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INSPIRATION
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| It is, of
course, the real trains and railway systems of this world
which inspire people to want to recreate them in model
form. However, there are many ways and many channels
through which the incentive spark may catch on. Here are
some sources of inspiration which had an impact on me. |
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JAMES RIVER
BRANCH LAYOUT & WEBSITE - PROTOTYPE - BOOKS - VARIOUS
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JAMES RIVER BRANCH
LAYOUT & WEBSITE
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| There are
many interesting websites created by modellers of all
scales and gauges, but when I came across David K.
Smith's Z Scale James River Branch layout whilst
idly browsing the web in late 2011, I was completely
fascinated - not only by his superb modelling efforts but
also by the approach (you might even say philosophy) to
modelling in Z Scale which he formulated. |
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| I was so taken by the
simplicity of its trackplan and the complexity of
its visuals and how it all came together that I
felt this to be the almost perfect layout concept
for me. If imitation is indeed the
highest form of flattery, as 19th
century English author Charles Caleb Colton put
it, then my subsequent trackplan doodling was
nothing else but paying the highest respects to
David K. Smith and his layout. In
the end my planning diverged, into an urban
setting double track layout which ultimately
never got built. But it was the James River
Branch which set the wheels in motion again for
me with regard to Z Scale modelling (which I had dabbled
in a bit during the 1990s and early 2000s).
The
layout was destroyed in a shipping mishap in May
2012, and when the companion website (which had
documented construction of the layout in great
detail) went offline sometime in 2013, a great
source of modelling inspiration disappeared from
the web. For a while, some of the content could
still be accessed through the Internet
Archive, but as of 2016 even that partial
access was no longer available.
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(c) David K. Smith
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| Apart from
specific modelling "clinics" which came with a
lot of friendly and sound advice, the website also
provided a number of trackplans which Smith had adapted
to Z Scale, complete with parts lists for Märklin,
Micro-Track and Rokuhan. |
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Beautifully rendered and
enhanced with a portrayal of their respective
main characteristics and layout building
challenges and rewards, they were in themselves a
treasure trove of inspiration. At first primarily
dedicated to documenting the concept and progress
of the James River Branch layout, it
ultimately grew to be a hub of information - and
inspiration - on Z Scale modelling. Smith's
efforts were miles above what I will ever be
capable of doing (such as scale handlaid track)
but that never bothered me for a second. |
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| Because what stuck from his
layout and his website and what inspired me was
the realization that one of the prime qualities
of Z Scale is, quite simply, the ability to have
a lot of creative fun thanks to its reduced size.
And so, a couple of years of accidental
modelling later, my Z Scale model
railroading may not bear much outward resemblance
to David K. Smith's James River Branch,
yet most of what is there goes back, in one way
or another, to that small layout and that big
website.
Since
the website has vanished without a trace, there
is possibly only one way left to get a glimpse of
the James River Branch: an article on
the layout which Ztrack Magazine featured
in its January/February 2013 issue.
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| Along with layouts,
books and websites it is, of course, the
prototype itself which inspired me to
want to plan and build and run a Z Scale
US prototype layout - and seeing the
actual trains in 1:1 scale trackside also
helped define the "how". |
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Three Norfolk
Southern diesels (SD70ACu #7258, SD60E
#6945 and SD70M-2 #2649) pass by the
Virginia Museum of Transportation
Roanoke Va, 20 October 2016
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| The initial
inspirational rush came from watching
CSX trains blast through Wildwood in
Central Florida, and it changed my
perspective on what a Z Scale layout
could look like. |
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| Previously
focused on minimum space
continuous run layouts,
the trackside experience
at Wildwood made me
reconsider this format.
It struck me that Z Scale
was ideal to replicate
precisely what I was
seeing here - trains
speeding by or trundling
by or awaiting their turn
to get back on their way
from A to B. Continuous
running yes, but in a
more linear orientation -
just like the yard layout
at Wildwood. The
ideas of
"modular" and
"not necessarily
permanently set up"
followed almost by way of
sheer logic - inspired by
the James River Branch's
philosophy to make the
smallness of Z Scale work
in your favour.
