Do You See What I See?

I’m on the train for a business trip, so it seemed fitting to finally update you guys on the latest at the MCTD.

I’m Visualizing As Fast as I Can

I’m a slow modeler. (Hey! I hear you, y'know! I hear you guys saying, “Yeah, you’re a slow blogger, too.”) I admire the modelers who can just jump into a project without a set plan and come out with something great, but that’s not me.  This is not to say that I think you have to plan everything out to the nth degree before building anything; quite the contrary in fact. But I have to be able to visualize it. When I build something, especially a structure or scenery, I have to be able to imagine it and see in my mind’s eye how it will fit into the whole. Once I can “see” it, I go to town and usually finish the project relatively quickly.

So I spend a lot of time just staring at the layout.

 While this blog documents my work on the MCTD, I’m also a member of the Worcester Model Railroaders (see the link almost directly to the right), and I’ve been working on the Port of Boston section for almost 3 years now. I’ve made significant progress lately, which is great, but for a while there it was a slog. Guys at the club will come around the corner and see what I expect looks to them like I’m completely zoning out. For minutes at a time. But I’m not, I’m visualizing.

Sometimes my visions work and sometimes they don’t. There have been any number of times where I’ve stared and visualized and come up with what seems like the perfect solution. Then later, perhaps after measuring or simply further consideration, I determined that it wasn’t going to work. So while all construction was visualized, not all visualizations are constructed.

I hear you again: “Hey, slow modeler boy, get to the point.”

Partials at the Fascia

The building that today houses American Distribution Resources.
Will be represented with a partial structure on the MCTD

I’ve been trying to visualize the building I plan to put across Wicomico St. from the Raleigh Industrial Center. (I now refer you to the newly-created Current Track Plan page. As I write this, the RIC is shown on the plan as F&F Jacobs and Sons, this will be changed soon.) To the right is how the building looks from W. Ostend St. As you can see, it’s a pretty long building. As you can also see from the plan, I’ve only got a few inches from trackside to put the building in. I simply don’t have the real estate to create a building with that footprint, even with massive compression. I need a partial building and I need it right up front.

Partials at the backdrop are easy. No one can look through the backdrop and see your construction “sins” (bracing and so on). But this was going to be tougher.

Here’s what I knew about this building:

• I wanted the building to butt up against the front of the layout
• I didn’t want the building to be “complete,” that is, there would be no finished fourth wall at the layout edge implying that what you saw was the whole building; I wanted it obvious that this was a partial building
• I didn’t want to bring the fascia up to hide the building interior
• I didn’t want a wide-open building where I’d have to detail the whole interior (While I enjoy detailing, I don’t have the time, money or inclination to do a complete factory or warehouse interior)

So I sought out some advice. (Thanks to those of you who weighed in on the MR Forum. The whole discussion is here for those who have access.) As the discussion evolved, it seemed to me that the best solution was a styrene wall, roughly the color of the outer walls (but unweathered), hopefully leading the viewer to the right conclusion. It wasn’t completely satisfactory, but it was the best of what I saw discussed and presented.

A Different Solution

The online discussion continued and someone summarized that having the whole area open would expose the “sins” of construction and that they would opt for the fourth wall, no matter how improbable the final building looked.

It then occurred to me, what if you could have the best of both worlds?

I saw a structure open at the fascia, but showing only a few scale feet before ending at an interior wall. The outer building walls come out all the way to the fascia. I can do some detailing work on the interior wall (maybe some doors and windows, pipes, tools  and so on).

I love it!

I’m sure it’s not original (because, really, what is?) but I’m excited to have had it dawn on me without reading it somewhere else. This solution allows you to brace the heck out of the structure, not have to imagine what the inside of the building looks like (because we almost always have to), allow you to include, but minimize, the detailing (and associated purchasing) that you need, and still have a plausible looking structure.

This is what I’m going with. And the fact that I can see it already is icing on the cake...