Can a flatlander layout look dramatic or...

[FJ and G]

eerrr, flat?

Well, June04 MR answered the question with a definitive YES, it can look dramatic. The Santa Fe layout depicts relatively flat south central Kansas in a very dramatic way. The layout also proves that you can pack a big punch into a multilayered, narrow-shelved layout.

Kudos to MR and to all of the folks who pitched in with its construction.

Dave Vergun

[orsonroy]

I just got the latest issue of MR last night, and I agree; that ATSF layout is fantastic! I'm building a layout with a similar concept (multideck through the flatlands), and it's really inspired me and reassured me that my layout idea really IS workable! I also liked Tony Koester's multilevel lighting article. All in all, a good issue for us multideck modelers!

[Anonymous]

I also really liked the Santa fe layout. i am modeling similar terrain (in a much smaller space ) I may multideck my 14ft long shelf to get some more running room.

[Anonymous]

Not all of the Midwest is flat. Most of it until you get out in Kansas and Oklahoma is gently rolling, and some places along the Mississsippi River Bluffs (which are in the area I model) are pretty rough. The Emporia Sub was a good layout, but MR needs to visit someone modeling the CGW, C&NW, CB&Q, CRI&P, Wabash, IC, or Chicago & Alton.

[n2mopac]

Even the flattest geographical area will have its own "dramatic" landscape features. They key is to find and recreate these features. I model North Texas myself--quite flat indeed. I personally looked for overpasses, creeks, and ridges to include in the layout to maintain reasonably prototypical yet interesting and "dramatic" scenic features. [2c] [;)]
Ron

[FJ and G]

Well, when I said "flat" I meant to say "relatively flat," without mountains or tunnels, two items that to many, seem requisit items for a layout.

One advantage of a "relatively flat" layout like that featured in JuneMR's Santa Fe layout, is that you don't run out of space on the narrow shelf layout of the type featured!

Gently rolling terrain and low level river runs get add variety enough.

dav

[Anonymous]

Yo, cjm89 Oklahoma is not flat !!!!! If you want to talk flat, talk about kansas or texas. we have rolling hills just like you "northerners" I know that Illinois is part of the midwest, but I think of it as a northern state ( that has nothing to do with the civil war north and south. oklahoma was not even around back then ) just didn't want people to get the wrong idea about my beloved sooner state. by the way, Oklahoma city ( where I live ) has the largest tornadoe count of any city in the USA. I'm not sure wether to be proud of that or not. every spring-REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRR, O boy the tornadoe sirens, turn on the TV, go get in te storm cellar. such is life in the midwest.

[JoeUmp]

Well, Here in Indiana we are considered part of the midwest and the southern third of the state is quite hilly. No mountains mind you, but we do have bridges and tunnels.

Joe

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by train boy

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRR, O boy the tornadoe sirens, turn on the TV, go get in te storm cellar. such is life in the midwest.

Uh, trainboy, Oklahoma's in the south.

[CNJ831]

I would guess that a lot depends on what you consider as being dramatic. I'd consider Steve Priest's layout an excellent example to good old solid modeling and it is very pleasing to the eye but I saw nothing in the MR photo's to suggest anything dramatic about it or its scenery. There are no towering cityscapes, dizzying trestles or canyons, rock cuts or tunnels. These are the aspects that one typically associates as making a layout dramatic in appearance.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a flat-topped layout but it certainly won't produce the ooohs and aaahs you will get from a viewer when seeing a landscape with sharp undulations in terrain or extreme structural complexity.

CNJ831

[MStLfan]

I guess it all depends on your viewpoint of your models. For a flatland model to be effective it has to be close to eyelevel. Even in the real world this is noticeable. I make a regular trip by train from my home town of Rotterdam here in the Netherlands to Goes, a small city in our southwestern province of Zeeland. This journey is by doubledecker intercity train. Recently I was staring out of the window and I noticed that the landscape looked a tiny bit different from the toplevel of the doubledecker when compared to the lower deck. On the top I still can't look over the socalled deltadykes, which reach up to 7 meters above sealevel (the province itself is at or below sealevel) and on the bottom you really have a feeling of passing through the backup dykes with their safetydoors (your are sitting less than a meter above the rails). We also have to climb the approaches to bridges over two canals. Then you have a good view towards the horizon.
Well, that's my 2 eurocents opinion on the matter, you still have to make a nice model or your viewers don't get the effects you're after .
Greetings from Rotterdam the Netherlands