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A CSX
mixed freight blasts
through Wildwood Fl
15 November 2014
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| There's more on how the
prototype provides inspiration here. |
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BOOKS
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| There
is, of course, a wealth of information and
inspiration related to railroads and modelling to
be found on the internet, but apart from the fact
that some of this can be rather volatile (cf. the
James River Branch) it's really hard to beat good
old-fashioned books both as a source of
inspiration and a toolbox for modelling. |
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Two
books which actually
predate internet days by
a long run (and which I
bought in the early
1990s) have proven to be
nothing less than definitive
sources of inspiration: The
Train-Watcher's Guide to
North American Railroads
and The Historical
Guide to North American
Railroads - two
general reference books
which I have regularly
taken from the shelf and
perused over many years -
as their slightly
battered condition, seen
in the scan, bears
witness of. Strangely
enough, for a work of
reference data, the Guide
i's a book that's
very easy to pick up (not
the least thanks to its
handy format) but
extremely hard to put
down: it has provided me
with countless hours of
reading fun, just like
the best of crime novels.
As
the years went by, the Train-Watcher's
Guide somewhat took
second place to the Historical
Guide to North American
Railroads, maybe
because the Train-Watcher's
Guide became
increasingly outdated
(the 3rd
printing, which I have,
was published in 1991),
but maybe also because I
gradually became aware of
just how much of a
treasure trove The
Historical Guide is.
Whilst
you could get lost for
hours in the Train-Watcher's
Guide, you can
easily spend entire days
perusing the Historical
Guide. After more
than twenty years, it is
still hands down the book
on North American
railroads that I take
down from the shelf most
often - and regularly, as
the many dog ears prove
conclusively.
Somewhere
in time I started to take
note more and more of the
man who compiled and
wrote these books, and
the name George H. Drury
began to stuck with me as
I kept re-reading the
biographical information
given under the heading
of "ABOUT
THE AUTHOR".
And over the years, that
picture of a man wearing
glasses and a tie became
an integral part of The
Train-Watcher's Guide to
North American Railroads and
The Historical Guide
to North American
Railroads. And the
keyboard he is seen
using, well, that just
got more and more amusing
as it showed how quickly
state of the art
technology becomes a
museum piece.
One
might think that just as
that keyboard shows signs
of a long gone time, the
internet may well have
rendered both of George
H. Drury's Guides
cumbersome and obsolete.
Nothing could be further
from the truth - and it's
all due to the author and
how he chose to arrange
and present the
information contained in
both Guides.
Below
is an example page
showing the entry for the
Louisiana & North
West Railroad, taken from
the Train-Watcher's
Guide to North American
Railroads.
Incidentally, this
railroad still
exists, but
even if the content may
have become utterly out
of date since it was
compiled in April 1983,
you'll be hard pressed to
find a portrait of
similar clarity and
comprehensive nature. The
formula was a winner:
text (concise but to the
point), map, tabled data,
picture.
The
result was all you needed
to know almost at a
glance.
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| None
of the pages of both Guides feels
cramped, yet you always come away with enough
information to satisfy an initial interest. If
you wanted more, further reading was generally
suggested and indicated. It certainly was a
winning formula, but someone had to come up with
it, and that someone was George H. Drury. |
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| It took me a
few years to come to truly
appreciate this. Today, both The
Train-Watcher's Guide to North
American Railroads and The
Historical Guide to North
American Railroads are books
I simply keep on browsing and
reading again and again. You'd
think I'd know them by heart now,
and some pages I probably do, but
there's always something new to
be found or rediscovered. A newly
developed interest in the Norfolk
& Western or the Seaboard Air
Line? No problem. George H. Drury
will instantly provide sufficient
information to put you in the
picture - along with, in my case,
lots of modelling inspiration.
