Model Railroad Blog

Fighting Gravity

Gravity

Fighting gravity.  In modeling terms it’s the subconscious, omnipresent, urge for order and uniformity.  We can get away with it when modeling man made features such as structures, roads, and rolling stock.  We can’t get away with it when comes to scenery.  If we can’t overcome this innate urge, our results will indeed look like something man made, a park, a lawn, or a golf course.  This was recently brought home to me when I was putting some vegetation in front of a backdrop.  When I was done, I took a step back, and  the results simply weren’t convincing.  The trees we fairly close in height, shape, texture, and spacing.  I had to force myself to go back, fight the gravitational pull of the need for order, and break things up.  I was surprised how hard it was.

Overcoming this natural tendency requires two steps.  First, we need to be aware of it.  Second, we need to train ourselves to be a good observer and work from photos.  Take a look at the image above and make note of some of the signature features we should try to incorporate.

  • The stream isn’t straight but rather a series of S curves.  On the outer side of the curve the bank is undercut, on the inner side debris accumulates
  • The tree trunk diameters vary greatly
  • The tree spacing isn’t uniform (as modelers this something often overlooked)
  • The stream depth is very shallow with the stones on the bottom clearly visible.
  • Although it’s winter, green patches still exist and provide striking color contrasts
  • The wash has produced a shallow rock island on the inside of the S curve
  • Branch debris is everywhere
  • Underbrush and brambles are everywhere
  • Exposed roots show where trees have fallen over (scale tree roots can be modeled by uprooting the grass or English ivy in your lawn)
  • The soil colors vary.

Fighting gravity and adding the natural chaos found in nature will make a dramatic improvement in our scenery results.

Gravity 2

LAJ Update

Los Angeles-Junction-Railway-Trackplan

It’s been a productive month on the LAJ layout.  Progress being: made a visit to the actual site in Vernon, solved the lighting problem, finalized and tightened up the track plan, laid all the track (half of which is permanent), wired in the track and activated the control system.

The LAJ is proto freelance.  It draws heavily on the lead to Federal Cold Storage but doesn’t model it exactly.  Freelancing has the advantage of giving some flexibility but you need to choose your elements carefully so as to capture the flavor of the area and not give the impression that you “cherry picked” .  You do cherry pick, you just don’t want to be obvious about it.  All of the structures and industries are either on the lead or within a mile or so.  Sabor Hispano is a small food processor that used to take an occasional car.  On my visit a few weeks ago it was clear it is no longer rail served but I’ll bend the rules a bit and assume it still takes a car now and then.  .  Federal Cold Storage is no longer rail served but is an iconic structure on the skyline.  General Mills is the major customer on this lead.  The problem is grain hoppers aren’t really car spot dependent so you lose some operational interest.  I needed to find a replacement industry that would be more interesting to switch out.

I spent considerable time deciding what to select as the major industry.  The answer ended up being Sweetener Products, a corn syrup processor  located about a mile away and served by the UP.  The advantage of a corn syrup facility is that it is highly dependent upon car spots since each grade of syrup needs to be placed at the appropriate discharge hose.  In the plan above the numbers 55, 200, and 300 indicate the syrup grades.  I also like the fact that the 17,600 gallon cars are typically an understated uniform flat black, an appearance that just “looks right” for what I’m trying to accomplish.  The cars are also pretty short which also helps.  In the plan above an incoming train will have five cars of various grades that will need to be sorted. The areas blocked in red to can be used to that end.  Once the cars are sorted a grand pull is performed removing the empties and then spotting the loads.  The slot between the Sweetener Products gate and Everett Avenue can serve team track duty thus adding one more industry.

I tend to take a time oriented approach to design.  It will easily take forty five minutes to work Sweetener Products which is about as long as I car to run most days.  The layout will be fairly detailed so should keep me pretty busy for at least a few years.  Again, two years is a good chunk of time, and a lot of play value per square foot.

SwProds1

The photo above is of Sweetener Products in Vernon.  I like the understated look and short length of the cars as well as the fact that they are car spot dependent.  For the actual structure on my layout I plan to get away from the totally modern steel look and go with a slightly older brick.

LAJ Lighting

IMG_5942

“You can never be too rich, too thin,…….or have too many lumens” Wallis Simpson.

Coming up with a method of lighting the LAJ proved to be more challenging than expected. Since this was in a finished room, with decorative track lighting already in place, the biggest obstacle was coming up with something that would bath the layout in light and yet be unobtrusive enough as to not compete with the other fixture The way my home was built, installing recessed can lights wasn’t an option due to the difficulty in running the power feeds.  After literally months of head scratching, a trip to The Home Depot turned up the solution; high quality, ultra thin, high power, LED strips by Lithonia. I bet they sell these lights everywhere but because I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, I kept missing it! It’s amazing what they’re coming out with these days as far as lighting options go. Although light in weight, it’s an awkward size, so if you’re thinking of putting one of these in, I would recommend having help.  The specs. of these units are also pretty impressive:

  • They put out a whopping 3200 lumens per fixture!
  • Color temperature is a warm 3,000 degrees
  • Power consumption is a low 36 watts
  • They are “linkable” meaning you can string them end to end.
  • The design is very thin and clean making them suitable for living areas
  • They are surface mount and power is fed in via a plug in chord. Each unit also has an on/off switch

What You Don’t See

After my most recent hand laid track project using P:87 tie plates I was struck by the fineness of the plates themselves.  Others have asked me about this as well.  Rightly so.    I had two choices, paint the rail a lighter color to highlight the  tie detail or paint it the darker color it actually is.  I decided to go with accuracy and went with a darker color.  As I feared the darker color essentially causes the details of the plates to be lost in the shadows.

Even so, I do view this approach as a success.  It’s successful from the standpoint of what you DON’T see.  You don’t see the oversize spikes and the total absence of tie plates that is the problem with typical hand laid track. As much as I like Micro Engineering track and it’s finer detail, even those spikes appear a bit large in photos.