Its that age old joke that every one always says at any steam event "If only we could bottle that smell and sell it in a spray can you could make millions" so the ideas sound its just making it work I guess

PS As long as your railway doesn't run past a sewage treatment plant that is

Hi Steffan

This post is full of really creative new effects.  I couldn't agree more, and from this outpouring of ideas, I also suspect that from time to time you experience a wish to capture other views and conditions, quite possibly without any railway being present at all.  Relatively few see the surroundings before the trains but your instinct on this seems to be more like a landscape artist or a movie set designer, who seek to create a complete illusion.  Well made models might well be included in your plan, but again, I'm guessing as only one aspect of a bigger picture.

To help in achieving your aim of combining all those sensations into a complete viewing experience, there is no need to separate any model railway from good landscape study and effects. The natural location existed long before the railway traversed it, so why not seek your reference far away from the conventional railway influenced sources.

Landscape galleries. historic panoramas and nature photography can all help to inspire you to gather your own specific reference, and these creatives choose their viewpoints freely, rather than having to position themselves with a view over a railway.  For interesting skies try searching for galleries featuring 'Victorian romantic landscapes' with De-Breanski, Koekkoek, and George Cole among many other masters.

Consider leaving the old fashioned adherence to scale behind you as well, because painters and photographers have no concept of it in their work.  They are aware that nobody 'sees' anything as a measured dimension, all things are merely perceived relative to others and distance.  As modellers we can also project out from a 2D sky panel, generating progressive layers of 3D landscaping.  Sounds are quite easy to add to backscenes using edited mp3 loops with bluetooth triggering.

Keep us posted. 

Hi PJB,

What great suggestions you make which I will be sure to follow up, particularly concerning skies.

Once I got as far as making seven big screens about 2 meters by three meters using a semi-translucent screen material - stretched on 3/4 inch wooden battens.  The material is manufactured for back-projection off a regular VCR and was readily agailable from a specialist supplier.  This was for a conference/ exhibition and included highly directional stereo speakers designed to create very localised 'pools of sound' .  It worked well: seven very large screens which cost me about Thirty Quid to make over one weekend.  The projectors and VCRs were provided by the institution.  The seven screens meant I could show seven vids at the same time.  Delegates were surrounded by screens and could watch whichever one they liked.

I very much accept your point about not sticking to 'measured dimensions'.  One idea I had was a 'View from a Railway Carriage'.  This would be viewed through a full Mk1 Beclwat window (complete with sliding top windows) recovered from a scrapped vehicle.  The scene the other side of the window would be contained in a box.  The proposition would be that the carriage you are in has been held on a viaduct above a city landscape.  A sprinkler would throw raindrops onto the window which would be enough to form streaming ripples down to the bottom of the window - those random meandering streams of coalescing raindrops which always fascinated me as a child.  That is the scene would be partly obscured by rain and perhaps by some railway grime at the edges where the cleaners never reached.  The buildings immediately below the viaduct would be made to give a false perspective (optical illusion of depth).  A 4mm railway would run at what would appear as a scale distance of about 1/4 mile at a much lower level than the 'train on the viaduct'.  Between the 4mm distant trains and the viewer there would be artefacts (some actual full scale artefacts such as a 'Catchpoints 200 Yards' sign and perhaps a 'Calling On Signal' and others half scale, and then other items at progressively smaller scales graduated until they reached the 4mm scale as the probable minimum.

As for content I like to imagine the railway as Riddles imagined it: his Standard steam locomotives, Mk1s and Fitted Goods trains perhaps running on a formation parallel to an Overhead 25Kv 'Electric Blue' railway with Mk2D stock.

There would have to be Cooling Towers.  Love 'em!  And thousands of Starlings.

I think we could manage without any turnouts - just occasional trains running at about 4 min intervals with enough movement in the clouds etc to maintain interest by drawing eye.

Sound would be via quad speakers with no attempt to place sound into locos.  At the kind of distance suggested and through the glass not much sound would have reached us anyway.  It might be good to be able to eavesdrop on the conversation going on inside our railway compartment.  This could be constructed from sound archives contemporary with the scene.  In this scenario Mr Riddles locomotives have lasted well into the 1980s as intended and the topics of the compartment discussion would reflect this.

It is possible the whole model would have to be constructed inside something like a horse-box, towed to exhibitions as a 'walk through' experience.  It might make a nice Exhibition Entrance in its own rights....

Maybe film-set designers have the knowledge already.

Something along these lines....

Hi Steffan

Sorry for delayed reply.  It's the free thinking here and the wish to recreate the complete experience that is interesting. There is always a trade off with a restricted view type show, because you can't run around taking pictures of the scene from all angles .... there's only one view, but it's a good one!  

With that, the 'raindrops on window' idea sounds great, and so do the other atmospheric effects and props, but bear the natural viewpoint in mind.  From a carriage window it's normally quite an oblique one from a seated position.  That foreshortening is going to make any diorama perspective difficult to control, so it might be easier to simulate the corridor side where folks could walk past it naturally.  A view from a narrower building type window perhaps, with other view blockers to help manage the more difficult angles?

Either way, control the viewpoint, then set the far horizon line at eye level like a flat desert as the most important datum for consistency.  It controls the surface grid, which then approaches the viewpoint progressively from skyline to full size.  Paint or project a sky onto the inside of a horsebox size hemisphere, it's dioramic that way, and closer to how our eyes 'see' the surroundings outdoors.  Maybe mock it up half size to to see what works, and just make everything fit the scene where it looks best.  There's no modelling scale with this lark, leave it behind and just place the 'trains' into the illusion relative to everything else.

Keep the faith, and good luck with the starlings!.....Paul

Paul,

I have been looking at scores of paintings by the artists you recommended: De-Breanski, Koekkoer and Cole.  Marvellous skies and good 'lighting' of the scene too.  The skies - in many different moods - are just like the skies we see, recorded with great accuracy and then with a degree of kind of 'super-realsim' added.  Thanks so much for these suggestions.

I think the best sky/ light combination I ever saw connected with the railway was when the down DMU we were on (headed for Aberystwyth) was held in a loop between Talerddig and Machynlleth, probably at Commins Coch Halt (though I must check in a minute to see if Commins Coch had a loop!).  It was a July evening around 8:00pm so the sun was in the West dead ahead and still quite high in the sky, over the line but slightly to the right.  This made for a dazzling bright haze with a suggestion of blue right above.  This was at the end of steam so it was a sunset in more than one sense.

After a few minutes a BR Standard 4 2-6-0 came into sight, preceeded by towering white exhaust seen first, which, being driven by a westerly wind that was travelling at the same slow speed as the loco, meant that the vapour was stacking-up to an unusual height above it.  The steam was now backlit by the sun to stunning effect and the exhaust beat suggested that the locomotive was working about as hard as possible, practically speaking.

Sitting on the front row seats this vision of steam's last stand was framed by the cab windows, perfectly.  My sense of it was that the regular passengers had been struck too.  Nobody could help but look.

Too soon the locomotive passed hauling an unusually long rake of assorted waggons and vans and I think which I think would have been too long to fit into the loop - hence we had to be held instead.  It was going to have to haul the lot up the bank unassisted and the crew were doing a good - if slow - job of it.  We'd seen the locomotive that morning shunting at Aberystwyth and only now, about twelve hours later, was it on its way.  One detail I remember was that the tender was full of compressed ovoid brickettes.

Yes.  Best ever steam moment.

It was the last steam train I saw on the Cambrian system, but what a great way of bowing-out!