Day 15 or so. Showing off.

As you know this will be an exhibition layout that will appear at train shows in the MidWest USA (model railway exhibitions in UK parlance). So it will need some kind of casing around it to protect it during transit and also add lighting to show it off during a show. Exhibition hall lighting is not perfect. I’ve been to some shows here in the USA where it’s downright horrendous. But the vast majority of exhibitors are content to show their layouts under the hall lighting conditions. Not me. So this is all very important when I consider the presentation. 

The easy way is to box in the whole layout and have it viewed from the front. Then as I was looking down the layout the other day I saw this view. It echoes a view I saw of a German Feldbahn clay pit tipping platform. The resemblance was eerie and momentarily stopped me in my tracks.

I love this low down viewpoint.

This is a view that you wouldn’t see if you could only see the layout from the front, head on, so to speak.

Clearly some kind of re-think of the showing of the layout is needed. The end needs to be open.

Having the end open creates a new vista of the layout. One where you can take in several feet of layout depth. That’s the experience I want to give the viewer. To be able to draw them in to the scene and forget that they are in an exhibition hall. Because when you look at the layout from here, there really is a lot of depth to take in.

Quite the depth to the scene. Not bad for 16mm scale.

This end of the layout is really resolving itself now. I’ve said a few times that I thought there should be a small hut at the base of the retaining wall. I think that my ubiquitous corrugated shed (which is actually 1:24 scale) shows that this would be a good idea. Look at the juxtaposition of surfaces and textures. The wooden retaining wall, in front of that the corrugated hut, and in front of that the breeze blocks of a sand bin. Quite the view.

Now I have to start pulling together the other scene on the layout. The skip loader, compared to the tipping dock, there’s not much there at the minute.

This area needs more

Currently, there’s only the loader in this scene. So I added my corrugated wall to the background for ideas. Let’s face it a a rusty corrugated iron wall fits into any industrial scene. Hmm… If I placed it behind the sandy mound at the back there, perhaps the fact that it is 1;24 scale might force the perspective, adding extra depth to the scene.

Some more research is needed here methinks.