Model Railroad Blog

Moving Beyond Being an “8 out of 10” Modeler

Victoria Embankment, London. G.De Nittis. Last weekend I attended a lecture at the Phillips on the work of Italian impressionist Giuseppe De Nittis (more well known in Europe than the US).  On the panel were two art historians and two museum curators, all excellent speakers.  They’d put up a slide of a piece of work and break it down in terms of composition, vanishing point, color, mood, etc.  Not only was the discussion fascinating, the applications to model railroading were pretty direct.

How deeply a person wants to be immersed in the hobby is a personal decision.  The modeling population as a whole contains the full spectrum. On one end you have the interested observers, the non-participant fans of the hobby.  In the middle you have the largest group, the fairly involved recreationalists.  Finally, at the other end of the bell curve you have, for lack of a better term, the most “serious” modelers.  That’s the group I’m going to talk to today.

The serious modeler, the more passionate one, is driven to produce the absolute best results that they can.  For them it’s not a case of beating the other guy, winning contests (which I think are nonsense but I digress), pats on the back, or earning certificates.  Their measuring stick of excellence is internal.  The more they like what they build for themselves, the more they enjoy looking at it, the deeper their level of satisfaction. A gradual but steadily increasing improvement in skills over time can add a very gratifying dimension to life.  To throw out an overused phrase, it’s not the destination but the journey.  It’s not just about acquiring skills, it’s the fun of learning them.

You can’t achieve mastery, however, if you don’t know what the necessary skills are and that’s where old habits and cultures die hard.  The conventional thinking and orientation in model railroading is that excellence is all about neatness of assembly and, to a lesser degree, prototypical accuracy.  All well and good if you’re a military or freight car modeler where you are dealing with an individual piece that is going in a display case.  For the sake of argument, let’s say that we could assign a number to absolute mastery.   If that military modeler gains the skills to perfectly assemble a piece, and weather it equally well, we could say he’s a “99”.  Hey, nobody gets a 100. 

That won’t work in model railroading.  Those skills alone will only get you to an “80”, an 8 out of 10.  Why?  Because we aren’t dealing with individual models.  We are dealing with an entire composition with very complex elements such as scenery, color management over an entire vista, structures, backdrops, and how they are composed to pull together an overall scene.  Without that awareness, you end up with what amounts to essentially a neatly assembled architectural model.  Neat and tidy, a perfect ““80” of 100. “8 out of 10”. Getting there will likely get you awards too if you pursue that route.

Why only an “8”? What’s missing?  The artistic element.  Even if a modeler does a great job with an individual component, such as a structure or freight car, they still need to pull everything together.  That’s the hard part.  It’s the composition that’s historically the problem.  Masterful color management runs a close second. While clean assembly is vitally important, the upper echelons of excellence require the artistic aspect ….and those skills are far more difficult to master.  That’s the missing piece that gets you from “80” to “99”, the subjective “something extra” that brings a model railroad over the top.

Where do you start? The information is out there but you’re not going to find it in the traditional model railroad venues.  So, where does the motivated, “serious”, modeler gain the knowledge and skills to pull all aspects of modeling into a masterful, cohesive, balanced piece of work? 

You get it from the art world.  Check the model railroading culture at the door and take advantage of the vast resources of knowledge accumulated and refined over the centuries.

If you are truly driven to produce the absolute best results, you need to begin the process of studying and understanding the fundamentals of art.  Not only will the journey bring a new and positive dimension to your life, the improved modeling results will bring you a sense of personal satisfaction you’ve never felt before.  You won’t need a certificate on the wall.  You’ll look at your work and just know it.               

What would be a “training roadmap” for all of this?  To start it’s important to understand that a big part of this is improving your creative intuition (as opposed to taking art classes which I’m not talking about).  This intuition improves gradually over time through exposure to and immersion in artistic excellence.  Numerous studies have shown that doing so essentially rewires the brain…..and……in contrast….my two cents worth….

“Social media and forums are where brain cells go to die”

-Develop a habit of spending time in great museums, gardens, and around architectural masterpieces.  I try to go once or twice a month.

-Attend a lecture on “Visual Literacy”.  “In person” lectures are a lot more beneficial than online courses.

-Attend a course or lecture on “Composition”.

-Go to lectures, tours, and panel discussions at the museums.  They will spend a lot of time breaking down a painting in terms of composition, color, vanishing point, everything.  In my experience the speakers that do these are far better than you would encounter in everyday life. 

