General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Hi!

I've sure pondered this question many times over the years, and I had an easy time making up the list - but an awful time paring it down into what I could fit in nicely on my layout(s).

In no particular order, "every" layout of my era (steam/diesel) should have:

A freight yard, a passenger yard, a roundhouse, coaling tower, ash pit, water towers, diesel facilities, & MOW facilities.

A passenger station, freight station, ice house with icing platforms, yard offices, & cattle pens.

A complete farm, couple of small factories, coal/oil dealership, oil terminal, feed stores, grain storage elevators, a coal mine, logging/lumber facilities, & a gas station to show the era's autos. 

Scenery should include areas of forest, hills/mountains, and flatlands.  A river or stream will be bridged by various types of bridges, foliage, grass, weeds will abound, and all track will be properly ballasted. 

And then come the details, like people, crates/drums, signage, autos/trucks, junque, and all the flotsam and jetsam that we see every day.

Ha, I only wish I had room for all the above...........

Mobilman44 

 

 

Autobus Prime wrote:

The vending machines somebody mentioned are a good idea, too. I guess anything people habitually use without thinking is good. Somehow, these things are extremely noticeable on a layout, when they're there, and really make it look like a familiar place...others might include trash cans, phone booths, fire hydrants, manhole covers, sewer grates, mailboxes, cellar doors, and electric and gas meters.

For a while such details for the modern era were lacking, but Walthers and other manufacturers have stepped up and brought out some nice ones in HO scale (specifically Phone Booths, Hydrants, mailboxes).  You don't have to go crazy putting them everywhere either, a few here and there (assuming you're just modeling nonrail area as 'slices' along the track, and not an entire city - which is probably a really poor assumption come to think of it...).
Hey, remember that guy who made an modern-looking lighted soda vending machine - looked pretty nice, but not sure if he ever really mentioned exactly how he made it.

Did anybody mention old tires laying in ditches? It's hard to think of any layout in the post-car era that shouldn't have a few tires here and there.

I think trash and litter was mentioned, but it doesn't hurt to reinforce it - heck, anytime after 1960 you can start adding big items like beat up washing machines and fridges into those ditches (although trash did tone down a bit starting in the 1990s, you can go crazy with trash along urban RR ROWs if you're modeling the 1970s-1980s - remember to add a few burnt out stolen vehicles while you're at it.  Newspaper (pieces of scrap paper), bottles (small pieces of colored transculent rod), and my favorite, small pieces of leftover squadron putty 'dripping', painted white to represent tossed fast food bags.

Domestic flowers and shrubs are another good detail. A lot of our scale residences look barren.

Busch and Presier have some nice flower sets out now, I don't remember seeing these detail kits until recently (the box I have stated 2006, so maybe they are indeed new), I have used them in a bed around a statue, and plan to use them in some residental front yards - and as I stated 3 pages ago, you can use timber ties to form a flower bed.

NittanyLion wrote:

For example, Pennsylvania has been using steel for structural construction for a long time.  I can think of exactly one timber trestle in half the state that survived into my lifetime, and it was recently replaced with a fill (now theres a feature everyone should have).

NL:

Actually, the old B&LE branch to the viscose plant in Meadville approaches the French Creek bridge on (IIRC) a pile trestle. Pile trestles are probably closer to "every model RR" status than tall timber ones, now that I think of it.

See, a high fill is one thing I'd exclude from "every model RR" status. It's definitely typical, but unless it's a really attractive fill (perhaps a serpentine, curving fill, or one that crosses an interesting swamp) fills tend to block view of whatever is behind them (which is sometimes desirable), and don't add a whole lot of interest. Where a fill is wanted, I think it's best to model a rather short section (pick the nicest one. ) and then have a trestle or bridge so people can peer through.

It's not that a fill is bad or unprototypical, it's just that the interest / space cost ratio isn't as favorable as some other things we might cherrypick from the same stretch of prototype.

Autobus Prime wrote:

Nifty! I've seen interlocking concrete walls here, but not stone. Do you have a photo or a link to one anywhere?

