Modeller's Block 

Before getting back to the saga of Aston Growers, I thought I would write about my current challenge - modeller's block. 

To me, model railroading is storytelling. I think most people who think of model trains think about a train running in a circle (probably with a steam engine on the front and a caboose at the back), perhaps around a Christmas tree.

For me, model railroading is about the industry and the community it lives in. I work for a railroad (not the railroad part though) and I've been in the logistics industry since 2004. The reason I got into the industry is that when I was a baby lawyer in 2003, my firm had a warehousing client in Cornwall, Ontario. The client had a wrongful dismissal court case that needed defending. To you, that may not seem very interesting. But it was fascinating to me because it meant I could take the train to Cornwall. I would get paid to take the train! Anyway, that turned into a job and let to my chosen industry. 

To me, that is an interesting story.

Modelling allows you to tell stories. A great example appears in Sam Posey's book "Playing with Trains". Posey was building a layout based on a long-dead Colorado mining railroad. In real life, Posey was a race car driver and he knew Paul Newman (a big fan of auto racing). At the time, Newman had a charitable endeavour, "Newman's Own" that made high-end food condiments such as salad dressing. The charity part of it was that the company donated its profits to well-deserving causes, like the environment.

Posey (not a big prototype modeller) decided to add "Newman's Own" as an industry on his layout. He wrote that because "Newman's Own" was so virtuous in real life, he would make it a very, very bad company on his layout. He modelled the industry as a rundown, rat-infested building. He placed the industry next to a stream and had a large discharge pipe going from the industry to the stream, spewing out toxic runoff. He added some drunk employees, loafing off away from the eyes of the supervisor. I have no idea if Paul Newman ever saw the layout, but who cares - I'm sure Posey had endless joy translating his idea into HO scale.

I'm at the stage where I've modelled the main stories on my layout. The industries. The track. The winding road along the back. The station. My current block is that there are four areas where I know the story I want to tell, but I just don't know how to translate each story into physical reality. This post is about the stories from smallest to largest.

Story One - A picnic table for Aston Growers

There is a small bare patch of scenery adjacent to AG and beside the tracks:

I hope that is enough room for a picnic table for the AG boys.  This should be an easy project - picnic tables and figures are easy to find.

Story Two - A truck repair scene for Aston station

I have posted about the western end of Aston Station where I've located buildings for the track gang. I've posted about the station itself. I haven't described the scenery between the station and Aston Growers - that is a future post.

What I have right now is empty pavement on the eastern edge of the station. As I'll write about in a future post, I didn't do a good job laying down the road, and it is rather bumpy and uneven. Actually, the bumpy and uneven road will probably blow a lot of truck tires...

...so the idea here is to take a short truck trailer, add some men and junk and tell the story of a small running repair. Nothing overwhelming, but enough to distract from the bumpy road.

This will be a harder scene to put together since I have to find a suitable trailer, build a tire jack and locate a repair vehicle. There has to be enough detail to tell the story, and finding that detail in HO scale is often the source of delay.

Story Three - the back lot of Generic Canneries

I have mentioned this before but there is a decent sized backlot at Generic Canneries (understanding that the model depicts the back of the building, not the public-facing front). 

The detail challenge here is that my ideal scene has a few Generic Canneries truck trailers waiting for their next load. So I'll need to design a paint scheme and find some way to decal the trucks. Not fun but it would be very rewarding if I could pull it off.

I already have a nice shack ready for the trailer boys to hang out in while they await instructions. I'll add a rusted out truck to tell the story of an evolving truck fleet and add assorted other junk. The result will be that Generic Canneries is a busy place with a lot of freight on the go.

The other block on this scene for me is fencing. As noted in an earlier post, Generic Canneries already had a problem with some nosy kids (one of the above photos suggests they may be back). So GC should really fence that yard in.

The drawbacks to a fence are:

1. A fence will block the eye-level view of the main track. I have intentionally put the track going into the GC building at foam level to give some variety to track height. 

2. Fences are finicky to install and break easily. This is especially a concern because they will be near the edge of the layout.

3. Fencing off the yard will require me to build gates for the tracks. And I have tracks at two different elevations which will complicate gate installation.

Two ideas to get around this - 1. Fence off only the track closest to the edge of the layout to suggest that GC owns all the land that the spur tracks run on. 2. Because the spur to the loading shed is new, I could try to model a fence under construction.

Of the four scenes, this is the one I'd really like to make progress on. If I scenic the yard, I'll have a section of the layout fully scenicked from front to back. At present, when I take pictures in this area, I am distracted by the brown paint and unballasted track.

Story Four - the foreground at the western edge

There is a piece of straight track at the bottom left of the layout that serves as a switching lead for the runaround track. Without this track, switching would be impossible because the engine couldn't "run around" its train - hence the term. But the track is straight which makes it boring.

I've built some nice scenery behind the track - the rock face - so I don't want that to disappear.

So I have created a two-part scenery blob that is ready for its story:

So far, the story is that of an overgrown driveway leading up to a small clearing. The driveway begins where the "blog" descends to the base (toward the middle of the layout). I terraformed the foam to create a gradual incline with small slopes on either side of where the driveway will go. Eventually, I'll add a dirt road to the middle forefront of the layout - giving the driveway a connection to the rest of the world.

My "block" is a vision of what is at the top of a small hill. I know it is the suggestion of a small building. I thought about modelling a concrete base and nothing more. The challenge is that the footprint is pretty small - at best 5 inches wide - and I do not want to overwhelm the footprint with a large building. I want something unobtrusive, but still want to hint enough that something was there previously. I'll then add long grass and plenty of scrub to depict and overgrown clearing. 

The hill isn't high enough to block the view of a train behind it, but I'd like to think that it will create the illusion of the track "passing through" the world instead of being the focus.

Postscript

So what is the cure to Modeller's Block? Time - first of all. With mindfulness of what you want, time gives you the opportunities to see things that help fill the gaps in the story.

The second thing is retail therapy. I placed an order today with my pals at Model Tech Studio and an assortment of junk (picnic tables, outhouses, stone walls, etc.) is on its way northward. Do I realize need the junk? I don't know. But it does take away the "I don't have the right stuff" excuse.

Finally, reader's may note that I began this post with a fun story about Newman's Own. The four stories I plan to tell are nowhere near as fun. I've fought the urge to add a moonshine still to overgrown hill scene. People will sit at the picnic table - not skunks (again, very tempted by this idea). The GC yard will be all business. The reason for all this is that for me, I'm more interesting in modelling things as they appear in real life instead of the quirky...