Feb 22 2009
Planning Your Outdoor Garden Railroad - Part 6
Planning Your Outdoor Garden Railroad - Part 6
How to convert “Bubble” Diagrams to Scale Plans
Take out your drawing, dimensions and notes for your backyard. Draw up a scale diagram. Using your scale diagram place immovable objects like large trees, deck, house, and shed. Now transfer your selected “bubble” diagram to the scale drawing. It’s OK if your slightly off in placing these items. That’s the point of using a “Bubble” diagram. It provides some leeway, room for adjustments, and a general zone where you will be working.
Make Scale Drawings of Your Scenes
Remember those photographs, calendars, and catalog pages. On a separate paper convert each scene, factory, and facility into an exact scale drawing of your scene. These can be pretty simple. Remember, a station viewed from overhead, is just a rectangle. A road is another rectangle, a straight bridge is another rectangle. A water tower is just a circle. Use scissors to clip this out. Lay the cut and trimmed, scale drawing of each scene on the appropriate bubble.
Making Adjustments: Selective Compression & Implying a Bigger World
You’ll notice very quickly that you have too much space or too little space. Some scenes will appear way out of proportion with the available space. It’s time to make some adjustments. We’ve discussed “selective compression” on this blog before. Remove repeating some repeating elements. If the eye and brain see a pattern that’s enough. Avoid even numbered patterns. The brain tries to match things up. For some primal reason odd numbered patterns fool the brain into thinking there is more.
You can also compress your scene by “implying” a large world, or more of a world “off stage”. Remember the suggestion to model a small part of a road coming out of a tunnel. If it is well done, it “implies’ that there is more road and a “somewhere to go”.
Redraw your scene to scale. Trim it with scissors and put it into the bubble space on your scale drawing.
Railroad Planning Software
These same techniques can be applied through many software and computer programs. Unfortunately, the size of the screen and the mechanics of moving things with a keyboard and mouse get in the way of the creative process and quick feedback. That is why track planning software is more successful on computers than layout or landscape planning.
Getting back to the paper, scissors, and scale drawings. Pull out your second favorite “bubble” diagram in the correct scale. Move some of the pieces around. Confirm that the reasons it fell into second place still hold up. You might be surprised. Maybe one or two scenes should be moved back to where they were on the second place plan.
Sleep On It
Now let the whole thing sit over night. Come back to it the next day with some small distance and perspective. Speaking of perspective, imagine you are a visitor, train operator, or photographer. Walk around the layout diagram and test the views and angles. Should you move a model building? Should you curve a trestle bridge? Ask one or two family members or experienced train friends to imagine using the railroad. They can be a good final check. Does the railroad work without any explanation at all from you? Then, you know you’ve got a winner!
Get out the glue and tape. Gently tack small spots to keep the scale scenes in their proper place. You may have to move them, but not much. It’s time to connect the railroad together with track.
Track Planning
Using your computer or photocopier, make paper scale track sections and switches. You could also use plastic drawing templates for the most popular drawing scales and model railroad scales.
Some model railroaders agonize over track layout and diagrams. That’s OK if you like that kind of thing. Computer software programs are designed for this.
I try to keep track planning simple. My railroad has industries and stations with a purpose. The track plan comes pretty quickly out of the need for practical operations (passing sidings, storage tracks) and outdoor terrain/conditions setting a basic route between stops. I gently modify these basics for visual impact or ease of maintenance and construction.
When I’m at the paper and drawing stage I find that a flexible metal ruler or a rubberized draftsmen’s curve tool helps me to draw smooth transitions and sweeping curves between large radius circles and straight track sections. It falls into place amazingly quickly if you imagine you are carving a real railroad out of real terrain. The flexible curve tool can also be straightened out and measured to get a rough idea how much flexible track is going to be needed in a given section later.
Celebrate!
We’re not done, but we’ve made tremendous progress. Celebrate! Have someone take a few pictures of you and your latest version of the plans.
Build Journal
Don’t forget to add personal notes and pictures and drawings to your archival build journal. These have been extremely productive steps. You will refer to them again and again as you make estimates and build your railroad.
Have fun!
Trainguy
