Train Room

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.

You need a mix of flourescents and incandecent. Flourescents and "energy saver" bulbs will give odd colour effects. Incandescent bulbs will give a warm appearance light. You need a higher light output than would be normal in a home situation when you are modelling, about normal home lighting level for viewing/operation and a lower "toe stubbing" level for "night time" operation. Probably the simplest way to do that is to have 3 seperate overall lighting circuits so you can choose your light level. One of those circuits can be on a dimmer.

Greg.P.