It’s a combination of immersion and exposure to excellence, that essentially does this “rewiring” of your brain and improves that creative intuition.

Nothing is immediate, but if you add artistic study and exposure to your lifestyle, things will start to sink in and you will see improvements in your modeling that you never envisioned. For more on the subject, check out my recent book, Model Railroading As Art.

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Sight Lines

My new, and long awaited, view block to control sight lines when walking into the layout room.

The layout room environment matters and it matters a lot. A big part of that relates to sight lines. By that I mean what you see as you stand in the room and take the layout in. Of particular importance is what you see when you enter the room. The prototype Downtown Spur is an arrow straight, three and half mile long, linear run. My layout room is square. In order for me to make things fit, I had to spiral that linear run around the room. When you stand in front of a specific scene everything looks fine.

View of the layout when entering the room prior to mounting the view block valence.

However, when you walk in the room and view the layout as a whole, the view is “not fine”. Everything sprawls out in front of you in one expanse and the linear nature of line is not apparent in the least. The look really bugged me. For quite some time I’ve thought about using at least one valence as a view block to control the sight lines and even wrote about it in an earlier blog. Although the idea was simple, how to execute it was not. What material would I use and how would I attach it to the ceiling? The answer came in the form of Gatorboard. I had a slab of that on hand and just cut a strip out to serve as the valence panel.

Gatorboard solved the material question but how to mount it to the wall. I finally settled on a combination of 2 inch angle bars (Home Depot) screwed to specialty suspended ceiling clips made by Progressive Lighting. Once I had everything figured out, installation was pretty easy. The “figuring things out” aspect was the hard part. The valence appears to be the solution to the sight line problem. I’m going to let it sit in place awhile before making any final decisions. To clarify, the valence is not a light box, it is simply a suspended, half inch thick panel.

Directing the Eye

No matter how much of a prototype modeler we’d like to say we are, the reality of our limited space is such that everything we do is ultimately somewhere on the “proto-freelance” spectrum. Since we can’t copy actual scenes exactly, decisions need to be made with respect to composition.

One of the key principles of art is that of directing the eye. If you look at the photo above, there are two basic scenes, Miami Jai-Alai (MJA) on the right, Miami Taxi Meter (MTM) on the left. I want the viewer’s eye to be drawn to Miami Jai-Alai which means I need to be be careful what I put across the street. A key issue factoring into the equation is the unsaturated, dusty sand color of MJA. MJA is larger which gives it some weight in directing the eye. However, if I had not been careful with what I put in the other scene, there would have been the risk of running into visual chaos with the eye dancing between the two. The main trap to avoid was that of color. Many of the businesses nearby are painted in brilliant, highly saturated tones. If I’d gone that route, selected one of the brightly painted ones, even though the structure would be smaller, the color would dominate and pull the eye towards it. By selecting MTM as the subject, it’s equally dull, low saturated tan, didn’t compete with the centerpiece (MJA).

Defining Model Railroad Design Success

A pair of boxcars sit in front of A-1 Farmers Choice on the switchback segment of my Downtown Spur layout.

A successful model railroad design is one that provides a platform for several hours a week of relaxing hobby time…recreational time…..fun time.  It doesn’t really matter how those minutes or hours are spent.  If there is some degree of completion on a layout, module, or diorama and you find yourself working on it somewhat consistently, congratulations, you’ve come up with a successful plan.  A two hundred turnout, dog’s breakfast of a layout plan isn’t successful if it never gets so much as started, let alone built.

More than half of the people I know never reach the point of having even a basic operational test track tacked down, often after decades of design noodling.  I could (but won’t) write an entire book on what I suspect the underlying psychology for this is.  However, if I take a look at that pool of bystanders, and separate out the smaller subset of those that truly want to be engaged, I keep coming back to one central cause for the logjam.  It’s overreaching with the design.  There is a disconnect. On one hand there is what they “think” is the absolute bare minimum scope they need in order to motivate them to build something/anything. On the other side of balance is their actual level of time/energy/focus level. The problem is the two don’t match. In other words, “I need X to be happy but I only have .5x in the tank”.

The secret to design success isn’t finding a way to squeeze more in but rather understanding how to be satisfied with less.  Less doesn’t mean less sophisticated and it doesn’t mean “settling”.  A starting point of that process is having the self-awareness to truly understand what aspects of the hobby you enjoy most.

