How To - Create Realistic Industries
The illusion of reality is a critical feature of your scale model railroad. It is very important to create realistic industries and keep them realistic. You can do this based on an existing industry, a historic industry, or an industry from your imagination.
Let’s suppose that Santa Claus has decided to improve his material supply system and toy distribution network by establishing a railroad. Santa might consider locating his railroad lines near the oil pipe lines to take advantage of already cleared routes. Santa is also concerned about animals and may want to have his railroad elevated in the same areas as the pipe line so that he doesn’t block the natural migration of polar bears, elk, and reindeer.
Santa has assembled the most modern equipment for his railroad. It features high capacity freight cars, engines with the latest lighting and radar to travel through storms, and powerful snow plows and snow sweepers to keep the tracks clear for a safe and fast journey.
Santa’s basic industry involves an enormous amount of manufacturing of finished and wrapped toys to be delivered to good boys and girls around the world. The distribution of the toys has been exclusively handled by Santa and his flying reindeer. Santa and his top planning elves have determined that the aging Santa and reindeer would have less work and move the toys out more quickly if they were shipped part of the way by the North Pole Express train. The toys could be met at various stations around the world and carried to their final destination using the traditional Santa and reindeer.
Realism could be achieved by carrying the story of the flow of goods to the next level where your model railroad scene will be concentrated. Establish a receiving station for raw materials. Unloading and sorting equipment would be on the site. Materials would be moved into manufacturing and packaging buildings. The buildings would have to be suitable for their purpose, such as manufacturing with metal, wood, electronics. The buildings should be suitable for their setting, frozen, North Pole. Include paint shops and packaging plant, and warehouses for finished toys. Add wrapping and ribbon handling equipment. Finished and wrapped toys would would be divided labeled and crated for shipping to the scattered railroad distribution centers.
Containers of toys can be moved to their flat cars, and freight cars, with using mobile gantry cranes, container lifts and other specialized equipment. Elves can move loads using small vehicles with wide linked treads like airport baggage carrier trams combined with a ski slope maintenance machine. Tracking marks can be made using standard bar codes or Santa’s own “candy stripe” bar codes.
Further realism would be possible by keeping the elves and other workers in scale and the correct size. Trams, conveyors, and an in-plant narrow gauge train line for moving materials and finished toys need to be laid out in a practical arrangement in keeping with the basic purpose and flow of each industry within the North Pole.
Such a facility would consume a huge amount of space and may exceed the space you have available. Here, you will need to a key technique of scale modeling called “selective compression”! Selective compression is worth its own article, but described in short it is modeling a section of a scene faithfully in scale and creating a representative sample or the impression that there is more to it than has been fully modeled. A simple example is when a factory building is a scale 1000 feet in length and only 200 feet of the building is modeled. The same kind of selective compression applies when there are many miles between station points and only one mile is modeled in a way that gives the impression that it was a longer distance.
Realistic industries can also be created by placing lots of related details near the industry. Signage is a prime example. In addition to the billboard outside the plant. Safety and productivity messages are posted in appropriate places. Signs for special (reindeer) parking or entrances and exits for personnel. Model suitable decorative elements such as flags, lighting, and landscaping.
Give your industry a “lived in” look. Some industries have large smoke stacks. Make sure their ends of the smoke stacks are dirty from smoke. Some industries are prosperous and very conscious of appearance to public, customers, and shareholders. (Such as chocolate factories.) Food handling has purity and cleanliness requirements that are reflected throughout the facilities.
Other industries are VERY dirty and have been poorly maintained for many, many years. The public rarely sees this phase of the industry or the owners don’t care. Model unwashed equipment, peeling paint, rust, and equipment that hasn’t been replaced for many years.
Workers bring the scene to life. At Santa’s North Pole facility, the elves are brightly dressed, wearing the latest safety helmets and footwear, and clean. Workers at a coal mine might be dressed in dark clothes, wearing well-worn basic safety gear, and clothes that show the hard service needed to mine coal. Workers coming out of the mine might be dirty from a hard day’s work.
Keep building your industry’s realism and story.
Have fun!
Trainguy
