New Ideas on "Partials"

[FJ and G]

As far as I can determine, no one has ever mentioned or written about the 3 types of partials. One of them is commonly used. One is rare and the third is very rare.

1. The most common partial is when a road, tracks, river, mountain, forest, etc etc ends abruptly at the train table edge. Your mind naturally fills in the missing pieces just like when you are reading a good novel. You imagine things happening that are not there, such as the mountain chain continuing for several hundred more miles, the river running to the sea eventually, and the road or track leading off somewhere distant.

2. This partial is a bit rare but nevertheless is used on occasion. It consists of splitting a building at the table edge so you can see inside the building. THere's a dude named "Spankybird" on the CTT forum (Kalmbach), who did this with a circus tent. The same could be done by splitting a train in two, such as a passenger train and the locomotive, but this train splitting idea has never been done before, probably because the thought of slicing a train in half lengthwise is too grotesque to ponder.

3. This last partial is EXTREMELY rare. It consists of adding a complete structure such as a building or oil storage tank near the edge of the layout with the deception being that related structures continue just off the table. This is esp. useful for extremely large structures that simply won't fit on your layout. Some examples might be a weighing station on a spur leading to a coal unloading operation. You don't have room for the entire coal structures, coal piles and stuff like that, except for perhaps a small pile of coal. But, this gives you an excuse to run a coal drag. An example for a grain elevator or steel mill could also be devised, where the hint of bigger things could be made by putting some structures or stuff near the edge of the layout that you would recognize. Stuff you might recognize for example would be steam locomotive spare parts at the edge of a turntable, with partial tracks leading to a roundhouse, but the roundhouse is not there and is believed to be just off the layout.

I don't know if I'm making these examples clear or not.

Anyway, the use of partials can greatly "expand" your layout's horizons; something esp. needed in O scale where space is premium.

Dave Vergun

[philnrunt]

Dave- There was an article in MR about "over the hill " industries that tied in with this. The pulpwood cars were on a siding, and you just assumed the mill was over the hill.
And along time ago, (going along with your split building) someone showed underground structures at the edge of the layout. Water and gas pipes, sewers etc were all modeled, and it was pretty neat. I always wanted to do that, and maybe add a fossil or an old forgotten graveyard, buried foundations, etc.
You could also build a tunnel on the layout edge, and model the interior (blasted rock, wood bracing, bare worklights illuminating damp, moss covered rocks) and model the mountain above it. With maybe a cave with stalagmites and stalactites included.Or an underground river with waterfall.
The possibilities are really unlimited!

[CNJ831]

Why hasn't Dave seen his "partials" addressed here before...simple.

With regard to his first type of partial - tracks or roads leading off the layout, or partial terrain (mountains, rivers, etc.) - one sees these on at least 90% of _all_ layouts in some fashion. It is a rarity for a layout not to have an example of one! This makes them hardly an item to be singled out for discussion. You'll find references to them under the topic of typical scenicking.

The second sort of partial is largely avoided by most of us simply because placing a "halved" structure at the very edge of the layout invites its almost certain demise unless you have your layout roped off like a museum diorama. You or a guest are sure to wack it with an elbow sooner or later and then it's goodbye! And it really isn't possible to split a car lengthwise and have is stay upright on only half a truck (a bizarre concept anyway!).

As to the third typeof partial - implying structures off the layout - this works affectively in very few situations. Incidentally, it is better and more believable to have implied industries be off the layout behind the backdrop rather than on the aisle-side. Nearly all implied industries off the aisle-side of the layout are recognizable/believable only to the operator, not to the viewer, and so generally fail in their purpose. I once saw a layout feature by one of the bigtime MRR's (perhaps Koester?) with a pile of coal representing the yard of an off-layout industry. The only impression it conveyed was a pile of coal!

CNJ831

[Anonymous]

I don't know about these never being done before - this hobby has been going on a long time, and the vast majority of the work has never been published. That is changing with the magazines, and now the internet becoming more available. As phil pointed out, MR did do the "Over the Hill" article, and selective compression is a kind of "partial" that has been practiced for years. I think Tony Koester did the roundhouse example, as he wanted to showcase the servicing of the locos, not the roundhouse.

But they are interesting ideas for sure!

I have one other that you might want to include, that I have been using on my layout. I have a station, and some heavyweight passenger cars. I also have 18" radius curves out of necessity. Now the long cars look a little funny on the curves, and running a real passenger train is not really possible. So the car sits at the station as if it is being prepared for a trip, but it never leaves...

I guess that is a "partial operation", not a partial industry, scene, or structure... But I hope it counts [;)] I enjoy your posts - they always make me think! [:D]

Andrew

[orsonroy]

Actually, I've seen all three types of partials in the pages of MR over the past couple of years. I plan on using the "road over the hill" and "plant continues off layout" extensively on my layout (most of have to because of space constraints). Personally, I've never really liked the "half a building you can see into" effect, so I won't use it.

And you missed the fourth, and most common type of partial: flats or partial buildings butted up against the backdrop. I think most of us use THAT technique!

[FJ and G]

Couple other things to add to the list of good partials:

* THe loooong warehouse, esp. the kind like at the old New Jersey docks

* The looooong coal dock. I don't know the name of it but Harrold Russell featured it in "things you can model" section I think last year. It is on Lake Erie, I believe. That is so long that unless you had N scale, would be hard to do

* full-blown petroleum facilities, you can start the intricate pipework and then let if abruptly end

* Open pit mine, which is way too big for most layouts

I could probably think of others. Now that you've jogged my memory, I do recall some of the published stuff that some of you mentioned.