As an example let’s look at a typical modeler.  They likely enjoy structure building, rolling stock tuning/weathering, and running trains by themselves in half hour bursts. They have other obligations and interests such as family, home maintenance, jobs, etc. Matching those real world time/energy constraints with typical modeling interests and get at least some railroad up and going is very attainable… if you have a good design. If you can come up with that plan, then you have the foundation for those several hours of relaxation and satisfying hobby time. It doesn’t take many turnouts or that much square footage either.

Shown above is an example.  The prototype is the switchback at the end of Miami’s Downtown Spur.  It’s only half a mile long and doesn’t have a single siding. Even so there are four industries along the route plus three additional locations that are used for team track loading.  That gives you seven places to spot cars.  There is a runaround siding just before the switchback that allows for the required moves needed to switch the lead.  You could have the bench work down in one or two weekends.  Throw down three or four Peco turnouts and you have everything you need.  At that point you could spend years of hobby time building the structures and rolling stock.  Solo operating sessions would easily run over a half hour, but probably more. If you wanted to further simplify things, you could eliminate Trujillo and Sons (top of plan), narrow the bench work and just treat the siding as staging.  As basic as this is, I’d guess it would take the average hobbyist five years or so to “finish”. Five years of fun, of satisfying leisure time, isn’t “settling”. So, do you want to spend the next five years building models and running some trains as you sip your favorite drink and listen to music, or do you want to spend it on ebay, forums, and social media? None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow so some food for thought.

Need Help Designing Your Layout? Check out my model railroad design services HERE.

The “Finished Layout” Landmine

The mid-morning sun washes over Florida Bottling on The Downtown Spur layout.

A landmine is something you didn’t see coming (but could have), step on, and then suffer the consequences.  To that extent it’s not the same as being subjected to some totally random negative event.  If you know you’re entering a mine field, you can be careful where you step.

Finishing a layout falls into that landmine category.  Despite what we might think, for many of us, declaring a layout “done” is not a good thing.  In fact it can go pretty far beyond being not a good thing.  The depth of the problem is made worse by the fact that it is so subtle, the way it sneaks up from behind, and then blindsides us.  Wow, didn’t expect this.

Hobbies are not a frivolous pastime and nobody should frame them that way.  They are a deeply meaningful aspect of our lives.  They give us creative expression, purpose, the satisfaction of assembly, and deep friendships and social connections.  I could go on and on. The vast majority of us are builders.  We lose sight of that as we get caught up in research, collaboration, emailing friends, solving problems, developing skills, building stuff, and just the overall process.  Somewhere along the line though we ever so slowly drift towards making the mistake of thinking there is a race to the finish line.  To get the layout “done”. 

Fine.  What if you’re unlucky enough to hit that mark? Congratulations, you can now say you checked another damn box off of your life list. Then what?  Seriously, what then?  You need to think about it.  If you don’t have another idea in mind for the next railroad you’re cruising for trouble.  I’ve seen it happen to myself and time and time and time over with my friends.  The sense of malaise and depression and just feeling lost when something that was so meaningful is “done”.  It’s not a small thing.   Like many of you, I don’t have any other themes that are calling to me that would create the same level of passion as what I’m doing now.  This is it.  Everybody is different but here are some ways I’ve dealt with it.

First, recognize the depth of the problem.

Second, take your foot off of the gas.  Getting a layout launched and establishing momentum is vital to its success but, once you’ve hit cruising altitude, working like a demon is essentially speeding up how quickly you won’t have a job.  I still put in as many modeling hours as ever but now work at a much more leisurely pace.  It was a hard habit to establish, but I’ve learned to put my emphasis on savoring the process not checking another thing off of a goals list.

I kept my main layout, but took a break and built a few small ones that allowed me to explore other themes.  Specifically, the LAJ and Brooklyn Terminal layouts.

Renovate the layout.  This was surprising to me. I guess you don’t know what you don’t know. The Downtown Spur was getting on in years and was starting to show signs of age.  I’ve been surprised how uplifting it is has been to go back and fix, repair, or even replace elements that were wearing out.  I thought it would be a boring slog and it’s been quite the opposite.

Go back and rebuild or replace elements.  If you’ve been at this a while, your skills are higher than they  were ten years ago.  There are areas (scenery, track areas, structures) where I realized I can do a better job now and have gone back and replaced them.  As with the restoration I’ve been surprised how fun and uplifting this has been.  In other words I’m taking a second pass over the entire layout and raising it to higher standards.

Just because an expression is corny, trite, and overused doesn’t mean it isn’t true….the hobby is meant to be a journey, something to be experienced, not a destination, something to finish and mark off your list.