[Anonymous]

ONe way to make a "Flatland" layout more dramatic is to put some thought and effort into the skyline of your backdrop. Distant hills, mountains, cities, grain elevators, tree lines, etc can do the trick. Andy Sperandeo did a series on modeling Oklahoma back in the early 1980's that included a very helpful peice on painting backdrops to give a sense of distance, and you don't have to be particularly artistic to get a great effect. I've used it and been ecstatic with the results (thanks, Andy!).

[Anonymous]

I'll gladly model any terrain where I can run HELPER LOCOs on my freights and have it look believable. I used to think helpers were only used in the mountains, but a friend of mine mentioned that he saw helpers used on the 'up' grade of a viaduct that went over a harbor on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Haven't ever been able to confirm this, though...

[orsonroy]

Ken,

I've got a helper district on my central Illinois layout, just as with the prototype. Everyone forgets that the midwest is full of small but intense river valleys. I drive over a glorified creek every day called the Kishwaukee River. At one point where US route 39 crosses the river, it's a 200 foot drop and rise in 1/2 mile!

On my layout, I've got three river valleys to traverse, based on a 30 mile chunk of mainline. The mainline starts next to the Illinois river, crawls up that, down into the Farm Creek valley (flood plain tributary to the Illinois), and on to the city of Bloomington, which is in a prehistoric river basin. My prototype, the Nickel Plate Road, had an assigned switcher in Bloomington, partially to move the high level of interchange and industry traffic, and partially to help get trains out of town and up the 1.3% grade (which was incidentally the fourth steepest grade on the NKP!)

[Anonymous]

well 4884, if you want to get technical, oklahoma is a southwestern state, but it looks midwestern.

[Anonymous]

I've always thought that a well-done prairie or corn-belt layout could be highly dramatic, in the sense of inspiring or capturing emotion. I don't think "dramatic" translates as "vertical" at all. I've seen MANY tall trestles and sheer cliff faces which are desperately underwhelming, and I think this may in large part be due to the lack of context; usually, such a scene is set in amongst all kinds of other grand vertical gestures, never giving the viewer a solid grounding against which such a scene can be appreciated. My own layout, based in West Virginia mountains, is becoming far more flat in general in order to make the few punctuation points stand out. My backdrop previously had mountains towering in the distance, uniformly about 8 inches taller than the railhead; I'm repainting to create a horizon less than half that height.

What I think would be most compelling about a flatland rail scene would be trying to convey the vast distances implied. Yes, this will be difficult, but I think a really big sky which dwarfs the trains, and makes you feel a little bit lonely, coupled with an ascetic trackplan which is comprised primarily of single-track straight main lines, could be just as compelling as D&RGS narrow-guage canyon winders. In fact, considering the abundance of railroad history bundled up tightly with the development of the plains, I think this sort of railroad would be more compelling than the umpteenth Gorre & Daphetic knockoff.

[Anonymous]

I think something that makes a flatland look dramatic is the details. I've seen many models where the layout is relativly flat but the added touches of setting up scenes which make the figures jump alive. A good example of this is the new rochelle layout in the great track plans 2004. I saw the layout and it jumped out to me as working town even though everything but the trains were stationary. I think it makes it dramatic.
Andy

[Jetrock]

Heck, if you want F-L-A-T, check out the central valleys of California! Sure, we're in between two mountain ranges, but the sheer flatness of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, and the delta region between them, is impressive largely due to its sheer FLATNESS! For those of us that model it, scenery is at least pretty cheap!

Things to liven up flat layouts: Short eye relief. Structures and cities. Backdrops portraying distant mountain ranges. Tall trees. And for those big open ag regions, gigantic grain silos and mills that dwarf the railroad.

Putting the layout at or close to eye level is a definite plus. I set mine at 48" because I'm usually viewing the layout while sitting down, and I'm not very tall...

