Slide Show Night at Mike Danneman's!

[unittrain]

Man I'm speechless wow!! it is in the upper 80's here in NE Ohio and I can just feel the cold winds and winter snow from looking at these pictures! That is some excellent work I feel I'm really along the tracks in winter. This shows why N can rival any scale enough size for reasonable detail and small enough to make prototype size scenes.

[Erik W]

Yep!  Good move on the wreck train, but looks like he has two so you could be rescued. 

I haven't seen the layout since he opened up for the NSC in Denver.  He's made a ton of progress since then.

Sometimes I wonder if I can rewire my brain to start thinking big picture like Danneman.  With all the great scenery the Peco track and lack of wire grab irons don't stick out.  At all.  Simple weathering of equipment goes a long way.  But sometimes I just can't stop rivit counting and end up spending more time on equipment than the layout!

I like Mike's approach to rolling stock.  He made riveted sided cabooses out of the Trainworks welded side cabooses simply by simulating the rivet lines with thin lines of chalk.  Very effective.  Also, on older covered hopper type cars with thick end ladders, he just paints the horizontal surfaces black, rather than thinning them.  Your eyes see what they expect to see.  I think Mike's background as an artist is what makes his model railroad so convincing and effective.  He has a great intuition of the big picture and how things should appear and what works best in scaling things down to a believable perspective.  Having lived in this are a for 16 years, I can tell you his scenery is spot on as far as accurately looking like the real thing.

Erik

[Chris333]

I guess he must be an artist, I can't tell where the layout ends and the backdrop starts.

[Dave V]

His stuff is seriously awesome.  I have his scenery book.  Kalmbach publishes it.  And yes, he's one heck of an artist when it comes to everything, but especially backdrops.

He really does take advantage of N scale's scenery-to-trains ratio.

[Sokramiketes]

I like Mike's approach to rolling stock.  He made riveted sided cabooses out of the Trainworks welded side cabooses simply by simulating the rivet lines with thin lines of chalk.  Very effective.  Also, on older covered hopper type cars with thick end ladders, he just paints the horizontal surfaces black, rather than thinning them.  Your eyes see what they expect to see.  I think Mike's background as an artist is what makes his model railroad so convincing and effective. 

Erik

That's like, why do his snow scenes look better and colder?  Because he paints blue tinted shadows on the back of the trees and in the actual shadows created by the room lights, of course.  Painting scenery in general is something that should be written about more often.  You don't have to use the Woodland Scenics colors for everything.  Put them down for texture and bring the color tones in place with paint! 

Rich Yourstone's stuff looked different from everyone else because he made his own color palate too.  I think Rich dyed his own ground foam though. 

[jsoflo]

That is magnificent, those pictures with snow falling capture the look and feel of the rockies in a snow storm so perfectly it takes you to that place. I cannot imagine how much effort went into the snow scenery. I have followed Mike's work in NSR from the start but have not seen anything about how he did it, but I have been converting to a snow layout and I can attest that WS snow in particular is extremely difficult to work with because it is so fine and discolors so easily, so whatever was used it came out PERFECT. Love it.

All me best,
Jan

[Sokramiketes]

That is magnificent, those pictures with snow falling capture the look and feel of the rockies in a snow storm so perfectly it takes you to that place. I cannot imagine how much effort went into the snow scenery. I have followed Mike's work in NSR from the start but have not seen anything about how he did it, but I have been converting to a snow layout and I can attest that WS snow in particular is extremely difficult to work with because it is so fine and discolors so easily, so whatever was used it came out PERFECT. Love it.

All me best,
Jan

Here's the issue of NSR you missed!  http://www.nscalerailroadn.com/039/NSR039.html

Danneman covers his snow technique, which involves marble dust for the ballast and hydrocal for the rest of the snow.

[jsoflo]

Here's the issue of NSR you missed!  http://www.nscalerailroadn.com/039/NSR039.html

Danneman covers his snow technique, which involves marble dust for the ballast and hydrocal for the rest of the snow.

Thanks! I absolutely missed that, maybe could of saved me a lot of headaches with my snow!! I will check that out. Amazing scenery.

my best,
Jan

[Erik W]

I guess he must be an artist, I can't tell where the layout ends and the backdrop starts.

Chris,  There are sections of his layout where you can't tell where the scenery ends and the backdrop begins when you're standing there in person three feet away.  I'm specifically thinking of the Coal Creek area where he has a small farm, with Z scale structures, (at the 12 second mark of the first short video in the link Mike Skibbe posted).  Since he paints the backdrop and scenery there is no mismatch of color between the two and his lighting is set up in such a way as not to cast shadows from the 3 dimensional scenery onto the backdrop.

While I'm at it, all of Mike's hundreds of pieces of rolling stock have pizza cutter wheels *gasp* and, to be honest, it's not noticeable at all.  I guess the lesson I've learned from viewing his layout in person and in print over the years is that the more thought and care you put into your layout as a whole before you start construction, the more convincing the results will be.  All too often, in our excitement, we dive right into construction without thinking through how all the elements of the scene will fit together and be taken in by the viewer.  The real art then, is not how well each element of a scene is done (rolling stock, structures, track, scenery, etc.) but how well the individual parts blend together to mimic what our brains perceive reality to be.  If that's done well, the brain, perceiving what it sees in the real world, fills in the holes.

Erik

[Ian MacMillan]

Epic. From that small layout he had, to this...amazing.

[ElginLoco]

Mike's layout is equal parts intimidation and inspiration. I see it and think, if only I could be that good, and to be sure, if I get my layout to be half as stunning as his, I will be twice as amazed as anyone else. Yet also there is the drive to try because I've seen what can be done.
That is a must visit layout.