I've got a few shots, not as many as I thought, but here's some for starters:


Meitetsu Ibi Line


Hokutetsu bridge


A rise in Tokyo


Noseden bridge


Meitetsu station

The vending machines somebody mentioned are a good idea, too. I guess anything people habitually use without thinking is good...

I think that was me.


Shop in Higashi Tamagawa


Shop in Higashi Tamagawa


Shop in Nagano



Beer vending machines - can't remember where these were!

All the best,

Mark.

shayfan84325 wrote:

I think every layout should have something that is sort of toungue-in-cheek.  We've seen a few on the forums; one of my favorites is the Heartbreak Hotel, complete with Elvis and a hound dog.  On my layout, it's the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory).  John Allen had a bunch, but I liked Hangman's Bridge the best (it's where a diesel salesman was lynched, according to legend).  These little gags are a way of expressing the fun that the hobby represents.

That's one way of looking at them. I don't care for them myself, as most of them aren't all that funny after seeing them more than once. I think unless you're as clever as Heath-Robinson or Rube Goldberg, you should leave model railroad whimsy well alone.

But to each their own. I've often been tempted to repaint one of my Kaetsuno Rly cars in this livery:



or build a model of these beasties:





All the best,

Mark.

Autobus Prime wrote:

jeffrey_wimberly wrote: Every layout should have an old beat up engine with gobs of paint and thick stickers on it. jw: I really think that discussion of Guilford shop practices should be kept in the Prototype Forum. (Oh, that was a low blow)

Yep! What happens on Guilford stays on Guilford...

Every story needs a happy ending!  To me, that means every freight train needs a caboose.

No, I don't model the modern era.  And that's one of the reason's why...

shayfan84325 wrote:

I think every layout should have something that is sort of toungue-in-cheek.  We've seen a few on the forums; one of my favorites is the Heartbreak Hotel, complete with Elvis and a hound dog.  On my layout, it's the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory).  John Allen had a bunch, but I liked Hangman's Bridge the best (it's where a diesel salesman was lynched, according to legend).  These little gags are a way of expressing the fun that the hobby represents.

My club has Hoffa Cement Plant.

Left Coast Rail wrote:

shayfan84325 wrote: I think every layout should have something that is sort of toungue-in-cheek.  We've seen a few on the forums; one of my favorites is the Heartbreak Hotel, complete with Elvis and a hound dog.  On my layout, it's the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory).  John Allen had a bunch, but I liked Hangman's Bridge the best (it's where a diesel salesman was lynched, according to legend).  These little gags are a way of expressing the fun that the hobby represents. My club has Hoffa Cement Plant.

Wasn't Hoffa Cement one of the sign options supplied with a Walthers kit? (I think the default one was Medusa Cement - which I just found via google is a real (and large) company).
Anyway I find these punny names a bit cringeworthy (back in the day, I had a Lifelike funeral home, one of the many derivatives of the Farm House, labeled 'W.E. Snatchum' - ugh).  However, I also realize that many businesses in decades past had such punny names (and various snippets in magazines like Reader's Digest that listed them), but not sure how common that is nowadays - doesn't seem too common nowadays here in NY, although I'm sure there's a few out there.

chutton01 wrote:

Left Coast Rail wrote:  shayfan84325 wrote: I think every layout should have something that is sort of toungue-in-cheek.  We've seen a few on the forums; one of my favorites is the Heartbreak Hotel, complete with Elvis and a hound dog.  On my layout, it's the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory).  John Allen had a bunch, but I liked Hangman's Bridge the best (it's where a diesel salesman was lynched, according to legend).  These little gags are a way of expressing the fun that the hobby represents. My club has Hoffa Cement Plant. Wasn't Hoffa Cement one of the sign options supplied with a Walthers kit? (I think the default one was Medusa Cement - which I just found via google is a real (and large) company). Anyway I find these punny names a bit cringeworthy (back in the day, I had a Lifelike funeral home, one of the many derivatives of the Farm House, labeled 'W.E. Snatchum' - ugh).  However, I also realize that many businesses in decades past had such punny names (and various snippets in magazines like Reader's Digest that listed them), but not sure how common that is nowadays - doesn't seem too common nowadays here in NY, although I'm sure there's a few out there.

