya got a GOOD idea there JC.
Thanks Catt...it would never have hapened if I had not taken the dern thing apart. I like the idea of also looking at broader areas to see if the scene blends. No ice caves in my desert so far, but those spruce trees just wont do ! John
What an interesting idea, John. I have just begun to take a closer look at things on my layout too. When you look at a close up view of a scene, what's missing? In my case, it was the realization that my town needed more trees. The park, grassy areas between sidewalks and parkinglots, backyards of houses; these all needed LOTS of trees. Show me a small town that isn't just crowded with trees. I believe that these efforts will make our layouts look more realistic in the end. Jeff Augsburg & Concord R.R. (a fictional shortline in Central Illinois) http://www.pegnsean.net/~revnjeff
Jeff, Trees are a big part of it. Bushes too. A general overview of the finished part of my railroad LOOKED good, until I started doing this. The I realized that there were far too few bushes (sagebrush desert is actually pretty thick with the stuff). I think the best thing to do is build as you think it should be, then, later, do the blocking. Its interesting to see what's missing or just plain out of place! John
