i'm building a small L-shaped folded pt-to-pt layout on 1" foam and 1/4" roadbed. The layout is low, 30", to fit under some windows. I hope to elevate the rear track.I'd like to avoid the flatland look, and am wondering about scenery contours (height), both in front and behind tracks, not only at the front of the layout but between trackwork and where there are elevation changes.There seem to be many levels of realism. The starting point is flatland without even any scenery extending above the trackwork. The next level is small hills and trackwork cutting through them. Even if tracks are elevated, each level may be flat and there's a staircase effect.
Bill McClanahans Scenery book discusses how a railroad cuts through the landscape, both rising above and sinking below it, and ealier books and articles often described building narrow roadbed over open-frame benchwork where hard-shell scenery covered the remaining benchwork.
Open frame encourages landscape that avoids being flat but there still seems to be a reluctance to having scenery that rises above the front-side or dips below the backside of the track.
It's obvious that you don't want to hide views of the train, especially if the layout height is at eye level, but wouldn't parts of a layout having a valley effect where there is both hills in front and behind the trackwork look a little more realistic?
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Personally (with my limited experience) anything that has a lot of up and downs on a 24" width does not look realistic Interesting and beautiful yes. Realistic no. This is why (again caveats applied for this is my humble opinion) plans from the 1930s-50s like the one you have shown or even plan like the famous Gorre and Daphetid don't appeal to me. If your typical eyesight frame can catch three tracks each at three different levels at the same time, well, that just ain't so in typical real life.
Second, rising and falling terrain that partially hides a train gives me that rolling hills or valley feeling. But in 24" or similar width, a hill behind and a hill ahead of the track makes a gorge, not really a valley.
Third, i think you have the right idea with "cut-and-fill" ... Undulate the terrain lengthwise (along the track) showing cuts thru terrain and fills over valleys. That looks realistic to me.
// end rant. NP.
gregcOpen frame encourages landscape that avoids being flat but there still seems to be a reluctance to having scenery that rises above the front-side or dips below the backside of the track. It's obvious that you don't want to hide views of the train, especially if the layout height is at eye level, but wouldn't parts of a layout having a valley effect where there is both hills in front and behind the trackwork look a little more realistic?
The answer is to forget what other modelers are doing and base your scenery on the real world. If there's a hill, model it; if the land would slope away from the track toward the backdrop, model that. Most people seem to copy other layouts, which is why so many layout look the same, and don't look like reality.
There's nothing wrong with hiding views of the track here and there. When you're out railfanning there are only so many locations affording clear views of the track. Using landforms and/or vegetation between the track and viewer can help to create a look that will remind you of what you really see on the prototype. This can be even more effective with higher benchwork levels because your view will truly be obstructed and you have to move to one side or the other to get a good look at things.
Here's a scene on my layout where the landforms rise above track level on both sides of a creek. If you're standing in this spot, the train will come into view from behind the hill on one side, and disappear behind the other. You can still see it by looking up a canyon or through a cut, but you may not be able to see it looking straight-on.
This is another part of the same scene. You can look into the canyon from either end, but the hill at right rises up to the fascia in between.
Rob Spangler
Except in some fair grounds and on playing fields, terrain is not flat. If you want my opinion, every layout should have contoured scenery. It needn't be mountainous, unless that's what you intend to portray, but it should have some shallow changes in elevation at least. Even a river bed is likely to show some contouring near it since most of them flood from time to time and scour the earth adjacent to their banks, resulting in a bit of a depression.
A large number of us, but probably not a majority, would say that ideallly a train should not move through the same scene twice on a layout until it has completed a main line loop....if it's a looped main line. A switching layout is a different beast entirely. The photo you show above is a lovely layout, but the trains move in front of the viewer several times. It was a design feature, surely, and I can actually appreciate all that went into it. If I were constrained to the space I think this layout occupied, I'd be right there as well. I'm not, though, so my trains do not move in tight curves and return in another direction two or more times across my front. When they do that, you pretty much have to have contours...or crossings.
