What Was Once Can Never Be Again

Or what makes a good model railway layout?

Discuss.....

Seriously as with all "art" this is truly in the eye of the viewer and I am not going to say you are wrong for liking what you like but I will tell you what I think (it's my blog)...

Often folk talk about model rail cliches, things they see again and again and again. The church with a wedding or funeral (or even both!), the obligatory water feature (with someone fishing), house on fire, fire engines and police cars with blinking lights at an accident scene, the improbable tunnel [the one where the track goes through the only rock on an otherwise completely flat flood-plain], the obligatory ruined castle, unaltered RTP buildings, buses on bridges (don't get that one to be honest).

Alas I see much more than this given that a cliche is something that is seen over and over again - the quaint country setting with lovely fields and sheep, the quaint station, the quaint water tower, the quaint coaling stage, the quaint signal box, the quaint people in 30s - 60s clobber and the quaint....steam engines.

Hornby Duke of Gloucester - Big & Green

 Quaint! Sorry but visit any model rail show and you will see the same thing over and over and over again, albeit presented slightly differently (with some exceptions). I had a recent ephinay as I could never remember the names of layouts. when persusing upcoming showguides. I thought old age was setting in. It isn't that though...to me it's because of many of that ilk are so similar they don't stay in my brain i.e. you can replace one with another and barely notice the difference.

Nice - yes Original - not very

 If you are a fan of steam fair enough, and I am not implying a steam layout means one that isn't any good, obviously not there are amazing works (in terms of modelling and skill) in this genre, even ones that have all the "cliches" but it's still a representaion of the same thing. While I am too young to remeber the active days of steam I do get why they are popular to some extent...many of them have character and are marvels of engineering and they are "romantic"...but sorry time moves on.

In many ways it seems to be clinging onto a bygone era when life was better, and evil Beeching cut a swathe through the land.....but was it and did he? In todays terms they were slow. Have you ever actually looked at pre-Beeching rail map? It was absurd. Many companies all singing to a different song. Yes - he probably went to far (evidence by the reinstatement of some lines) yes the whole affair stank given that the ultimate guy in charge had a financial interest in diverting traffic to the roads (dubious politicians - nothing new there) but clinging on to branch lines cos they were interesting is complete crap.

Before and After.

Peoples needs change with technology. Before trains there were canals to move goods, the arrival of trains meant they were no longer needed in that way. Sad but true. Installation of gas into consumer houses, the advent of nuclear power, and the replacement of steam to diesel then electric locos meant to demand for coal was massively diminished hence the closure of many coal mines. Badly handled by the Government yes but continuing to pay to dig up a resource not needed anymore makes no sense.

A simplified view I know but not untrue, like it or not. If you want to paint a picture with your layout of when life was better that's up to you - it's your layout but it isn't mine and we strive to do "something different".

As I mentioned though there are exceptions. There are some sublime steam based layouts - The Gresley Beat, Liverpool Lime Street (mainly steam), Sumatra Road and Rod Stewarts Three Rivers City. 1920's USA captured to perfection probably the best model rail layout in the world I have ever seen. I had assumed being a famous, rich bloke he had simply paid people to do it all, I assumed wrong he does much of it himself. What all three of these have in common though is concept, scale and grandiosity - and of course originality.

Sumatra Road - North London grime

 

Gresley Beat - church like structure in the background received funeral trains - I thinks it's called a Necropolis.

Lime Street - epic!

Three Rivers City - Astonishing!

 Whatever you chosen subject/era there is one thing to bear in mind. Yes it's a model of a railway but an actual railway exists for a reason be that to move goods or people or both. What I mean by that is, on the whole, the land it sits on was there before the railway was. While that might sound obvious it's quite a skill to make a model actually look like that. In an ideal world you would design your landform adding the grass,trees, roads, houses etc and then put a rail line through it by cutting a swathe through the land. Obviously this is not practical and a waste of time, but we do need to strive to make it look like that's what we did. The most realistic layouts are the ones where the train lines and associated permanent way are incidental.

Again occasionally there are exceptions - there have been instances where a small town or village has grown into something much more because trains stopped there, that's economics and human geography so in those instances you can build around it (though the land sculpting principle remains the same, and the line should follow the most logical route and not go through rock for the sake of it - remember the improbable tunnel!).