Model Forum / General / Railroads / December 2006

Well, now we enter in the great 'Foreground/Background/Good Enough'
debate, which as you can image is almost religious in nature, but:
Right up close at the edge of a layout (foreground), especially a chest
or higher-level area, where the viewer's eyes are close to the models,
you need rather detailed, good looking models - a piece of rod and
square of styrene as a outboard motor is no way going to cut it - looks
cheap and toylike, and ruins the illusion. This, BTW, applies to layout
photography also - even worse, as the camera seems to accentuate the
blemishs, errors, and inconsistancies (this part may be psychological,
or just bad lighting :p)
Further back, where the eye's focus isn't so sharp, now you have the
mind filling in the details and 'representations' working fairly well
(a marina maybe a meter or so away, yeah, simple shapes representating
an outboard works - much like representating a forest on a hillside
using teased out clumps of scenicing - crappy up close, OK further
away).  This is were you can also use underscale items as 'Forced
perspective', and get away with it.
Good enough applies to items which cross between the two extremes
(meaning here locomtives and rolling stock), which you detail to a
certain point so that it looks realistic, but cut enough corners so
that you can actually get enough cars together to model a train in your
lifetime - yeah, you may miss rivets here, or brake valves here, or
whatever; Not a contest winner but it looks fine running).
Trust me, if something looks bad up close in the foreground, the
viewer's mind won't be filling in details, it will be screaming toy!
crap! fake!

Dan.
   Let me remind you that Baskin & Robins makes, what is it, 28 flavors a
month?

   That said, I'll just inject, as the OP, that my interest is in modeling,
not in operating, and consequently I build static dioramas ranging from
1'x2' to (currently in progress) 3'x4'.  In these models, everything is
foreground and while I obviously have to make many compromises, I'm simply
striving for as much realistic detail as possible in every aspect of the
scene.

   That said, I heartily agree with you that an HO-scale outboard motor is
quite small, maybe 3/32" x 1/8" x 3/8" overall.  Rather than "scraps of
plastic", I'll probably sculpt something out of Sculpey for the body, maybe
carve a piece of plastic for the vertical "shaft", and bend a scrap of brass
for the propeller.  If I decide I want a few of them, I'll probably make a
rubber mold and cast them with resin.  To be sure, the extent of the detail
on the motor isn't great and scale, color and shape are more important than
precision details.  But it's going to take on the order of an hour to do the
first one and I may not even like it enough to keep it.  Probably the
equivalent of an evening will be taken up in creating the motor(s) I need.
But then for a diorama where everything is easily within the viewer's range
of study I feel it's definitely worth it.

   And, long ago, I did contemplate actually building a layout in a 12'x15'
room in the basement.  That was in 1972 and it's likely that I might be
finishing it up sometime before I die, but probably not soon.  And certainly
the quality of the trackwork would have been paramount there.  But not in a
harbor diorama.

   Norm