Model Railroad Blog

Throwback Tuesday

When I first started researching the Downtown Spur, I made a point of capturing as many of the Bing Birdseye images as I could.  I’m glad I did because, as far as I know, Bing doesn’t archive their photos and they are now gone forever.  I thought it would be fun to go back and wax nostalgic at how diverse the industries on the Spur once were.  My best guess is the shot above was taken around 2005.  The loco has dropped it’s train on the runaround track and gone down the switch back.  It picked up a car at A-1, pushed it across 12th Avenue, and is in the process of picking up another car at The Miami Produce Center.  The two pick ups were put on the train bringing it’s total 15 cars at which point it headed back to Hialeah Yard.  Better lucky than smart.  When these images were taken they captured this entire switching sequence from above photographically.

The Downtown Spur is roughly three and half miles long.  I made my first photo safari to it in 2006.  In terms of “interesting activity” it seemed to peak in 2007.  In late 2007 the 12th Avenue Street crossing was removed.  Since then Trujillo has move to a new location along the FEC and the entire switchback has been removed.  The eastern portion of the lead from Family and Sons to 7th Avenue is now pretty dead.  The west end from Family and Son to FP&T appears to be as busy or even busier than ever.

Cuba Tropical Produce

While my focus over the past two years was on building the LAJ layout, my “main” model railroad continues to be the Downtown Spur.  Although I haven’t added anything to it in a few years, I have maintained it and operate on it regularly.  With the LAJ now done, and a Brooklyn N scale layout on the docket for next year, I decided to double back and do some more work on the spur.  Next up is Cuba Tropical Produce on 13th Avenue.  If ever there was a structure that screams out, “This is Miami!”, Cuba Tropical is it.

The core was constructed of .060″ sheet styrene.  The foundation is from 1×4 PVC “lumber”.  Color will be applied via photo laminates.  How do you like my sophisticated work bench consisting of a ragged sheet of MDF on a trash can?

Hitting The Artistic Sweetspot

A scene on my LAJ layout. Viewing a layout in person has it’s limitations. When viewed through the camera lens however, we can control the experience through lighting, framing, and viewing angles.

 

 

Often, when I tell other modelers that I’ve just made a photography trip to Allapattah (Miami) or Vernon (LA), the immediate response is, “Wow, you’re brave.  Weren’t you afraid of being mugged?”.  Let’s get one thing straight up front, I’m not brave!  But no, I can’t say I’ve ever felt even remotely threatened.  Granted, I always go during business hours. Both areas are essentially industrial parks focused on the heavy lifting of commerce.

Dangerous just isn’t the adjective I’d use. Better descriptors for both places would be: authentic, peaceful, serene,  understated architectural elegance, quiet dignity.  They have a soul.  They have texture.  They’re local treasures and won’t be there forever.

When visitors see my layouts in person they’ll make comments along the lines of “so detailed” or “so realistic”.  I can’t say either is my goal.  What I’m really trying to do is convey that sense of understated elegance and serenity, to convey emotion and not simply document by duplicating rivets in miniature.   Viewed in person I doubt that I’ve done that and, due to the limitations of size, optics, viewing angles, etc., I’m not sure that it can be done.  It can be accomplished however through photography where you can control the viewing experience via framing, low viewing angles, lighting, and cropping in actual sky backdrops.  This is why I also suspect that when people see my layouts in person they’ll say “this isn’t what I expected”.

There is a vast distinction between simply using modeling as a form of documentation versus conveying emotion.  It’s the ageless debate across all artistic mediums of “is this illustration or is it art?”  The latter is much more difficult to achieve. The litmus test is whether the subject conveys information or emotion.  On one side of the spectrum is simply illustrating a point in 3D.  This is the purpose of an architectural model. You can copy a scene shed by shed, window by window,  be one hundred per cent prototypically accurate in a technical sense, and still  leave the viewer emotionally unmoved.   If however, we go too far the other direction we either end up with a cute, amusement park like caricature, or just a layout surface with modeling subjects plopped down in an incoherent, unbalanced pattern.  The sweet spot in the middle is where art lies and it can be a hard target to hit indeed.