Train Room

Dan,

Perhaps you and others can offer some experience or suggestions, or even speculations, for my problem.

THE SETUP:

I have an above garage space that will be a few inches over 16' x 23' - but that's under a 45 degree roofline that intersects the long walls at 54" above floor level. With this in mind I've had to plan a layout height ranging from 40" to 48", with a staging return loop with three passing tracks dropping from the 40" level to 37" (most of that will be below an end wall and curve around under the 48" area along one long wall.

The basic concept is that of a mythical southern Indiana branch line, the Big Fork and Diehl RR (reporting mark BFD), that leases engine service and critical area trackage rights with some class 1 lines (Wabash, Nickel Plate and possibly even C&O - I'd like to see a 2-8-8-2 dragging in empties and schlepping away 20-car coal drags, in addition to NKP Berks towing reefers stopping for re-icing and a Wabash P-1 4-6-4 heading up a train of blue heavyweight cars with a Bluebird drumhead at the end of the observation car), and has it's own out and back run from the big yard up to the mines and branch terminal, shuffling hoppers, reefers full of Buxom Melons, and cars of cement and limestone slabe as well as miscellaneous freight and local passenger service.

Along the West long wall, 40" level, track enters from staging loop via tunnel near North short wall and enters the long double ended interchange yard, passenger station, engine service area, shops and MoW yard at Big Fork, returning via balloon loop in southwest corner; West side of balloon loop also goes:

1) along West wall headed North into tunnel and begins down grade to connect to staging loop

2) between that track and the return side of the balloon loop begins 2% grade headed North, crossing North entrance from staging at 44", then East, doing a 35" radius climbing loop around the Piedmont peninsula (station, cement plant, limestone quarry, and a melon farm - the liftout access in the middle of it) crossing over itself at 48" and continuing East then South along East wall to a 33" baloon loop with a wye, small yard, engine terminal and station at Diehl at the south end; two coal mines are in the Northeast corner and along the outside (West) of the East side balloon. Various small industries such as stock watering, REA, coal and fuel dealers, brewery, produce distributor, steel fabricator, chicken packer, grain elevator, scrap yard, etc. are scattered around Big Fork, Piedmont and Diehl, offering lots of switching activity for BFnD way freights.

Stair access is in center of south short wall.

NOW - THE QUESTIONS: that East wall area at 48" height will have just

6" of vertical wall for backdrop before hitting the 45 degree slope of the ceiling (rises to 8 feet, then flat across the center)

I'm concerned about how to handle the transition from vertrical to slant (small radius coved? - and don't even mention the corners!), and wondering about lighting. Track lights sound attractive - mounted behind a valence perhaps. I'm thinking the backdrop color should be a fairly pale blue to reflect more light, but am concerned about complex shadows and color cast.

Our president, Heinrich "Big Harry" Diehl, leader of the Big Fork'n' Diehl, home of Silverplate Service, thanks you for your thoughts.

snip

It all depends ----

IF your viewing is all from a single location, then 'backdrop' scenery can cross the verticle to slant juncture without a lot of problem. But if the viewing is from several directions, you will have a lot of 'distortion' to try and explain/ live with.

Chuck D.

On 6/19/2009 12:06 PM Steve Caple spake thus:

This is the only small part of your problems that I thought I'd comment on.

How about having the backdrop seamlessly make a transition* to the ceiling along that wall (gentle radius, as large as possible), and make that the "outward looking" edge of the layout? You know, the western edge, where the skies are not cloudy all day, etc. (Although surely the skies will look better with some nice big cumulus clouds in them.)

• I'm sorry, but "transition" was never meant to be a verb. (One doesn't "transition to" something; one makes a transition to it.)

David Nebenzahl wrote: [..]

Making nouns out of verbs and vice versa is easy and natural for English. (Actually, it's more accurate to think of "noun" and "verb" as positions in a sentence, that is, as syntactic functions rather than word classes or "parts of speech". English is a highly analytic language, much more like Chinese than Latin.) Many verbs were once used exclusively as nouns, and vice versa - they've just become widely used in both functions, is all, and sound perfectly natural now. Anglo-Saxon words usually have the same form for both, in fact. Latin words usually require a nominal or verbal suffix, but that requirement is disappearing as fewer and fewer speakers learn Latin, and the awareness of the Latin patterns fades.

Your objection to "transition" as a verb merely means that for you "to transition" is not yet a natural-sounding verb. I share your feelings, but am not as het up about it all.

cheers,

wolf k.

On 6/19/2009 3:42 PM Wolf K spake thus:

OK. "Transition" I'll give you as an iffy case. But "grow" used as a transitive verb? *That* I'll fight you on!

(As in "we plan to grow our business".)

Er, uh, arguing with yourself?

BTW, many Iowa farmers grow corn. Pretty transitive, no? But "growing a business" bugs me for the biz school marketing speak flavor. If you hear anyone use the word "rebranding" without heavy sarcasm, smack the ignorant bastard down.