I haven't been to New York in a long while, but here in Utah we still have a lot of fun with names of businesses.  I'll grant you that prototype tongue in cheek names are only seen once in a while, but there are prototypes.  In Logan, we have a real aritsan bakery named Crumb Borthers' Bakery.  I know of a real dentist named Dr. Payne.

Like most things, moderation is a good approach when it comes to this stuff; I admire fun little touches that express some lightheartedness, but don't detract from the realism of the scene.  It's a tricky balance.

BTW, one other industry on my layout is Spock's Wingnuts.  They advertise that their products are "the logical choice" as they have "bigger ears for a better grip."

I don't think there is anything EVERY layout should have other than track and trains. For my layout, these were the givens.

1. Lots of passenger traffic of all types. Limiteds, accomodations, commuters, and even a mixed train. I am old enough to remember when train travel was the norm even for long distance trips. I'm not sure when air travel surpassed train travel for long distance trips but my guess is the late 1950s or early 1960s.

2. Several passenger stations of various sizes.

3. A large urban area. So far, mine is still on the drawing board with lots of plywood space to fill. I intend to double the apparent size with a strategically placed mirror.

4. A large classification yard.

5. A locomotive roster with late steam and early diesels.

6. A turntable and roundhouse for servicing the steam fleet. Also all the other servicing facilities for the steamers.

7. A coach yard to allow for switching of passenger equipment instead of simply running it through with no consist changes.

8. Staging yards at both ends of the layout to enhance operations.

9. A branchline to create some interchange traffic with the mainline. This one is still on the drawing board.

10. Details that will establish a latter 1950s time frame.

The original post has some problems. if you model ATSF in the desert what are you going to use for a water feature?  If you model the east not many wood trestles there.  And so it goes. For every suggestion there is a railroad that didn't have that feature.  The critical element if doing prototype modeling is to be true to the prototype.

Well, on a Sodor layout, for something tongue-in-cheek, try the A.W. Dry workshop.

ndbprr wrote:

The original post has some problems. if you model ATSF in the desert what are you going to use for a water feature?  If you model the east not many wood trestles there.  And so it goes. For every suggestion there is a railroad that didn't have that feature.  The critical element if doing prototype modeling is to be true to the prototype.

I think AP addressed your problem in his initial post, where he wrote:

"Of course, not all of us will have the same list."

I agree absolutely that if you're modelling a prototype, you should be true to that. It's something that I strive for, but a lot of what I do is really only recognisable to me. I think the underlying point AP was making is that we should think carefully about what the signature elements of our particular prototype are, and use them so our layouts tell a story that is recognisable to non-modellers, or to modellers who aren't familiar with our specific prototype.

It's something I haven't really given much thought to before now, and I think it's a great idea. In my case, it's made me think more about just what exactly makes a layout based on Japanese prototype distinctive, apart from the trains. Listing my "should have/must have" features has clarified a few things in my mind, and helped me develop some ideas that I've had for a while.

That being the case, I'm sure I'm not the only who thinks this a great thread!

All the best,

Mark.

shayfan84325 wrote:

I think every layout should have something that is sort of toungue-in-cheek.  We've seen a few on the forums; one of my favorites is the Heartbreak Hotel, complete with Elvis and a hound dog.  On my layout, it's the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory).  John Allen had a bunch, but I liked Hangman's Bridge the best (it's where a diesel salesman was lynched, according to legend).  These little gags are a way of expressing the fun that the hobby represents.

While I really think everyone should at least have some track, a locomotive, and some RR Cars.........  I too like the Tongue  in Cheek gags, especially sight gags.  Several of my businesses are named after family members and located where I get in big trouble with one of my sister's who "gets" the gags....  If your layout happens to be during Prohibition in America, you probably should have a moonshine still somewhere....

along with the Pink elephant.