[simon1966]

All my friends in the North East imagine that I live on a billard board in central Illinois. OK, it may not resemble the finger lakes region of NY, but it certainly is not flat. I am planning on modelling a good size bridge that crosses a small valley on the mine spur (N&S line now) just north of Staunton, IL. This will be a fairly dramatic section of my layout. I am having to be a bit careful as it is easy to compress to many dramatic scenes together and lose any hint that the setting is Illinois. So I am forcing myself to have some relatively flat bits around a grain elevator seed mill that I am building.

[Anonymous]

Hi all
A layout I saw built by AMRA Australian Model Railway Assosiation WA branch is called
Arrid Australia it is FLAT and not a tree in site if it was straight and 300 miles long it would be a good representation of the Nulabore plain boy is it dramatic I dont know how they have done it but just looking at it is enough to make you head of for something
cool to drink I think the builders have captured not only the look but the feel of the place as well.
Not my style really but I wish I was that good a presenting a model railway it really grabs you so a flat land layout can be done dramaticly its just a case of getting the look and feel of the place right.
regards John

[FJ and G]

John Busby,

Australia just built a line from Darwin to the south; the other transcon. Dramatic flat scenery. I used to ride the trains in Perth when I was deployed to the land down under.

One other flat comment that I hope won't go flat. When you design hills and mountains and tunnels, it often looks phoney. A real mountain would be the size of your house, in relation to the trains. Well, I guess you can selectively compress it to look real, but the point is that flat land just appears more convincing. Check out not only the MR June issue but also go back to a year or two ago to Great Model Railroad issue (forgot the title but it's that annual magazine by Kalmbach). See the Corn Belt railroad, (Chicago Great Western). Very dramatic flatscape with nice elevation for some cuts to add variety to the terrain.

Dave Vergun

[Anonymous]

Anyone who models Louisiana can outdo anybody else when it comes to flat. No tunnels, no mountains (highest point in state is less than 400' above sea level),but can do water and a bridges. Absolutely nothing in the southern half of the state that can't be recreated with a sheet of plywood. Still it is the recreating of what you are familar with that is the fun.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who models Louisiana can outdo anybody else when it comes to flat. No tunnels, no mountains (highest point in state is less than 400' above sea level),but can do water and a bridges. Absolutely nothing in the southern half of the state that can't be recreated with a sheet of plywood. Still it is the recreating of what you are familar with that is the fun.

[Jetrock]

There are still features that can appear on flat land, though... In the Sacramento River delta, an area subject to annual flooding, all railroads are up on high levees or trestles. Even though the terrain is pancake-flat, the levees rise up above the flatness, and thus roads and railroads must meet their level or rise up to them. I assume that delta/floodplain terrain elsewhere is similarly flat, and human artifacts not wanting an annual bath have to elevate above the high-water mark...

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave
The Darwin line is only 100 years late on completion date.
I used to live in Perth..
I got a bit of a shock I did not think NT had a railway at all but got given a load of junk by a friend who is moving some junk?? two passanger cars and three frieght cars ideal for my next foray into indoor railways. and a small booklet on the 3'6" gauge line that was in Darwin sadly long gone but worth a bit of research for the garden line.
mountains can be a bit hard to get right if you don't go floor to ceiling.
But I don't know any one with that luxure in the larger scales the problem gets worse
regards John

[Anonymous]

hi fortbend
Sorry but the flat sheet of ply wood dosn't work for any kind of model railway unless it has a sheet of canite on the top dont know what the US call it its the soft stuff pin boards are made of.
flat land isn't flat so you will need to go belw track hight at some places
regards John

[philnrunt]

East central Indiana is so flat we make pancakes and stand on them to get a better view. Why, I myself have seen a 3 high flapjack stand ...well, you get the idea. The best flatland layout in my opinion is the Monon N scale featured in RMC, MR, and GMR a few years back. Built by a father and son combo, if I remember correctly.
If you like switching tho, the good old flat midwest can give you the perfect platform to do it on. The Muncie and Western RR that served Ball Corp and a few other industries is a great model for a layout.
Now that Tony Koester is going straight Nickel Plate, we'll see how well he handles this challenge! Frankfort is pretty flatland!
And speaking of RMC, if you want to see some beautiful trackwork check out this months RMC and the Everett and Monte Cristo.