Model Railroad Blog

The Realism Hierarchy

Pyramid

In my October 26th blog, What We Want, How to Get It,  I brought forth the idea that one of the primary reasons we model is to re-create an emotional connection in miniature.  To be transported in such a way that meaningful emotions are triggered.  To this end, the more realistic we can make our modeling the more effective we will be in transporting ourselves to where we want to go.  As with all things, some elements contribute more than others.  That being the case, it makes sense to focus initially on those areas that are most crucial and create the most impact.  Start with the big ticket items and then tick other items off the list in order as time permits.

The foundation of realism is built upon effective scene composition and color treatment.  If you miss the ball with either of these two elements, you’ve created a hole you can’t dig yourself out of.  No degree of modeling skill will compensate for ineffective scene composition or color treatment.  To be blunt, you’re screwed.  For whatever reason, high levels of detail are often associated with realism.  Detailing is a relaxing.  It’s rewarding.  Although it does make a difference,  the impact is far less than other areas.

 

Scene Composition:  Scene composition relates to the elements we choose to put in a scene, their relative size/shape/proportions, and of critical importance the space between them.  The number one modeling error is placing elements too close together.  Some masters of scene composition are:  David Barrow, Mike Confalone, Paul Dolkos, Tom Johnson, and Jim Six to name a few.

Color Treatment:   Color treatment address color selection, color placement, color patterns, edging of color patterns, washes, and the effective use of black and dark brown.   The best teachers of this subject can be found on the Rustbucket forum.

Effective Backdrop Treatment:   Backdrops take up an enormous amount of surface area.  In addition, they are oriented perpendicular to the eye.  For these reasons, any missteps will be glaring.  A distinction should be made between “effective” handling and “artistic” handling.  This is a subject area best approached from the outset with the philosophy of do no harm.  Unless you are an artistic master, keep it simple and subdued.  A pale blue, cloudless sky with a one or two inch simple gray horizon line is often adequate.

Scenery:  Volumes could, and have, been written on the subject.  Some things to try include static grass, natural soil and ballast products, and the higher end grass/scrub products available from Scenic Express.  Be aware of oddly shaped tree armatures or armatures with overly thick branch ends.  Keep it neat.

Basic Neatness:   Keeping things neat, tidy, and vertical costs nothing and pays big dividends in terms of appearance.  Keep your ballast neat and off the sides of the rails.  Keep your trees and poles vertical. Make sure your structures are cleanly seated in the scenery.

Cross Sections:  This refers to the with and radii of elements such as window frames, rails, and poles.  Due to limitations in the casting process these elements are often overly thick.  If you can’t replace the part, at least paint it a dark color.  If you can replace the part err on the side of too thin vs. too thick.  A few excellent manufactures of parts with fine scale cross sections are: Tichy, Grandt Line, and BLMA.

Details:   Fun. Satisfying.  Relaxing.  Go for it.  Just be aware that the visual

Coupling Cars, “Give me a stretch”

Topic: Model Railroad Operations

 

So, how are your coupling skills?  Are you doing everything by the book?  Are you sure?

In the January issue of The Dispatcher’s Office*, professional rail Dan Sylvester writes, “When making a joint (coupling) the speed should not exceed 4 mph.  Stop and stretch the coupling to make sure the pin dropped.  If coupling to more than one car, stretch the entire track, make sure you’ve got the rear car before shoving the track.  This is especially important when switching without air.  When the engine stops, the cars won’t unless they are all coupled together.”  He goes on to explain in graphic detail what can happen if you don’t perform this safety check and things go wrong.

Stretching a connection after coupling is a common rail practice that we can and should incorporate in our model operations.  Not only does it add interest, it serves the same purpose as on the prototype.  If you scroll to the 2:07 mark of this YouTube video you can hear it in action.

*The Dispatcher’s Office is the quarterly publication of the Operations SIG.  At only seven bucks per year, membership is a great bargain.

 

Following the above post, professional railroader Barry Karlberg added,

“You brought up stretching the joint after coupling into a car or cut of cars in your latest blog.  Good!  There is also “give me some pin”, or “I need a pin” when uncoupling, that is when the couplers are stretched and the man on the ground can’t get the coupler pin to lift and cause the coupler to uncouple.  A rather common occurrence in real life railroading.  So the engineer then has to bunch the cars so the pin can be pulled.  I have been doing this on my model railroad as it helps me get my uncoupling tool between the coupler faces to uncouple the cars.

