The center of attention!

[Dave Vollmer]

 

      Uh, Dave,

      The signal on the left reads APPROACH, while the signal on the converging track says STOP AND PROCEED. Doesn't that just invite a collision? Or are you just testing us, to see if we're awake?

Yes!...  except that two reds vs three ambers in a horizontal line indicates Absolute Stop.  That extra light is a pain; I ought to just cut the lead.

[wm3798]

 

      Uh, Dave,

      The signal on the left reads APPROACH, while the signal on the converging track says STOP AND PROCEED. Doesn't that just invite a collision? Or are you just testing us, to see if we're awake?

Yes!...  except that two reds vs three ambers in a horizontal line indicates Absolute Stop.  That extra light is a pain; I ought to just cut the lead.

SO the focal point of Dave's layout is his morbid fascination with train wrecks...  Just like Gomez Addams!!

 

Uncle Fester 

[Anonymous]

I can't read those signals anyway! I just wish I had working signals!

[twhite]

I guess the center of attention on the Yuba River Sub is the Fall mountain scenery.  At least that's what everyone who has been in my garage says. 

I always thought it was my bridges--God knows I've got ENOUGH of them--but everyone just seems to be hung up on Yuba Summit, or the hydraulic mining scars at Malakoff Diggings or Bullard's Bar Lake.  Actually, to a lot of my friends, the trains are almost incidental, LOL!  Except that they like watching them climb over and through the scenery.  Oh, yah, and those vibrant Fall colors in the Sierra. 

Tom

[SilverSpike]

Thought it is still in the early stages of layout construction, the center of attention for my layout is the roundhouse, roundtable and swing gate area.

 

[Dave-the-Train]

The solution was in the ballast.  My previous layout had used a brown colored ballast (Highball Brown) with cinders-it looked very dark.  It made the overall layout almost too drab.  While the colors were similar to ones I'd seen on PRR coal branches in photos, it made the layout seem dark and unfriendly.  Plus, the trains did not stand out.

The current layout uses a much lighter colored ballast.  I used Woodland Scenics' fine gray blend.  It's a bit on the coarse side for my tastes, but the color was similar to some of the mainline PRR photos I'd seen from 1956.  Fortunately, the "Standard Railroad of the World" didn't really have a standard ballast color (photos show every color from brown to black to gray to almost white).

I then framed this light colored ballast with a cinder shoulder.  While prototypical for 1956, the cinder shoulder served a second purpose: it frames the track area like a picture frame or an outline.  Now my dark, drab trains can be seen against a lighter gray background, framed by a black outline that says to viewers that "this is the center of attention!"

So this is why I am forever going on about ballast!

It's even easy to highlight main track from lesser tracks... You want to focus on one piece of track or away from something... just put in a patch of new clean ballast worked by the MoW crew...

How do others project the center of attention for their layouts?

Exactly the same use of colour (and light) can be employed with anything else.  Our eyes and brains naturally pick out what is different in any scene... whether it is the black and yellow of a wasp or a bright advert...

A building can be made to stand out by re-pointing all or some of the masonry.  Repainting a bridge... or re-painting in progress will make it stand out.

If you are sitting at a grade crossing while a string of covered hoppers goes by you will wake up for the odd one out.

[steemtrayn]

 

 

      Uh, Dave,

      The signal on the left reads APPROACH, while the signal on the converging track says STOP AND PROCEED. Doesn't that just invite a collision? Or are you just testing us, to see if we're awake?

 

 

Yes!...  except that two reds vs three ambers in a horizontal line indicates Absolute Stop.  That extra light is a pain; I ought to just cut the lead

 ______________________________________________________________________________

Don't cut the lead, just install a switch. This way, the towerman (you) can give a train permission to follow another train into the interlocking.