-Crandell
A small point to point with tracks at two elevations should have a definite purpose for the "high line". For an industrial scene, an extensive elevated bridge may serve an industry requiring dumping of hoppers. Since your thinking about land contours perhaps your thinking a switch back to a mine? In either case, its entirely realistic to have two levels of track in one scene. The key is avoiding an overly artificial stair case effect. The real roads use retaining walls, cuts, fills, and bridges to get across, around, or through nature. In a way, imagine the country your in first, then what is going to be required to get the railroad through it. In reality however, you usually have a track plan first then put the scenery in. The more you can imagine what the scenery was like before the tracks came in, the more realistic things will look. And then, more interesting scenery, like creeks, and cliffs, that go above and below grade, make for a more interesting scene in my opinion.
Crandell,A ISL needs not to be flat..Add a short 20 or 30' bridge over a creek or pile some rip rap around a industrial size sewer pipe and you have "elevation"..Drop the industry siding lower then the main industrial branch you have elevation..
As you know "evelvation" does not always mean steep grades going around a mountain.
BTW..Crawford County fairgrounds is not completely flat..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
it's not the elevation of the trackwork, but the elevation of the terrain around the track.
there's an spur nearby that crosses a road but it about 5 ft above the backyards of the house it runs behind about 100 yards from that road. Further away from the road, the ground rises up even with the track again.
and of course if track runs across a hill side, the ground should be below the track on one side and above it on the other.
i'm trying to get a feel for this undualting terrain both along the track as well as in front and back. Not mountainous but hilly terrain
gregcthere's an spur nearby that crosses a road but it about 5 ft above the backyards of the house it runs behind about 100 yards from that road. Further away from the road, the ground rises up even with the track again.
This sort of gently undulating terrain can be easy and fun to do.
This low fill is only about 1/2" tall. Rather than trying to sculpt contours out of plaster, I made a scenery shell even with the base of the roadbed and built up the fill from sand. Scenery rises back up to track level in the background.
Once the scene was complete, the fill added some welcome vertical relief.
About 60 years ago a chap who had spent the day railfanning the Western Pacific designed a trainwatcher's layout - a single track following a river through a gorge, with a normal height fascia and tracks down at sock-top level. IIRC, there were layover tracks hidden under the near side of the Feather River Canyon.
If your railroad runs through vertical scenery, a lot of it will be above track level. So, are you standing in the river, or is there a narrow stream in an intervening canyon? Or maybe you have to cross a series of steep finger ridges with a track that undulates across short bridges and through short tunnels, with a straight fascia that looks like a spread out version of a seismograph's earthquake trace. (On my layout, that shelf is only 375mm wide. One visible track, three hidden.)
Forced perspective only works if the viewing angle can be controlled to a narrow arc. If you can get an edgewise view of an obviously hyperbolic backscene...
Chuck (Modeling the vertical scenery of Central Japan in September, 1964)
wp8thsub ....This low fill is only about 1/2" tall. Rather than trying to sculpt contours out of plaster, I made a scenery shell even with the base of the roadbed and built up the fill from sand. Scenery rises back up to track level in the background. Once the scene was complete, the fill added some welcome vertical relief.
....This low fill is only about 1/2" tall. Rather than trying to sculpt contours out of plaster, I made a scenery shell even with the base of the roadbed and built up the fill from sand. Scenery rises back up to track level in the background.
That's a very good-looking scene, Rob. I especially like the way the modelled scene blends in with the backdrop.
Wayne
BRAKIE Crandell,A ISL needs not to be flat..Add a short 20 or 30' bridge over a creek or pile some rip rap around a industrial size sewer pipe and you have "elevation"..Drop the industry siding lower then the main industrial branch you have elevation.. As you know "evelvation" does not always mean steep grades going around a mountain. BTW..Crawford County fairgrounds is not completely flat..
I'm sure there are many exceptions, but they are not hilly as a rule, Larry. That's why I said, "...some..." My point was that there is very little evenly flat ground.
doctorwayneThat's a very good-looking scene, Rob.
Thanks, Wayne!