The other real life railroading coupling event that occurs on my model railroad is when coupling into a car, the couplers do not always match up, or mate.  One, or both couplers get pushed to the side.  In real life, the engineer must pull the engine ahead so there is a gap (50 feet if you are going by the rules) between the cars where the coupling is to take place to allow the conductor to straighten the couplers so they will mate.  Sometimes it takes more than one try to get everything lined up, especially on curved track.  The spring loaded couplers on my model cars need a slight push with my uncoupling tool to get them to line up during the joint.  A mismatched failed joint on the prototype occurs more than you would expect, especially on curved track.

On a model railroad it is so easy to just couple and uncouple the cars with the assistance of your hand, but think about how it is with real world size cars and locomotives the next time you switch some cars around on your layout.”

Sound

 

Hierarchy, Vantage Point, and Why We Are Approaching the Whole Shebang the Wrong Way

 

There are two reasons we build model railroads, the satisfaction of assembly and the desire to be transported, transported to a time, place, or operational system that evokes strong emotions. The better our modeling, the more effective we are at immersing ourselves in our miniature world. The nature of railroading is such that sound is a major player in this quest. This is particularly apparent when rail fanning where the sound is so distinctive and overpowering that it becomes the dominant sensory experience. Sound isn’t an afterthought, an accessory tacked on at the last moment in the same manner you might treat carpeting for the layout room . Modelers tend to view it that way though, either they ‘have sound’ or they don’t with no real thought or care as to the acoustic quality.

Sound Hierarchy

Good modelers are taught that the key to realism is to model the ordinary. Model the typical. It’s the best advice you can be given. The same applies to sound. You don’t model the acoustic trick of the month, you model the dominant sounds and ideally you model them to your utmost ability given the confines of current technology. Realistic sound is not a cacophony of birds, sawmills, car horns, waterfalls etc. Taking that approach is analogous to the layout with the band in the square, carousel, pier, and coal mine jammed into a spaghetti bowl four by eight. Prototypical sound is essentially the sound of a prime mover occasionally interrupted by flange squeal, the horn, and the bell. Even if there are other sounds in the vicinity, the primer mover unloads so much audio power that everything else is drowned out and become irrelevant anyway.

We need to look at the sound spectrum from a different point of view. Not all sounds are of equal value or importance. They aren’t, some are much more important. By far and away the sound of the locomotive prime mover is at the top of the list. A distance second would be the horn, bell, crew radio chatter and perhaps flange squeal. It’s not a game of how many sounds your system can produce, it’s a game of how well your system can reproduce the dominant sound, the prime mover. In fact, you could live with less fidelity from the horn, bell, etc. Prime movers require bass and we need a system, a method that can deliver it effectively. Note that I said method, not decoder.

Vantage Point

The second area that needs a hard look is the vantage point we have when experiencing sound. The time we are most focused on prototype operations and experiencing sound is when we are rail fanning (in person or via video). In this instance we are generally within a hundred feet of the prime mover, stationary, not circling overhead in a helicopter. And this is critical, nine times out of ten we hear one train and one train only. We don’t hear our train plus trains and locomotive in the neighboring cities. Even if there is another train nearby, the one closest to us is so loud it drowns the others out. The point is this, hearing the sounds of locomotives in multiple trains in multiple locations is very unrealistic. On layouts where there is a problem of too much sound in close proximity the owner will combat the issue by turning the sound of his locomotives down very low. To me this sort of defeats the purpose. Now we have a problem. We want to model one of two perspectives, a rail fan within a hundred feet of the track or a member of the crew working in or near the equipment. On board speakers simply don’t do that.

We’re approaching the whole shebang the wrong way.

When sound first came out it seems that without so much as a second thought a delivery system was selected using onboard locomotive speakers. Nobody questioned it then and nobody questions it now. I question it because frankly onboard speakers simply can’t deliver the same sound experience as other methods. Under table speakers are a step in the right direction but there is a big problem there and it’s sound direction. It becomes very apparent that the sound and locomotive are in two different places.

When it comes to layout types, large, multi-train/multi-operator layouts are the most well known. However, on a national basis they aren’t the most prevalent. The most common situation is the person that operates by themselves or one or two others the vast majority of the time. Given that’s the case, maybe we should target the most common layout type and operating situation when it comes to sound.

 

Headphones

The more I play around with headphone sound the more I’m convinced it’s the way to go for most situations in terms of acoustic quality and the vantage point issue (they aren’t practical for the large layout with frequent op. sessions with numerous attendees). When compared to onboard speakers, high quality headphones are in a different world when it comes to quality . In addition, the wrap around/cupping effect of headphones produces a much less compromised path to the ear drum than going through a plastic locomotive shell, through the air, and then to your ear. The directionality problem is solved because the sound goes with you as you walk.