The REAL misuse is that beloved of DoD bureaucrats, using impact as a verb.

So what don't you grow in your garden?

:-)

wolf k.

He grows plants. Very transitively.

Now you can complain about 'plants' being both a noun and a verb, as in 'he plants plants'.

On 6/19/2009 6:25 PM Wolf K spake thus:

Hmm; I guess it's not precisely the use of "grow" as a verb (tr.), but its use with an improper object. It's OK to say "I'm growing some high-quality sinsemmila", but not OK to say "we're going to grow our marijuana dispensary business". Or at least it wasn't OK when I was growing up.

(OK, language is constantly changing*, yadda yadda ... )

• I remember when I took calculus finding that there is actually a formula governing the rate at which words change in a language.

[...]

It's the metaphor of business as a plant that offends me. That, and the implication that you can make things grow the way you want.

cheers,

wolf k.

You don't say what the distance from the track to the wall is.

One thing that comes to mind is don't run the track parallel to the wall under the break from vert to 45°.

Put trees, hilly scenery, building flats or shallow buildings etc between the track and wall to break the line formed by the ceiling and wall, i.e., hide the straight line behind scenery. Make sure that the lighting doesn't cast shadows on the wall.

You name eastern RRs. The sky at the horizon should be nearly white (actually light gray).

On 6/20/2009 11:15 AM Fred Lotte spake thus:

It would be better to eliminate the break entirely by coving it over. Often done in such situations using thin plywood, masonite, etc. (Or just by using drywall mud and tape.)

You are easily offended.

First, that wouldn't bother me all that much but if it bothers you, then I'd consider the following:

As someone else mentioned, you could use a thin plywood or Masonite to round off the intersection of the vertical & sloped wall sections. I can't remember what it was called, but when I was in college, we used a material that was kind of like a thick matte board to build rounded sections of stage sets. You could also consider something like linoleum that could be glued &nd would nicely curve to cover up the wall joint.

You might also consider moving that edge of the layout forward more to be able to better hide the transition. In my room, I have a similar sounding wall/ceiling combination. I moved that edge of the layout forward a few feet and put my staging in that area behind a false wall. On the false wall, I painted a blue sky & some varying colored hills. My layout loosely represents Eastern Ohio so the hills are a little more plausible than in Southern Indiana. Something else to consider...

Is there a way that you could fill in the foreground with buildings, other releif structures etc? Make them easily removeable to gain access to the stuff behind them. But with only six inches, it wouldn't take that tall of a building to cover / hide the transition.

dlm

I think that might serve best. I'm looking at ways to gain a couple more inches out from that east wall. Relief buildings aren't really in the mix, as many other clues indicate the area would be open country. I anticipate a low berm topped bu scrub and small trees, with "flat" trees right on thte backdrop; the backdrop being probably just sky color, with perhaps distant low hazed hills at the very bottom.

btw, there are some hills, and wonderful limestone bluffs, in southern Indiana.

Think in terms of using the BACK side of the linoleum... no visible patterns there.

If you are a MODEL RAILROADER subscriber, take a look at the video that's up where Tony K. talks about his Indiana cornfields. He talks about using scenic photo backdrops then a very shallow layer of 3D stuff to give the illusion of depth. I hink he said something like the photo is at the back, then about three rows of corn plants and then fencing or other shrubbery. Such an approach might work for you as well.

As to the topography of Indiana, especially to the south, I'm guessing it is much like the area I grew up in, the northern Ohio Valley in the Wheeling-Steubenville area. The river had a lot to do with what was cut out there a few hundred thousand years ago. I guess I just didn't know how far south you were modeling in Indiana. When you mentioned the Nickel Plate, I was thinking farther north.

dlm

Seems to me you have daylight during the day and should provide typical night lighting on the layout itself like lamp posts and yard spotlight towers for when you run at night, would seem to make it more realistic and interesting.

"The room when finished will have glass

Gratulations! ;-)

Want one, too ;-)

Just a thought - you could use semi-opaque shutters to keep the direct sunlight out (and thus preserve the vibrant colors of your models), but still have lots of illumination. You just need to find the right kind of shutters ;-) Probably use some kind of white or off-white cloth?

Night lighting... It would be fancy to provide only very minor illumination from above (so to say "moonlight") and illuminate the trains, buildings and structures on the layout. You'd need some "real" light which would be used for "disaster relief", but running would occur under "moonlit night" conditions ;-)

Though it's your layout and that does mean it's up to you to decide what to do with it!

Have fun and enjoy!

Ciao...

PS: the more I think about it, the better I like the idea of "segments"

- even when there's no "standard" interface, it's possible to rearrange the segments with much less work than a fixed layout. Of course the segments would be coupled using screws and should share legs (save cost and work). A module layout might be great also, but I'm not so sure whether the module interfaces are too great a restriction... Though it might be good to have a module interface between some of the segments ;-)

.

Motorized storm shutters mounted on the outside of the windows? Would provide variable lighting during the day.