on. If nothing else, the mock-ups will make the civilized portions of the layout feel less “empty” and more complete.
Mike’s world The back side of Tyrone’s mock-up of the Chillicothe depot holds notes for supplies and parts needed to do the final structure once the mock-up passes muster on the layout. The model is selectively compressed from the prototype’s dimension owing to space considerations at its location on the layout. — Mike Schafer photo
ly Joliet Union Station — argu- ably the most impressive building in that transportation-crossroads city of some 150,000 residents. Joliet stands at the intersection of the main lines of the erstwhile Rock Island, Santa Fe, and Gulf, Mobile & Ohio railroads on my 1965-era layout. Fortunately, I have a complete set of actual plans for the 1912-built Beaux Arts beauty, right down to the urinals. They are in ⅛-inch scale — almost HO scale — so I plan to make copies of the plans of the trackside façades at about 80 per- cent and paste them onto a foam- core board as a mock-up. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than nothing, which is what I have at Joliet now.
In fact, a number of my mod- el-building buddies are using
Bill’s world A sample of a temporary backdrop structure on Bill Navigato’s Chicago, Peoria & Southern. By temporary, that means it may be replaced in a lifetime. The backdrop has been in place for about ten years. In the end, in about the same time it took to construct the temporary structure, the final one probably could have been built and would look much better. — Bill Navigato photo
80 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
foam-core board and/or illustra- tion board to do simple mock- ups to use as stand-ins until an eye-catching model can be built. Mock-ups are quick and easy to pull together with a minimum of materials and time. I like this ap- proach because it helps me to de- termine if the intended structure will work in the space I’ve desig- nated. If not, the mock-up can be modified until it does work, and then I can start building the final model. The mock-ups need to sit through a few operating sessions to prove their worth, as well as to give my operators a more con- crete (as it were) idea of where industries are going to be and how they will be served. Should there be an in-building spur? Out- side spurs at loading docks? Will clearances be sufficient? And so
Sure, I could instead just plow ahead and begin building the final structures and theoretically save a little bit of time like Bill does. However, I simply don’t have the luxury of being retired and bored like Bill, who has so much time on his hands now that he even came to work for me part-time putting magazines together. “Say, Bill! I have this ultra-cool Joliet Union Station building project I wanna do. It will be a blast! Sure, I might consider letting you help me on it. Are you sure you are up to it? I’ll bet you aren’t! Show me!”
odel railroads from their infancy — once the trains started rolling somewhat reli- ably — progressed to three di- mensions. Mountains grew from the plywood, rivers cut into the landscape, and civilization crept in. Early model railroaders soon could buy already-built structures for their new empires. Suddenly, depots sprang up in small towns, and as trains rolled by, tower men popped out of the top floor of Lionel signal towers. All was good, as imaginations filled in the gaps that maybe our eyes didn’t see. As the hobby of model rail- roading evolved, layouts became bigger. With better track and roll- ing stock, many modelers found larger areas to build their em- pires. “Plywood Pacifics” popped up all over.
M
I realize it takes a long time — usually years or even decades — to get model railroads even near a reasonable sense of completion. (Editor’s note: We know model railroads are never finished!) In our haste to get our railroads from the two-dimensional running ex- hibit to have a significantly better-
Bill sez…
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