Until recently, I viewed the sense of isolation as the biggest drawback with headphones. You can’t hear anything else. It’s you and the prime mover. You can’t hear your crew, you can’t hear your guests, and you can’t hear your wife yelling downstairs that it’s time to visit the mother in law (drawback or blessing, you decide).

There’s a solution to the isolation problem and I think it will be a game changer. It’s called a mixer. By inserting a mixer before the headphones other sounds can be ‘mixed’ in. Crew radios are one big example of something that could be cut in and heard through the headphones. That solves the isolation problem as everybody with headphones hears the show. Headphones aren’t cheap but we need to be realistic. How often will you need more than one? Four times a year? Six? Even then it would probably on be one or two extra people.

Another advantage of headphone sound, if we ever move in that direction, is that we are no longer confined to the small space inside an engine shell for the components. Going off board means we have space for larger, higher quality audio components such as amplifiers like ones you can find at websites similar to https://hifisystemcomponents.com/phono-preamps/. Instead of sound decoders we could have dedicated sound processors. Going this direction would be an economic boon to the sound decoder manufactures.

Preparing For “The Day”

You’re 55, 60, or 65. You’ve wanted a layout your entire life and you spend hours fantasizing about ‘the day’. By that I mean the day when the kids are out of the nest, retirement final yields some free time, or the necessary space frees up. Fantasizing is one thing but what about effective preparation? With a little thought now, you can effectively prepare for the day you are ready for a layout (and have a lot of fun in the process). Before we get started let’s think about what doesn’t constitute effective preparation. Random spending on rolling stock and structures frequently ends up being dollars down the drain that doesn’t move you in the direction you’ll want to go.

I suggest developing some basic skills now. In addition, take a much more focused approach to equipment and tools you will, without question, need. Here are some simple suggestions that will not only provide you with some relaxing afternoons but also put you in a great position later. The ‘layout on a plank’ blogs would be a good platform to work with.

Practice basic electrical skills

Learn to solder simply by practicing on a scrap of flex track. Start by practicing making feeders soldered to the rail. All you need is 18 gauge hook up wire (All Electronics), a 40Watt soldering gun and .032” solder (Radio Shack) and Flux (Team Trinity part 5004). Next, practice tapping the feeder into a scrap of 14 gauge wire. You can buy the 14 gauge wire by the foot at The Home Depot and 14 to 18 tap connectors can be picked up Radio Shack. The point is to get used to making the solder flow and making good connections in the controlled environment of your work bench

Learn To Use DCC and program a locomotive

Put yourself in a position where you have two smooth running, fully operational and tuned, DCC locomotives. If you’re positive you will have a layout, it makes sense to get the basic system now and learn how to use it. Even four or five feet of test track is enough. With no disrespect to other systems, you can’t go wrong with the NCE or CVP EasyDCC wireless. Setting up your DCC system is no harder than setting up a new television set. Hook it up to your test layout and begin experimenting with locomotive programming. You won’t blow anything up and if you really screw up the programming just do a reset. In terms of decoders I suggest the Soundtraxx Tsunami (great directions, high quality, very tunable). For starters I suggest having a professional install the decoders for you.

Practice Track laying

Pick up some Atlas or Micro Engineering flex track, joiners and a turnout or two. Practice laying straight track, curves, placing turnouts, and transitions to curves that are free of kinks. You’ll need some Xuron rail cutters and one small jewelers file to clean up any burrs. If you want roadbed I suggest Midwest brand cork, secured with adhesive caulk.

Practice laying ballast

You want even applications free of particles on top of the ties or sticking to the sides of the rail. The easiest way to get a successful application is work in several layers as opposed to trying to bringing it to full height in one shot. Life is much simpler if you use natural rock blends such as Smith and Sons or Arizona Rock and Mineral.

Start now on posts, signs, and sheds

Layouts have a voracious appetite for signs, utility poles and small sheds. Why not start assembling those now.  These are small achievable projects that build assembly skills, don’t take a lot of time, and can be easily stored without taking up much room.

Learn to use an airbrush

Paasche and Iwata are two excellent brands. You will also need a compressor. Start by practicing with dilute india ink washes as these clean up easily and then move on to paint. You’ll also need a high quality respirator to protect your lungs.

Practice Rolling Stock Weathering

Learn how various weathering mediums feel in your hand. These can be oils, enamels, acrylics, craft paint, ink washes, and chalks. Start now as it really does take LOTS of practice to get good results. I suggest picking up the cheapest freight cars you can find and work with those first. Begin with basic subdued looks before going on to the more complex weathered patterns. Grimy black or rail brown dusted with brown chalk or dusted with dark brown is a good starting point. Dullcote the car. Practice subdued washes (Diosol with a few drops of grimy black and roof brown) fogged onto the car. Read up and practice the techniques on The Rust Bucket Forum. When weathering, work hard at light layers and self restraint (easier said than done you’ll find).

