I realize that it is impractical to say the least, but has anyone else thought about how one could go about building a layout as would have been done in real life?
That is, building a complete area with soil, grass, trees natural terrain features then planning and executing the building of a railroad . . . removing overburden, cutting through topsoil, leveling rises, putting down sub road bed etc. etc.
Better to plan ahead with the idea of bulding the layout to what your final rendition will be. Why go through all the work, expense, and mess just to rip something out?
Mark B.
Building a 25 acre 7 1/2" gauge live steam layout will be the only way I know of. Maybe Ray's large scale railroad was built this way.
On an indoor layout all you are doing is making a lot of work and creating a ton of frustration.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
That is what a lot of large scale guys do when building into an established garden. Build with the terrain so as to disturbe as little as possible Posses some unique challenges
shane
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
In addition to making extra work for yourself, a more fundamental problem with this approach is that what we modellers want in our railroad is usually different (even opposite) of what a real railroad wants.
Generally we want lots of stuff like curves, sidings, tunnels, bridges, grades, crossovers etc because they look good and make running trains fun. Real railroads don't want these things because they cost money. If they could lay track in a perfectly straight line from A to B, they'd do it. We wouldn't, because that'd be boring model railroad.
Add in the fact that most of us are working with limited space, we have to plan the scenery and geography carefully so as to get all the stuff we want into the space we have.
Example, I had to intentionally place a mountain on one side of my layout, with carefully measured dimensions, so that I could have an excuse to put a tunnel through it and also a grade climbing up and over it. Two features with one piece of geography.
John Allen did a bit of this but mainly the basic land forms only.
I put down foam and plaster, make trees, plant them, put down ground foam, static grass and then tear it all up so I can lay track and feel like I am Otto Mears.
It was said WW2 Admiral Earnest King was so mean he shaved with a blow torch.
Both techniques might work but in answer to your question, no I never thought of doing either.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Soupy but has anyone else thought about how one could go about building a layout as would have been done in real life?
Not me. Only if I were building a large scale garden type railroad.
Mike.
My You Tube
John Allen did that in the 50s on his Gorre and Daphited. Pictures of the scenery were in MR with no right of way
Have at it, but it all must be done using this equipment. We will be checking up on you for cheating.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
I like that Brent! Wonder how it handles styrofoam and cardboard.
Excavating my layout would be the scene in Beetlejuice.
I did the next best thing. A friend tore out a layout that had plaster hard shell mountains with lots of relief formations.. He tore it out in big lumpy chunks.
When I got my track laid and infrastructure all in and it was time for scenicking the mountains over the staging tracks, I grabbed those chunks and stapled them in place randomly, almost recklessly. The resulting irregular formations were far more natural looking than my lack of imagination could have come up with.
I then went over it all with additional layers of hardshell to stiffen and stabilize it. Dan