For my HO, 16x20 “L shaped” layout of the PRR I don’t have room now to include enough of the PRR theme to make a visible impact. In addition my layout has a time stamp of 1968 the last year the railroad operated. Although even with these limitations I will include weathering and an occasional shack. My layout is divided up into a locomotive yard, urban, suburban and rural areas. This gives me a variety of buildings and scenery to model. But during my life I have seen enough slums and filthy places and murders to last me a lifetime. I would rather forget about them but never can. I would rather enjoy memories of the nostalgic fun times in life for my entertainment and leave the gory stuff to the people who enjoy the shock value. Doc
Let's face it, of EMD Trainman's original list I can only think of one that CAN be attractive and that's a trailer park situated under low-lying oak trees. Not the newer ones with white-washed curbs and every thing lined up GI style. We still have a couple around here of the old style and perhaps one day ... . And the "texture" until the mid-1960's was different because I believe the people were different. We had yet to discover "if it feels good, do it," the plethora of needs and wants that became "rights." What I call "public ugliness" didn't become common until the 1970's, at least to my memory. And in most places sewage treatment was discharge into the nearest trickle, creek, or river. A 60" pipe into a creek or river is not much of a structure or scenery. Another factor is that this country's population since the 50's has doubled. That, by its self is not conducive to things being "hidden away." And no, I didn't grow up in a gated community, think it was a pretty standard suburb of the 40's and 50's and I didn't have to go too far where the saying "too poor to paint, too proud to white-wash" was more than a saying.
The Oregon Women's Prison is situated right along PNWR's former OE main in North Wilsonville. In fact, when Trimet first started talking about the WES commuter train, the Prison requested a station stop for the Prison employees. It was not a chosen stop. The Ex-Santa Fe Surf Line to San Diego goes past a Sewage Treatment plant, A Natural Gas Power Plant and multiple Trailer parks from nice to crusty and that's just in Carlsbad Ca. It also goes past the infamous (due to suggestive shape) San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. Someone did mention Tracks in Chicago going past Low income housing. This is quite true, though the El goes by even more of them. Still, Both Henry Horner Homes (the most crime ridden projects in the country in the early 90s) and the Robert Taylor homes (the biggest projects in the country till torn down) have many tracks for different railroads running through them. Not to mention that the Former Chicago Northwestern mainline west cuts through Austin Neighborhood which had been improving, but recently took a turn for the worse. But really, modelling Henry Horner or Robert Taylor would take some serious space even in N Scale. These were high rises.
I will most likely be out of synch, with the current progressive part of this thread. I wish to address the original question. "Why do some modelers of modern layouts leave out certain scenery? " My only response is: Why Not? Or better said, Do we really need all that stuff? Let me acknowledge: It's your railroad and you make the rules. You decide what scenery you want and what you don't want. I certainly reserve the right to do just that on my layout. Here's a insiders look at my approach to scenery. I don't want my scenery to overwhelm and take attention away from my trains. It's not about the scenery, although it helps, it's about the TRAINS. Scenery is optional. I don't need built in city scenes, mountains for mountains sake, roads for cars and the likes. I do need for my trains to appear to be running from town to town and through the mountains. To occasionally cross over or under a highway but I don't need to have a completed highway system. The cities and towns can be apart of the background scenic's with as few. Did I say? As few, as possible spill over buildings but just enough to make it look real and plausible. That's my thoughts, from the for what it's worth department. We now return you to the regularly scheduled program and the current train of thought.
There is, but to the uninitiated, it doesn't look like a "jail." It just looks like two concrete towers that happen to have small windows.
I am a modern-era modeler, but I'm modeling a small town and not a large city, and even if I were, I wouldn't have the space for most of those things anyway.
A maximum security juvenal prison is located next to a limited access highway (at an exit) and along two major roads in our area about 1 mile from downtown This prison is about 10 years old
Come to think of it, the local Juvenile Detention Facility is just across the freeway from the Union Pacific line east out of town. Tracks often plied by both UP and BNSF go right by the sewage treatment plant, too.
Great different views and opinions. I like asking the question that most would rather not. YoHo, very interesting facts, thanx for bringing them up. Evidently the question did raise some eyebrows and most never thought of this before.
Since I spend hours as the one-man volunteer "graffiti removal team" for my community... ...that filthy crap will never be put on anything that I model. :thumbs_down: Greg
I'm glad you brought up that point. I see alot of train cars with graffiti on them in real life. This makes me wonder if railroads have a graffiti clean up team or do they not worry about it and leave it on?
From what I seen, it's both. They try, but can't keep up. North out of Cincinnati, about 15% of cars are marked. It depends on the day. Marking cars is a sporadic event, so it varies.
I am with you on that. I don't model graffiti because I just don't care for it. It's one thing if, in real life, someone wants to tag their own car or wall or house, but going out and doing so on another person's property without permission is not acceptable in my opinion.
I'm afraid graffiti is just a reality, as it has been for a long time. To include it or not is just a personal choice in modeling your world. I think that men in black suits will not be knocking on your real front door because of your choice. Graffiti happens, just like traffic stops for speeding, aging on buildings, murder scenes, fires, or all the events of life. I agree it's just a personal choice to include or not.
I think part of it is not that they don't care, but to keep pulling cars out of line to repaint them or unpaint them is time consuming, and wastes manpower. Plus, that car isn't hauling freight fo rthe time its out of line, plus the time to get back into its hauling pattern. If a car is going to be "idle" for a while or has to be worked on anyway, then off it comes, but otherwise, it's not practical. My favorite grafittis though are the ones where they repaint the entire car, usually in murals, then go back and graffitti the car's reporting marks back on. Awfully respectable of them...
That's still great, since you can model your painted-out graffiti patches and still look realistic...
From my understanding, it's not the vandals who re-mark the car, but rather the crew that needs that information. As you said, it's not practical to send the car into the shops to repaint. Similarly, if numbers are covered, its easiest to just spray them on with the Railroads own can of paint.
One of my friends included a graveyard scene on one of his models. Undertaker's staff and the mourners were gathered round a grave, but the excavation wasn't big enough to take the coffin. It raised a few laughs, but I've never seen anybody else try it. Regards, Pete Davies
One would be wise to be cautious about modeling some settings. Especially if you hope or intend to publicize and show off/image your work, some themes can be off-putting. For example, a WWII Nazi railroad comes up in discussions the odd time, and it is highly volatile just as a topic in threads...often resulting in them getting locked. Same applies to graffiti, hobos, and other subjects that are historically highly polarizing in nature.