And with every additional time I
thumb through these books, I
value the work of George H. Drury
more; sadly, he passed away on 21 June
2013.
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| I
am not quite sure how familiar the name is to
rail enthusiasts today; his Guides have
now long been out of print, but both new and used
copies are still available through various book
stores. In 2014, Kalmbach published a 3rd edition of The
Historical Guide to North American Railroads
which effectively combines this with The
Train-Watcher's Guide to North American Railroads
- the result is a fine book, using Drury's
concept and most of his maps whilst adding some
colour and updated information, but the enlarged
(now coffee table book size) format somehow loses
much of the original appeal along with,
unfortunately, some of the content of the
original publication. |
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In the same vein as
George Drury's Guides are an
excellent general overview introduction
to North American railroading and
railroads, Tony Koester's Model
Railroader's Guide to Coal Railroading provides
the same for this specific aspect of
freight transportation by rail. Compiled in a concise
yet very readable presentation, Koester
(of Model Railroader magazine
fame) provides the reader with just about
all the essentials regarding coal (how it
was formed and where it can be found in
North America), the coal industry (its
history and its way of operating), coal
trains, company towns, and coal
customers. The added bonus is reflected
in the book's title: Koester is a
prolific modeller and therefore
seamlessly combines the real world facts
with the perspective of replicating some
of this in model railroad form, including
operating tips.
First
published in 2006, the result is an
amazing amount of facts and inspiration
supported by 130 colour and 70 black and
white photographs along with 20
illustrations. Just
like Drury's two Guides, this is
a book that gets thumbed through a lot,
simply because it transports the unique
qualities which railroads have so well
and provides those sparks of inspiration
without fail, again and again.
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| The Model Railroader's
Guide to Coal Railroading was compiled at a time
when coal still was what it always had been: a solid and
reliable backbone for traffic and hence income for North
American railroads. |
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| The
Appalachian coalfields and the
railroading in the area are covered in
quite a few books, published in various
formats and by various publishers over
the years. An example of the more recent
publications is Stephen
M. Timko's Appalachian Coal Mines and
Railroads - Volume 2: Virginia. The
second in a series of three, this book is
spot on in terms of the region and the
railroad which are the focus of my
attempts at railroad modelling - and it
is just as spot on in being a seemingly
endless source of inspiration. Published
in 2014 by Morning Sun Books it is also a
typical example of this publisher's in
color line of books, featuring a
wide variety of locomotives in action as
well as the infrastructure used by the
railroads and coal industry alike. Black
locomotives (Norfolk & Western at the
time, Norfolk Southern today) or their
grey (Clinchfield) and then blue (CSX)
counterparts are all shown in colour,
true to its series' name.
The selection of
books at hand and readily available
really is quite big, and all of these
books are brilliant browsing material and
a treasure trove of inspiration.
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| Amongst the numerous other
souces of inspiration pictures would seem to rank
high in a natural way - frozen in one moment of
time, the atmosphere of real trains is sometimes
so concentrated that one picture alone captures
it all. Naturally (as with all sources of
inspiration, no matter what the subject) personal
tastes prevail, but to me Wiley Bryan's shot of
Seaboard E7 #3019 with the Silver Meteor
starting its trip to Florida out of Richmond Va
in a flurry of snow on January 9th 1966 is a
perfect example of a photograph depicting a scene
simply crying out to be modelled. It also serves
as a good example to show that sometimes it takes
only very few elements to create a railroad
vignette - in this case, the heavy blanket of
East Coast snow maximizes the focus on the train. |
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Wiley Bryan (ATW collection)
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Inspiration
can also come from the model: it can be a
scene, a track setup - many things, in
any scale. In my
case, American Z Line's December 2016
release of their EMD SD70ACe model in
Norfolk Southern's heritage paint scheme
of the Virginian Railroad pushed another
inspirational button.
DVDs can be a great
source of inspiration as well,
transporting the prototype into the
comfort of your home.
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page created 30 November 2014
page updated 19 April 2019
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