Puttering around with some of these ideas over the next several years will not only be fun for you but also give you an early ramp up on the learning curve for when you do have that layout. The basic skills needed to build a medium to large layout are really no different than those for a four square foot test layout. You just repeat the same steps more often.

On the Outside Looking In

From time to time the various magazines will run a poll in an attempt to gain some insight into the state of the hobby and the current breakdown of the multitude of tribal sub-interest groups. It’s a good idea. The quality of the results, however, will only be as good as the questions that are asked and therein lies the challenge. Some of the important questions are easy: scale, years in the hobby, era of interest etc. Others, are not so apparent and hard to quantify.

At the top of my list would be finding some sort of measure of how deeply somebody wants to be immersed in the hobby. An immediate follow up would be where they feel they are now with respect to how deeply they’d like to be involved. How do you even measure that? I don’t know but I am sure the second part is pretty darn important in terms of where we need to focus our efforts with respect to recruiting, supporting, developing, and retaining newcomers.

Most of us have a number of interests. Some we participate in on a cursory level but enjoy nonetheless. Other hobbies we dig into more deeply and thus get a much richer level of satisfaction from them. Model railroading is no different. Some hobbyists participate at a modest level and enjoy doing so. Others totally immerse themselves in the hobby. How deeply we delve into an area of interest doesn’t matter if, and it’s a big if, we are where we want to be. A big problem arises though if we have a longing to be deeply immersed in an activity, don’t know how to go about doing so, and as a result feel shut out. We feel like we are on the outside looking in. Based solely on anecdotal evidence, and my gut, I have a sense that this is a major issue in model railroading. I can’t shake the feeling that there exists a rather significant number of individuals that aren’t involved in the hobby at all or to the extent they’d like to be.

Does it matter? Yes, it matters. It matters to the individual that isn’t able to access something that would be so fulfilling. They miss out on the therapeutic value of creating something by hand. It matters to the hobby because we suffer by not having these folks on our side of the fence.

Who are these ‘outsiders’? Typically they are older, say age 40 and above. (Those on the younger side either have no problems jumping into the fray or are temporarily pre-occupied with school and early adult responsibilities). These ‘outsiders’ tend to be very bright. Even though they may not have built a single model, this group is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to prototype railroading. Their primary interest is in said prototypes. Professionally they tend to be very successful at whatever career they’ve chosen whether it be business ownership, medicine, law enforcement, military service, teaching, etc. They have an intense interest in railroading in general. Unlike the bulk of the hobby, they have no interest in a layout that is a generic ‘toy’. They want a ‘model of a railroad’.

Now let’s be clear, a portion on the outside really aren’t as serious about being involved in model railroading as they profess. Just as I enjoy the sport of surfing vicariously, they enjoy the hobby as casual observers. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you’re honest with yourself (the likelihood of me riding a forty foot wave on the north shore of Hawaii is pretty close to zero). I’m addressing those folks that are seriously frustrated about feeling locked out of something they really, truly want to be involved in.

If these outsiders are so interested in being more deeply immersed in the hobby, why aren’t they? The reasons are an equal split between the hobby environment in general and the inertia they’ve created for themselves through inaccurate perceptions and poor time management.

Within the individual’s control there are a number or reasons for this fix they find themselves in.

