Constantly Improving

The Maine Central layout I've been working on for the last year or so is the closest I've gotten to a fully fledged model railroad layout.  It's the most of a room I've filled and it's the longest run of track I've got working.  I tried a few things I hadn't ever tried before and repeated a handful of things I had done.

However, mistakes are always made and hindsight is always 20/20.  Here's a short list of what I feel are some of the biggest areas it could improve.

Roadbed

If there is anything I regret the most, it was skimping on the roadbed.  Modelers have long used mainly two materials, with the recent introduction of a third:  cork, homasote, and foam (notably Woodland Scenic's product line).  Well, I decided I'd use a different material: foamcore.  In retrospect this was a bit of a 'skimp'.  I had a bunch already and it was a lot simpler than driving an hour round trip to the train store to get cork or whatever.  I needed to cover a huge area under the yard and thought this would be a cheaper route.

Bad idea.  I glued down the foamcore originally with straight white "school glue".  In part 4 you can see it looks like there aren't any problems.

However in part 6, which was filmed just 2 weeks later, you can already begin to see it peeling up around the corners.  After I painted the ground with latex paint the curling was even more pronounced.

This ended up being both an operational and a scenic problem.  Throughout the yard the tracks on the outer edges were no longer perfectly level, they canted up a bit.  This meant that the cars sitting on that piece of track had a slight lean to them which looked really bad.

New rule:  Don't use foamcore for roadbed.

Module Breaks

For some context, I had just come from working on a small shelf layout which was centered around a single industry.  When I dismounted that layout from the wall for the basement to be finished it had easily come apart because when I had built it, I had been careful to cut the track at the break between modules.

However when I started building my Cobbosseecontee branch layout, I didn't give it the same attention.  A key reason for this was that I built the modules to fit the space that I had, then I worked out the track plan.  This pushed me to end up with a mismatch between the benchwork and the layout, and caused things like turnouts to be on the break between modules.

So lesson learned:  The benchwork needs to be designed with the layout to avoid these types of things.  This basically means if either of these modules ever need to be moved that turnouts is probably going to get destroyed and some major work will need to be done.  Which might be another way of saying that module isn't re-usable at all.

New rule:  Plan the benchwork with the layout.

Lighting

On the Norfolk Southern layout I had created a shadowbox by adding a hollow core door above the layout and hanging the valance with industrial velcro over the front.

The end effect of this was a far better presentation of the layout.  The layout felt more finished and more inviting.  Compare for yourself.

VS.

Even though the previous layout was in an unfinished basement, look how much more completed it looks.

I think there are two reasons for this.

First, the lighting is much closer to the subject.  In case of the shadowbox effect, the lighting is about 18" to 20" away from the trains.  In the "whole room ceiling lighting", even with track lighting following the entire layout around the walls the lighting was still a good 4' to 4.5' away.   The net effect there to me is huge.  My last blog post I mentioned that I missed the valance.  I think it was really the change in lighting that I was noticing.

Second, I know there countless model railroad magazines have said this, but I'm starting to think it's true:  The dark valance and fascia almost disappear and the contrast to the brightly lit scene pulls you in enough that you almost don't even notice whatever else is around you.

The lighting I had used on the NS shadowbox layout were just under cabinet lights from Walmart.  I bought about 5 or 6 of them.  They weren't dimmable, but who cares?  They looked good when on and that's what counts.

New rule:  Use lighting close to the subject, and get the fascia and valance painted black early on in a project.  It makes a big difference.