Better Model Railroad Layout Design for Larger Scenes

You can make your layouts seem much larger than it really is, using careful scene composition and other methods. Let's take a look at how Paul expands his sense of boundaries on his layout. You can expand the perceived depth and range of a scene by getting observers to imagine unmodeled buildings or landscapes. Use backdrop building flats two to four inches deep. Enough for plausible roof lines and screened-ins. Shallower models rarely look plausible from a side angle. Use shallow foreground cutaways and include enough clues to convey on modeled foreground. You can partly model several foreground structures with their full size, left to the imagination. Or portray a narrow strip of waterway along an aisle, rather than modeling the entire water scene. Design track that extends to the fascia. Tracks leading to your layout's fascia panel can help visitors perceive the layout is linked beyond the bench work, to other parts of the region's rail network or to foreground industries. Designate a few industrial tracks that disappear out of sight or extend up to the fascia as visible staging, to hold cars destined for unmodeled industrial buildings. Adding simple scenery to your layout's visible staging areas helps to avoid any feelings of running a train off the edge of the world. Include features that make it seem larger and more like an extension of the fully scenic layout, rather than just bare bench work. For example, continue the layout's fascia treatment into staging. Use the same basic rail coloring and ballast textures. Add some surface ground cover and maybe erode. And add an uncluttered smooth rear wall surface painted a neutral color, all of which adds to the realism of your staging area. Create visual events to make your train runs seem longer. Place buildings, terrain, trees and other track-side objects in the foreground to briefly interrupt the views of moving trains by engineers and rail fans. Thereby dividing a train's run into multiple visual segments. Frame the central part of wide scenes with raised foreground terrain, road overpasses across the main line and rows of trees. They will also diffuse a bleak distant views of oncoming traffic. For example, North of Barrett station, Paul created a scenic view block composed partly of a foreground hillside, with a narrow curved rock cut that extends through the backdrop. Historically, train crews worked in isolation, mostly unaware of the locations of other trains and imminent threats of collisions. You can create this same feeling on your layout. Use room walls, tall backdrop partitions or tall scenery above eye level to impose physical limits on your operators' views of your layout room. A partition not only makes the railroad seem much larger, but also greatly expands the apparent layout space. These features keep visitors and operators from seeing the entire railroad from one spot. These barriers can also block the sounds of approaching trains and crews. Overall, the imposed sight and sound limits, as well as Paul's use of aisle management strategies helps enhance operators' perceptions of isolation and autonomy. Paul's New Hampshire division of the Boston and Maine is an excellent example of contemporary layout design. His thoughtful aisle planning, his creative use of curves and hand-laid track, his realistic landscaping, and the techniques he's used to make the layout seem larger, all make the railroad much more appealing. You can adopt his design concepts on your own and achieve great enjoyment among your visitors, and great satisfactions to everybody who sees it.