Bob Brown

Choosing a Railroad Concept

Bob Brown
Duration:   1  mins

Description

Bob Brown, narrow gauge modeler and owner of the Tuolumne Forks model railroad has written in his Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette about choosing a good concept for model railroads. Brown had about a year to develop a concept for his Tuolumne Forks railroad and it was hard for him to decide what he wanted to do. He started by placing a simple dog bone type layout to fit about half of his modeling room.

This left the rest of the room so that he could follow a different concept later on when he made a decision. He eventually filled the whole room with his layout. Brown has built two 2 foot dead-on accurate scenes. One being Wiscasset in Maine and the other Phillips on the Sandy River. After building these scenes, Brown discovered that he couldn’t maintain his enthusiasm if controlled that much by a prototype.

He found that the concept right for him would give him enough breadth and room for creativity, and with that indefinable atmosphere. Too broad or big of a layout is hard to keep up work on, and too limited of a concept produces the same problem. For Brown, a good concept is one that keeps a modeler inspired to keep working on the layout for long hours and over years.

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You've written in the Gazette about choosing the concept for a railroad. Mm-hmm. Was it hard to choose a concept for this one? I have a real horror tale about a concept for this railroad. All right, well. I had about a year to develop a concept, and I couldn't decide on what I wanted to do. So I decided I would put a simple little dogbone type layout, and take about half the room. So I could have the rest of the room for some other concept down the line. And then I wasn't happy with this. So I finally took the whole room up for my layout. Now my problem is, I have built two dead-on accurate scenes. I did two two-foot scenes. One was Wiscasset in Maine, and one was Phillips on the Sandy River. And I find I can't maintain my enthusiasm, if I'm controlled that much. I have great admiration for Jack Burgess, the way he controls what he models, but I have to have something that'll drive me to the workbench. So it's taken me a long time to come up with the concept that I've come up with, which gives me enough breadth to keep me at my workbench, modeling. You're looking for something that's more creative than strictly controlled or defined, right? Yeah, yeah, I think so. That's something, again, with that indefinable atmosphere. I feel it, some people I know have too broad a concept, too big a model railroad, and never get on to building their layout. That, to me, is a bad concept. Okay. Other people have too limited a concept, and never get onto building a railroad. And that to me is a bad concept. Concept, to me, is what keeps you enthusiastic. And if you're not enthusiastic, you're not going to spend the hundreds of hours it takes to build a layout.
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