Good Times

It was Open House Weekend. Not for me, per se—it would be rather silly to open up my basement for people to crowd around a layout the size of two large coffee table books. But plenty of folks did get a chance to see the Z scale James River Branch at its first official public showing. It "tagged along" at the open house for Rick Spano's N scale Sceniced and Undecided, which was open the weekend of November 21 and 22. Per usual, my presence was as technical support, providing maintenance and repairs for the S&U as needed—and this time there was an unusually high need for these services.

Rick, Linda, the S&U and I have enjoyed a very long relationship. I met Rick and Linda when I was fifteen, and we've been collaborating on modeling ever since—forty years, now, and the S&U has nearly tripled in size over that time. It's kind of eerie to be having a meal with them and realize that the only people I've known longer are my parents and brothers, and with all of them in Arizona, I see the Spanos far more often.



Despite the fact that just about everyone in the Northeast who attends the annual Model Railroad Open House has already seen the S&U, it never fails to pull in visitors. This weekend, somewhere between forty and fifty people stopped in, ranging in age from seven to seventy. As a bonus, they got to see my little layout. And it was quite interesting to see how it was received. Curiously, about a third of the visitors gave it no more than a fleeting glance; I suspect they had no clue that it was a layout all its own, and I can only imagine that they thought it was some unfinished piece of the larger layout that was yet to be installed.



Doubtless the most amusing moment occurred when a younger fellow and his stepson arrived, and the boy immediately asked Rick, "Is this where the smallest model train layout in the world is?" (Evidently, dad had shown his stepson the video.) Rick pointed the two of them in my direction, and when I greeted dad, his first comment was, "I've read your blog." I asked, "1:220?" He shook his head. I continued, "1:160? 1:450?" He grinned, "All of them."



Some time later another visitor arrived, and as he stared wide-eyed at my layout—which was positively dwarfed by Rick's basement-filling S&U—his first words were, "It's much more impressive in person than on the website." As flattering as the remark was, it seemed amusingly ironic under the circumstances; I guess you had to be there. During a long quiet period, an older gentleman named Sal sat down and regaled me with tales of his stint as an engineer at Fairless Steel (nearby on the Delaware). Despite being in HO, he nevertheless enjoyed seeing the James River in action, and I enjoyed getting an insider's glimpse into the life of a locomotive engineer at a steel mill.



Of course it was great fun showing off the "world's smallest layout," and the reaction was predictable and universal: simultaneously the jaw would drop and the eyes would grow into saucers. I'd expected the younger visitors would have no difficulty seeing it function, as contrasted with the retirees; yet, curiously, it was mixed across the board: some children couldn't see it, while some of the older folks had no trouble. There were some doubters who, failing to see the train, dismissed it as a bogus claim, but a magnifying glass soon convinced them that there was indeed a train moving through the speck of landscape.

In the end, it was a most enjoyable time. Rick, Linda, longtime mutual friend Rich Laube and I celebrated by having dinner at Freddie's Tavern, located right beside the old Reading mainline in West Trenton. We all agreed that we needed to do this more often—not have open houses, but just get together and work on the layout. In my youth, I was at Rick's a couple of times a week on average. I think we all miss those days; fortunately, we can still do something about it.

Poor Planning or Easter Eggs?

History is in the process of repeating itself. My last layout, the fourth incarnation of the N Scale White River and Northern, had a highly scenic canyon with multiple waterfalls that was nearly impossible to see from normal viewing angles; one had to lean way over the edge of the layout and peer up the valley in order to enjoy the full effect. I swore it would never happen again.

But it's happening again—right down to the type of scene that's being afflicted. Going into the design of the little canyon above the James River Valley on the Z Scale James River Branch, I imagined the rugged, terraced rock, carved by a series of waterfalls, would be relatively easy to see. That is, until I recently added the (planned) strip of forest that separates the Landsend Farm from the sheer drop above the James River (below)... and now about all anyone can see from the normal viewing angle is the final waterfall; the picturesque canyon above it is cloistered by trees.



Once I reached this point, I realized my mistake: I failed to form a mental image of the scene in three dimensions; in my head, trees were still green blobs on a flat track plan. This problem has played out more than a couple of times on the James River Branch already—most recently, I had to play all kinds of games to keep the Triangle Bar in Naughtright in view so that the planned detailed interior could be enjoyed.

Of course, I can figure out all kinds of ways to rationalize the problem, justify the modeling, and gloss over my mistakes—to the point that they become a deliberate scheme. In the world of DVDs and video games, there's a thing called an Easter Egg, which is a little surprise you get for hitting a combination of buttons or achieving a particular score. I have every intention of photographing my layout from every conceivable angle—that, at least, was part of the deal from the get-go, and therein lies my excuse for poor planning.



Now I have a nice fat Easter Egg in the form of a photogenic canyon hidden behind the farm (above). I suppose that, had I designed the layout perfectly, with all points of interest in clear view, there'd be nothing for anyone to discover when the layout was observed from "abnormal" angles. Of course, I'll have to be honest if I'm ever asked if I'd planned it this way—the answer truly is "Not really!"

Getting Back to Normal

It appears the buzz over my little layout has at last died down. Not that I'm complaining about all of the attention—it's been fun, and perhaps it's helped spread the word about modeling as a hobby in its own small way. But it was a bit of a distraction: in addition to a flurry of emails with questions, there was an endless stream of comments posted to the video, some of which had to be removed. A few remarks were a bit irksome, as some individuals refused to believe it was real—in essence, calling me a liar—and I finally had to produce a response video.

Wrapping up my fifteen seconds now was good timing, because I'm now faced with the prospect of presenting my James River Branch layout to the public in less than two weeks. Rick Spano is having an open house for the DE-MD-PA-NJ layout tour (they don't seem to have a catchy name), and he kindly extended the invitation to me to bring my layout along. So, if you're in the area, you can see it on November 21 and 22. My thanks to Rick and Linda for the invitation!



Getting ready for the open house is of course a driving force in my modeling right now. I need events like this once in a while, because without them, some things may never get finished. It's much too easy for me to ignore the layout's infrastructure; in the absence of visitors, I'm fine running the train by simply connecting a battery pack to the track with clip leads. Not very elegant, but it makes the train go. So now I finally have a real control panel, wired up to a real power supply. Granted, the control panel is just a couple of switches, and the power supply is a permanently-installed battery pack, but at least it's not embarrassing-looking any more; in fact, with the power supply hidden inside the layout, it's kind of cool seeing everything run without having to plug anything in. And with trains on the move, I was inspired to do some video railfanning (with thanks to John Cubbin for acknowledging my work once again at ZTrains).



Other moldy old round tuits that have been addressed courtesy of the open house include painting the building that has the barber shop, and installing the working barber pole. It's the first of many little animated touches, and having at least one of them done makes me seem less of a builder of vaporware. While I was describing all of my animation plans, one fellow remarked that my layout sounded like an amusement park. While I agree it might create this sort of mental image, usually people retract their remarks when they see the animation actually working: it's quite subtle, and not the slightest bit in-your-face the way people imagine it, which is probably along the lines of traditional Lionel-style animated devices.

I'll probably devote a nice long blog post just to the subject of animation at some point in the future, as I think it's worth examining in detail. Meanwhile, I have loads of modeling to do between now and the 21st of November. I hope to see some of my readers there!