I’m going to take you inside the NTrak layout at the World’s Greatest Hobby On Tour show in Nashville Tennessee which took place February 14th and 15th. The Nashville NTrak club obtained space for a large layout and invited folks from Louisville, Knoxville, Murfresboro, Indianapolis, and Memphis to attend.
Run over to YouTube and see the video for the event at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiMSwtSJaoE (also embedded above). Note that the video is available in YouTube “High Definition”, although you may have to directly to YouTube to see it in that format. We encourage you to “Rate” the video on YouTube, subscribe to the Reality Reduced channel, and leave text and video responses.
Let’s jump right in and look at some of the pictures. To the right is a very simple but very interesting scene. “Under construction” doesn’t just describe the state of your layout, it also describes a lot of things in the real world. Here a modern highway bridge is under construction with men and machinery working all around it. It’s a scene that quickly grabs the eye and gets you to peer in closer at the details, but it’s also very uncluttered and open. The only area where this scene needs any improvement is the backdrop, while the plain blue doesn’t really distract from the scene I can imagine a photo-quality backdrop showing the city in the distance, or a simple painted backdrop showing the extension of the road off to the horizon, possibly with more construction going on. Still, it’s quite the cool scene as it is.
On my left is a scene that is interesting for two wildly different reasons. The coal unloading station is extremely well executed. I can imagine there were lots of local coal dealers that looked just like this all across the country. Again, not a very complex scene, but very well executed with the nice signs, coal cars on the trestle and small office building.
The down side here is not the builders fault, but rather bad luck. This module ended up placed next to a mountain line module to the left. It doesn’t ruin the scene or anything, and actually people understand that NTrak is a series of vignettes. Put next to a different module I wouldn’t have even noticed, but here the combination of the office being so close to the edge and the mountain line module next to it make for an interesting juxtaposition. I think it may also have a lot to do with the trestle being close to where the mountain line would be, but not.
Detail parts are expensive, and you can easily use a lot of them in a scene. However, sometimes you don’t need a detail part to add detail, a little creativity can go a long way.
The car crash scene to the right is a great example. It’s just another car like one of the dozens on the bridge. The details here were the removal of a segment of the bridge, and adding a wrecker and police car. The result is an everyday scene that really catches your eye but didn’t require any expensive or fiddly detail parts. This is also the sort of scene where it is easy to draw on real life. There are no tracks in this picture (they are below the bridges); this is a scene you could see driving down the road of your home town, even if you don’t live near a railroad.
A classic model trick is to make the viewer think there is more to a scene than is really there. The picture to the left is a great example of how this can be done. Here a coal mine and loading platform have been partially obscured from view by mountains and vegetation. The structures have some great detail, particularly the painting and weathering. However since you can’t see a lot of the track and flat area your mind takes that detail from the building and fills in a scene. The imagination of the viewer is likely to create a much more detailed scene than the modeler could ever do if this was out in the open.
The last scene I’m going to show you is on the right. A lumber yard with a small unloading spur. Here the detail that makes the scene is the backdrop. It appears to be hand painted from looking at close ups, but I’m not going to show you that because what is cool is the effect from afar. There are two layers painted, the trees in the haze at the top, and the foreground trees at the bottom. the colors and sizes were extremely well chosen and make you feel as if this small lumber yard is backed by a large forrest. There is a second very interesting detail, the fallen tree in the front. In a sea of green the fall colors of the tree from the dead leaves stand out. It makes the scene feel much more real; it’s too easy to fall into the trap of making everything perfect on your model railroad.
I hope that the video and pictures give you a good feel of the layout. Don’t forget to post video and pictures of your layout when your club has a public layout. It’s a great feeling to see others taking an interest in your work, and we all have a duty to inspire each other to make more and better scenes.
