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What to do when reality doesn't fit?

Will Vale

Entry posted by Will Vale

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6151733266_c908333c7c_z.jpg

Train to Freiburg by Will Vale, on Flickr

 

I thought I'd take all the junk (well, most of it) off the layout so I could see how things were going. The ballast has worked out well, the tunnels are boxed in at long last, and I like the sweep of the track at the left hand end. Still no bridge though, as you can see:

 

6151733488_5e97e9dd4d_z.jpg

 

The problem I've come across is that with the tunnel through the Hirschsprung in place, and the Oberen Hirschsrpung Tunnel which hides the exit to the fiddle yard, there isn't really enough room in between to capture the necessary features. There should be a rock shed, which is at least half a full-length coach, maybe a bit more, then various retaining walls and space to see a decent length of train before the next tunnel swallows it up again.

 

On the model there's rather less space:

 

6151185755_5bd48908c8_z.jpg

 

Compare this with the real location:

 

http://maps.google.de/?ll=47.937428,8.021425&spn=0.00173,0.004128&t=k&z=19&vpsrc=6

 

It's frustrating, since the real thing isn't impossibly long, it's just more room than I've left space for. I was so keen to get the scale of the bridge at the left hand end exact, and retain the sweep of the track up to the middle tunnel, that the interesting right-hand side has got rather marginalised. The bridge isn't even there in reality, it's just out of scene to the left before the Falkenstein Tunnel :O

 

I suspect there isn't much I can do about this at this point - shifting the whole RHS left a bit is possible but I don't think I have the time - only about 7 weeks to finish the layout now. A less dramatic option would be to push the final tunnel mouth back around the return curve, but the scale length coaches look pretty silly on 145mm radius, the fine scale track stops just inside the tunnel, and I'd probably have to make a considerably wider-than-scale portal to avoid scraping paint off the coach sides.

 

I may end up compressing the rock shed and walled section behind the portal (the tunnel was partially destroyed by Wehrmacht forces near the end of WW2, and rebuilt with some fairly serious walls where once was bare rock - see the Tunnel Portale site for more details).

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Jon020

Will,

I see that this is one of the problems associated with modelling real places... where do you place the line with artistic license..? Is there no room for license? The tighter curve sounds like a comprimise in running (?) and the wider portal might introduce less realism than you'd gain from the longer section between the portals. Time to consider all options, and pros/cons of each. Good luck. Otherwise... looking really quite neat!

Jon

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James Hilton

Will it's interesting to hear that even in Z you need to make some compromises in the landscape and artistically compress some aspects however I don't think that you should fret too much as the landscape will really dominate the trains and the layout even if it's not 100% accurate. Like Jon I'm looking forward to seeing things progress.

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Will Vale

Thanks chaps. I suspect the best plan is to carry on as pictured - Jon you're right that the other compromises are maybe worse. The running on the sharp curves is actually pretty good, it's just the extreme silliness it engenders as the train folds up into a half-a-hexagon or near enough to that :D

 

The saving grace for the right hand end *might* be that it'll be possible to photograph one or other tunnel mouth on the short section without it being obvious that the other is just out of shot.

 

Anyway, it's ballasted now, so that's a job ticked off, and I've boxed the left hand tunnel in and started on the missing landforms. Photos to follow. I hope whoever 'rated' this entry 1 star doesn't mind too much about the slow progress.

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