Making Model Trains Seem Real

In the end "Real" is in the eye of the beholder.  At age 6 my floor empire with one loop and a few plasticville buildings looked real when i laid down and pressed my head to the floor.  My bigger table empire looked real enough when i was 12 even tho the grass was outdoor carpet and the buildings were still plasticville.  I've seen the best railroads that strive to be the most realistic yet cant be reliably operated and the least realistic scenery on pikes that run flawlessly. Now for me reality is just finding enough time to build my dream layout while i'm still young enough to walk up and down the loft stairs!!

I took these with my cell phone.    I got down about level with the track but not below it.    The main thing I did was try to get the ceiling and wall corners out of the picture, so all that was seen was the layout and back drop.   In the first one, you can see the corner of the room in back left.

This PS28  - a train of empty hoppers running from Pitcairn to Shire Oaks where the empties will be sent out to the mines on the Monongehela Division.

@Farmall-Joe posted:

In the end "Real" is in the eye of the beholder.  At age 6 my floor empire with one loop and a few plasticville buildings looked real when i laid down and pressed my head to the floor.  My bigger table empire looked real enough when i was 12 even tho the grass was outdoor carpet and the buildings were still plasticville.  I've seen the best railroads that strive to be the most realistic yet cant be reliably operated and the least realistic scenery on pikes that run flawlessly. Now for me reality is just finding enough time to build my dream layout while i'm still young enough to walk up and down the loft stairs!!

I think the eye of the beholder is the key idea. What we see is always interpreted by our brains, and consciously or unconsciously we can suppress things that 'don't seem so real'. Put it this way, human beings when they look at things have instinct that if something is off in what we see, it triggers a warning (it is why as good as computer animation is, when we look at scenes with CG generated animals or people, we know it isn't 'real', there is just something odd about, credit 6 million years of evolution).  We can look at the photo of a 3 rail layout,that looks incredibly go, and think "that could be the real thing", when the 3rd rail is there, which we know isn't present on 'the real things'. A train with semi scale cars with a semi scale engine can look very realistic in a photo, if you mix scale with semi scale likely not. If we are looking at an engine or freight car, we aren't going to notice that a car is a scale foot too short. For most of us not familiar with the prototype, we won't notice things like X is in the wrong position, the headlight is too high, the drivers are scale 36" instead of 38 (and obviously, there are people who know the prototype who pick that up).

I think the best description is watching a play on stage versus the movie. When we watch a stage play, we know it is such of course, but when you get tied up in the dialog and the characters, the fact it is obvious stage sets doesn't matter, you kind of ignore it because you are caught up in the character. When we look at trains on a layout, to quote Frank Ellison, we are looking at a play that is being staged, and we suspend disbelief because we are entranced by the 'actors', the trains.

In the end it does come down to the eye of the beholder. To someone like Arnold who loves running his trains, and tries to recreate the feel of scenes important to him, it generates memories and the feelings of what he is trying to do. To someone who is a 3 rail scale modeler with a layout designed to mimic real operations, to them it is more real because they can switch cars, build up a train, then deliver it to where it needs to go to. Others want the look to be perfect and don't care as much about operations; some go all the way. In the end it is how it makes the person viewing it feel.

@bigkid posted:

I think the best description is watching a play on stage versus the movie. When we watch a stage play, we know it is such of course, but when you get tied up in the dialog and the characters, the fact it is obvious stage sets doesn't matter, you kind of ignore it because you are caught up in the character. When we look at trains on a layout, to quote Frank Ellison, we are looking at a play that is being staged, and we suspend disbelief because we are entranced by the 'actors', the trains.

In the end it does come down to the eye of the beholder. To someone like Arnold who loves running his trains, and tries to recreate the feel of scenes important to him, it generates memories and the feelings of what he is trying to do. To someone who is a 3 rail scale modeler with a layout designed to mimic real operations, to them it is more real because they can switch cars, build up a train, then deliver it to where it needs to go to. Others want the look to be perfect and don't care as much about operations; some go all the way. In the end it is how it makes the person viewing it feel.

Glad you quoted Ellison.  I've been trying to incorporate that philosophy in my new layout. I think the best plays and movies are those that draw you in such that you forget youre in a theatre or on your couch for a few minutes.  This need not be accomplished, as you mentioned, with mimicking reality alone but rather the dialog, story, memories, sights and smells as well.  Many posters here like Arnold, Pat and others do a great job with all or some of those elements. Even the great Ellison's layout would probably look "unreal" by some of today's standards just because of the materials he had available at the time.

I'm late to the party, Arnold, but I'm certainly glad you got this thread started. The combination of modeling and photography/videography are my favorite aspects of the hobby. I'm inspired by the work of Norm Charbonneau and many others. I built models for decades before having the space to create a railroad layout, and that's part of the reason why progress on my Happy Valley Railroad has been so slow--I'm doing a lot of modeling work on structures and vignettes. My goal is to upload video productions of my layout. It's all about scratching my creative itch.

@RickO posted:

Could use a horizon at the far end of the layout, and a more scale brakeman This turned out o.k.

This is some really terrific modeling, and the telephoto effect makes it even more realistic. One suggestion would be to film from multiple angles, including the scale "human eye" viewpoint. Love the ambient sounds, too!

It's all about those low angles!

Low angle does work !

RM Rocket

Troop train… brass helps a bit.