Layout design

In particular because I play Trainstation 2 on my phone as a time-killer, I find that model railroading is never too far away out of my mind, even though it's one of the great hobbies that I never quite managed to have, but always wanted to. I find that my approach to the hobby, were I to be able to indulge in it after the kids are gone and all that (and who knows, I probably can. And that's not very far away, really) is quite a bit different than what seems to be in vogue nowadays, in two key areas.

One of them is actually the simpler of the two; I have no interest in "prototype replication" which seems to be the way most modelers do it. It's all about operation on layouts that have little if any interesting scenery, and the operation is meant to replicate the real thing from a specific time and place as closely as possible. To me, this seems like a spergy, joyless parody of the hobby. Since the very beginning, back to John Allen and Bill McClanahan and Lynn Westcott and others of the original bunch of the hobbyist magaziners and whatnot from the 50s, whimsy, fantasy and fun were the whole point. I don't know that I'd be quite as whimsical as to name my railroad Gory and Defeated or anything like that. This paradigm was still prevalent in the 80s when I first got interested in hobby; heck; John Olson and Malcolm Furlow were both probably at their peak influence and popularity at the time. Exaggerated and beautiful scenery were the whole point, almost more than train operation even, and I always was drawn to model railroading for the same reason that I'm drawn to worldbuilding in fantasy fiction or roleplaying games (see how I keep it topical?) Not only would my railroads focus more on scenery and theme, but they'd also be alternate history, Ruritanian romance type locations. Not unlike these images I just found online, actually; check out the PNW logging and mining railroad, and then the whimsical scene of a poached Triceratops being loaded on a boat. Maybe they forgot to tell modelers in France that model railroading is serious business.

Speaking of Ruritanianism, Red Dead Redemption 2, which I haven't talked about in quite a long time, is a good example of the kind of Ruritaninianism I'd like to see. In fact, I'd almost like to specifically replicate the same environments as RDR2 in many respects, although I certainly wouldn't be so freakin' revisionist that I'm practically woke, like RDR2 is. Read chapters 7 and 8 of Reassessing the Presidency and then read Clyde Wilson's stuff. At the very least, the brief essay on the Yankee Problem, if not the entire book. If that doesn't depress you, then imagine a model railroad based on a Ruritanian "Greater Texas" that includes everything from the eastern Texas Piney Woods and the bayous to the trans-Pecos desert mountains, the southern reaches of the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains in all their glory that either never joined the Union at all and remained an independent Republic, or which won the Southern War for Independence and remained an autonomous Republic in loose association with the rest of the Confederacy. Unlike the Deep South further east, this Greater Texas never really indulged in much chattel slavery for its labor, so it remains a fairly homogenous population of Dukes of Hazzard style cowboys. Maybe Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane would even be railroad bosses on this layout, and the Dukes would be protagonist Robin Hoods of the backwoods.

No, but what I always liked was the idea of modular railroading. I don't mean that the way most people do, though. I mean, what if I started off doing something like John Olson's 4x8 foot "standard beginner" type railroad (the Jerome & Southwestern), did a 2x8" Back Alley & Wharf addition, but instead of stopping there, had the BA&W railroad abut a completely separate 4x8 railroad on the other end? I'd start off with the 4x8, but with switches already built in with the expectation that the 2x8 expansion would come as soon as the original 4x8 is done. Each would be added discretely, so that I've got a fully operational railroad while the next module is under construction. I can actually see, if I had a 25x20 foot or so room to build it in, having nearly four full 4x8 railroads connected by narrower expansions, so I can easily reach everything. 

I've never known of anyone doing railroading this way, but the idea appeals to me strongly. Each 4x8 could even be ecologically discrete, with the thinner sections serving as transition pieces. Let's explore how I'd like to do this, shall we? Here's a diagram.

The orange in the top right would be the original railroad, and like the Jerome & Southwestern, it'd be a mountainous desert region with all kinds of southwestern flavor (although I'd probably go more for Big Bend and the Davis Mountains terrain rather than Arizona.) The green extension would be like the BA&W extension in Olson's railroad. He did it as 2x6, but I always thought that was unusual. With 4x8 being the standard plywood size (hence its ubiquity as the standard beginner's RR size) then why not just split it up the middle and make it 2x8 rather than 2x6? I assume some kind of space constraint must have driven that, but whatever. With an extra 2x2 on the far end, I've got a bit more room to do something interesting. I actually wouldn't do this as an urban environment really, although a cowboy town like Blackwater might feature at the top end of it, then a big river gorge with a cool bridge for my trains to cross before entering the Rocky Mountains section in the next module, the light blue.

I admit that the corner here would be the hardest to reach, and if I don't have room to come around from the back to work on it, I might want to come up with something clever like some kind of access hatch or something. The yellow section would again be transition, probably going through farming and ranching rolling high prairie with western Nebraska style Scott's Bluff and Chimney Rock like formations here and there, on its way to the Appalachians (not unlike the Heartlands region of RDR2's New Hanover, with the purple railroad being the Roanoke Ridge area.)

The final pink addition is a little different, as in order to make it fit a bit better, I've cut a section out of the 4x8. That's OK, it'd be the Saint Denis-like fake New Orleans, nestled in the bayou, although a lot of the buildings would be suggested by the backdrop rather than it being thickly modeled with them. Although no doubt it would have quite a few; probably as many as most of the rest of the modules combined in some ways.

Because model railroads are distinguished by their extreme compression and the use of forced perspective and divides to suggest distance that doesn't actually exist, I can see a good two small desert towns in the first module, one on the second transition module, at least two stops on the Rockies one (a logging town and maybe a livestock town near the transition area, as well as maybe a mine buried in there somewhere too. The desert mines copper, the Rockies mine silver, and the Appalachian section will have coal mines as well as maybe some river trade. The bayou/city area might have some different kinds of livestock, as well as of course a big city with a wharf and port, so it can be whatever I need it to be.

Again, where I'd be different is that each individual 4x8 would be seen as an independent "beginner" style railroad with its own loop of track (plus sidings and spurs, etc.) that just happens to be connected in modular fashion with additional railroads so that trains can travel the entire breadth of the area.

I'd also like to embrace the new(ish) technology of dead rails; remote control locos that are powered by batteries, not by the tracks, which aren't even wired in this paradigm. My locos might have colorful names like the General Lee, the Jeff Davis or the Stonewall Jackson. I don't know how many I'd need, but realistically how many times are more than two or three people going to be using it at once? I'd probably want a roster of half a dozen or so just for variety, but with that much space to cover, they don't have to "belong" to any specific 4x8 module. The modules don't have to be seen as independent regional railroads anyway, although that's much more the way that the South would have done it, rather than the power and plunder-grabbing Yankees, which led to the big railroad moguls.

UPDATE: Here's a slightly smaller version of the same idea, but with significantly shorter transition bars. I actually probably like this one better.