Odd Question - Didn't Someone Propose to model topography first?

[MDW]

There is a article by Neal Schorr in an 2009 Kalmbach “How to build realistic reliable track” special issue that describes the civil engineering aspects of a railroad right of way and how they can be modeled.   There are some good ideas on how we can make our models look like they were carved out of an existing landscape without building the landscape first.   In any case, it’s a nice article that I often reference.
Cheers
Michel

[Dave V]

Hey @Dave V how did the JD change for you when you added some super trees? 

Everything suddenly looked properly scaled...and the trees served as a more effective visual block just as they do back East in real life.

[robert3985]

My good friend and fellow N-scale enthusiast, the late Kelly Newton developed a method of building a scenery base over existing subroadbed that allowed you to make cuts, fills and tunnels by cutting, filling and "drilling" the clearances from the surrounding scenery base.

Kelly, like me and many other N-scalers in Utah, use L-girder benchwork with splined Masonite subroadbed, supported by premium pine risers.  Most of us plan the layout trackage first, instead of putting down a table-top first and fitting the track to the table-top.  For our design priorities, the position of the track is #1 when designing both benchwork and scenery instead of the other way around.  Since the requirement of on our modular club layout was to only include LDE's, which means they depict prototype scenes, Kelly had a pretty exact idea of where the cuts, fills and tunnels would be.

He meticulously carved his rock outcroppings, using long-setting plaster and adding salt to keep it soft for hours, as opposed to my method of adding vinegar to make it set up quickly.

Photo (1) - This is a scene on one of Kelly's modules that I assisted him to build.  I did the track, the signal bridge, the telephone poles and provided the motive power and cars.  I also took the photo. Kelly did everything else.  This photo was on the cover of Rail Model Journal back in the Nineties:


Photo (2) - This is another Kelly module (Ntrak 2000) that he built for a customer, and I assisted on, again using the plaster-cheesecloth method.  The design and all of the rockwork is Kelly's and I did the track, some of the scenery texture, the water and the bridges:


Kelly also used this method to quickly do the scenery on Lee Nicholas' HO scale Utah, Colorado & Western, along with HO scale splined Masonite roadbed.  Kelly's methods are explained on Lee's site here: http://www.ucwrr.com/Kelly'sScenery.htm

My experience of Kelly's method was that his plaster shell was fairly easily done, but for portable modules, it got damaged fairly easily...although relatively easy to repair.  Lee Nicholas has been very happy with Kelly's scenery in the many years since it was constructed.

For myself, I prefer extruded Styrofoam as a scenery base, and I don't like having a plaster layer on my splined Masonite subroadbed...which caused some problems on the portable modules.

If you want to have your scenery look like it was there before the roadbed was put in, I would suggest looking for photos, videos...or visiting a road that you like and documenting it.  Also topo maps and satellite imagery help a lot too.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[ednadolski]

... it would be more realistic to build all the topography first, then retrofit the track, with cuts and fills as necessary, sort of like the real railroads.

I think that would only be effective if you used actual real-world proportions for the topography and the track.  The selective compression on practical model layouts is the actual 'culprit' vis-a-vis compromised realism, not the construction technique.

Ed

[peteski]

I think that would only be effective if you used actual real-world proportions for the topography and the track.  The selective compression on practical model layouts is the actual 'culprit' vis-a-vis compromised realism, not the construction technique.

Ed

That is exactly what I was thinking. Even in N scale, we use some serious selective compression to make the layout size manageable.

[Rossford Yard]

I agree, but have found that slope sort of scales, i.e. a 20% slope looks flatter on an N scale layout than out in the wild, whereas 30% or maybe up to double looks okay.  Look at real railroad embankments near a bridge, for example, and put a digital level on them, then check what looks like a reason facsimile on your layout, it will usually be steeper.

[OldEastRR]

I found that using the top of whatever is the lowest feature on your layout scenery (like a river surface) as the zero elevation for planning the layout scenery helps visualize things. You put the track at elevations above zero, then ground height lower or higher than track level depending on what kind of scene you're making, from fields to mountain tops. In the town on my layout I had the ground level start out about one inch above track grade at one end, then gradually fall to 1/4 inch below it, until near the river the slope dropped an inch in 14" (this is over a six-foot run). That is to the top of the bank, the river level is even lower. The track however drops less steeply, only 1/4" over the run.  So even tho the area looks flat, it's really sloping everywhere -- except where the downtown buildings are. That area is man-made flatland, so the building first floors could be built level with each other. Tho there are two levels there too -- one block is 3/16" lower than the other. So my town site is sloping from left to right (toward the river) and from back to front (toward a small creek that runs just off the front edge of the layout). And the included waterways provide a natural reason the land slopes the way it does.
I once helped build a guy's layout of mostly rural western US scenery with him and another person and used the same technique to plan ground slopes, cuts, fills, embankments, etc. Not as an overall plan, but in every area as we built it. When we were done and looked at the whole layout, it looked exactly like the railroad track had to build its way through the rolling landscape and over creek beds and river -- the land was not conveniently shaped for the railroad's purpose like you see on some layouts. Tho there was only one narrow river and a dried-up creek bed, you could instantly see how water from a rainstorm would flow through the scenery down to the lowest point, the river. And how the railroad had to build culverts and short low timber trestles over those flow points even tho there was no water modeled in them. We also put in tilted rock beds below ground at one end that you could visually see in the cuts for ROW until at the other end it rose into a bare rocky outcropping. It was more an architectural model than a RR layout.

[drgw0579]

In one segment of MR's first N scale project layout, the Enfield and Ohio (May 1967), they mentioned: "The idea was to build the scenery with the track location generally in mind..." They go on to show how with N scale the roadbed could be built over existing plasterwork.   Not quite like completely building a bunch of mountains, then trying to figure out how to route the track, but remember in the 60's track planners were still trying to cram all the track they could into a given area; this thinking from Linn Westcott's era was a big change from tradition.

Bill Kepner

[OldEastRR]

The "architectural model" layout I worked on was featured in NSM back in the early 2010's, the Spokane International. It's a multi-issue series with lots of photos showing the layout.