  • Lack of confidence. They are embarrassed about their beginner level skills. This is a faulty point of view. For one, it entails an overestimation of how much other people care about where you are on the skills spectrum. Others shouldn’t care and for the most part they don’t. Becoming better at anything is a lifelong journey. Where you are on the path doesn’t matter and we all have areas we want to improve. If you’re embarrassed, keep your early efforts to yourself. Let your own satisfaction be the litmus test. Rather than posting your early efforts on the net, limit feedback requests to a few trusted sources that will give objective feedback. I volunteer for that role for anybody that’s interested.
  • Poor leisure time management. I’m sure many will throw the hail Mary excuse up that they just don’t have the time. Although there are some exceptions, the no time excuse is generally just that, an excuse. If Rod Stewart can tour with a rock band, raise a family, and build a model railroad, most people should be able to also. The reason this group is so successful professionally is they have the ruthless ability to understand the difference between PRODUCTIVITY and ACTIVITY. At least at work they are great time managers. When they leave the office though something happens and many don’t take these time management skills home and apply them to managing and prioritizing their own happiness. In recent years a major player is the addiction, and yes it is an addiction, to technological toys. I’m talking about hours frittered way on smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, mindless chat forums etc. Most have the time, they just let it slip away on things that contribute nothing to their quality of life or happiness level.
  • Fatigue and inertia. For whatever reason, more than ever people are pretty fried when they come home from work. The solution here is a self awareness as to when you’re personal energy level is at it’s peak AND you have free time. Focus on small, easy to achieve projects such as assembling a shanty, adding license plates to a vehicle, etc.
  • All or nothing mindset. This is another inaccurate, self defeating point of view. For whatever reason, the ‘outsiders’ are under the impression that it’s all or nothing. If they can’t have an 800 square foot layout then it’s not worth participating at all, at any level. The space never materializes until retirement and at that point they’ve wasted decades that could have been spent developing skills, gaining friends, and enhancing their quality of life. Everybody has enough space to build a module, a freight car, a small structure, or a diorama. Develop these skills now so if and when more space materializes you’ll have them under your belt. I’ve never ever heard a person complain that they didn’t like their layout because it was too small or too simple. It just doesn’t happen.
  • They don’t know how to “play”. The second side of the technology sword, and we are starting to see it with kids, is that at an ever increasing rate people just don’t know how to recreate. Old habits die hard. One strategy is to set a time in your home when all internet and wifi connections will be turned off. For example, 8pm. After a month of cold sweats the body will adjust, freeing up time for more beneficial activities.
  • They don’t know how to jump in. They don’t know to participate (do I build freight cars, structures, locomotives, a module?) , how to start, or which skills create the most impact. This brings me to other contributor to the problem,……

The other half of this conundrum has to do with the current hobby environment as a whole. Although the foundation for solving any problem lies with taking responsibility for how you got yourself into a particular situation in the first place, I don’t put sole blame on the outsider. In the last one or two decades those on the inside haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet or handed over roadmaps as to how to join the club. The number of compelling reasons and inspirational examples for joining the hobby hasn’t exactly been on pace with previous decades.

This group, the outsiders, want a ‘model of a railroad’. They aren’t motivated by the generic layout typified by a double track dog bone loop, sprinklings of monotone ground foam, un-modified Walthers structures, and general look alike model railroads they are seeing. They want a convincing miniature replica of railroading that can be built taking into account their available space, entry level skills, and time limitations. Of course that can be done, it’s just that there isn’t anybody out there explaining to them how to do it.

More than any other group the press drives our hobby. Like it or not, they assume the leadership role and as they go, so does the hobby. Unfortunately, the advent of the internet has thrown all print media, including the model railroad press, completely off balance and they’ve yet to find completely find their way. The problems the hobby press face are numerous, some self inflicted, many by shifts in technology and the business climate. The current magazine environment is one of covers emblazoned with “How To” followed by whatever the trick of the month is. The problem is they never really tie them all together in a cohesive manner and show you how they relate so that you can build a ‘model of a railroad’. Dig deep articles on top tier layouts have become more rare than they were in the past. A wonderfully executed model railroad receives the same page count as an average layout, both of which fade to oblivion when the next “how to cover’ hits the shelves, typically never to be seen again.

What is leadership in the press? Press leadership is one of going to whatever lengths necessary to root out inspiring model railroads and cover and highlight them in proportion to their quality. It’s showing how to ‘model a railroad’ via a cohesive, month to month approach of explaining how various technique interrelate to and meld to create the overall effect. The ‘one hit, how to’ articles still have their place but it should be a secondary, filler focus more of a side bar if you will, not the main thrust.

The most obvious example of the approach I’m talking about was Allan McClealland’s V&O. Lost in the fray was that McClelland’s modeling was only half of the brilliance, the other half, was the way it was written about and presented to the public over a several year time frame. That article series transformed the hobby and for the most part is a formula that hasn’t been repeated since. Yes, it was a large layout but the concepts applied to all. Allen and the writers made you want to run to your work bench and get to work and they showed you how to do it. They showed you how all the concepts fit together and related. In the past several decades we’ve gotten away from that approach.

Personally, I feel the way out of the doldrums is to dust off this dig deep journalistic approach, bring it a back with changed emphasis on smaller, more attainable layouts skewed towards the modern era. Put the, one hit how to wonders in a supporting/filler role. Focus on a start to finish approach to modeling an inspiring, attainable, railroad laid out in simple achievable steps, and the reasoning why certain approaches are followed.

If the outsiders see something that motivates them consistently in print, feel they too can build it, and feel it fits their space and lifestyle they’ll start putting down their Androids and picking up track cutters.