The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “Student to Master, The Lifelong Pursuit of Model Railroading Excellence”. Historically, model railroaders have had a love affair with deeply saturated, vivid, primary colors. However, that doesn’t square with the world we model, a world typified by earth tones, pastels, and desaturation. It’s also a world […]
Category: Realism
New LAJ Warehouse
The large warehouse, which serves as the centerpiece for the new LAJ extension module, is now complete. With the Alco Line project now installed, my focus is on my next book, “Student to Master, the Lifelong Journey to Model Railroading Excellence”. More details on that soon. The warehouse illustrates some points of the book, the […]
Vacant Lot for the LAJ
Vacant lots are a signature element of many industrial scenes. Including them on your layout can heighten realism. They have a certain, “looks like they should be there” aspect to them. The aren’t as easy to model as you might think. About five years ago I started putting a lot more thought into how I […]
Weathering A Santa Fe Hopper
There are a number of annotated maps circling in the LAJ community calling out which industries received what type of cars, where they were spotted etc. I believe most of this information came from retired employees. One note that stood out was a business on The Horn Lead called Western Cleanser. The notes state they […]
Vacant Lots
Vacant lot on the extension model of my LAJ layout. The key to realistic composition is to model the typical, the ordinary, what the eye subconsciously expects to see. In our world, a common element is the mundane vacant lot. Personally, I find these trickier to pull off than you’d think. A typical open lot […]