What time of day is it on your layout?

[jcm@gwr]

For those that haven't been, Minature Wunderland is a good example of what can be done with

lighting, and special effects. I appreciate that some of the illusions created can be borderline

'toylike', but again, it's down to personal preference, and where your level of compromise lies.

They go through a regular cycle of night running (for about 20 mins, every couple of hours)

Overall it's impressive, and I would recommend a visit to anyone.

[john new]

On 14/05/2022 at 13:09, doilum said:

Someone please remind me of the name of the layout I saw at York the year before lockdown. I think it was located on the south coast and ran a full 24 hour clock under controlled lighting. It was superb.

Possibly the (N?) one based on Penzance (St Ruth) if my memory is correct and Forgotten the layout’s name but* agree that one is very good,

 

* thank you @doilum

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by john new

[john new]

An interesting topic which will always generate debate; and will differ depending on whether it is for home or exhibition use.

 

I think it comes down to what you like, and as others have said, your own acceptable compromises. My current one has not reached the lighting stage but will be July, like my others have been. Why? No steam or diesel clag effects emerge from my locos so that is a time period when they are least visible on the prototype. This, as just one example, for me spoils most of the winter set, steam era, layouts. This does though mean that when I start to add the scenics I will have to check what vegetation is out in July, for example no spring flowers or fruit blossom, or people in thick overcoats, some windows will need to be modelled as opened.

 

I like seeing photos of layouts in  night shots, but not necessarily the actual layout "in the flesh so to speak" unless, like the one at Pecorama, there is some ambient light even when in the darkness bits. The colliery one for example that was at York a long time back now was superbly done with black out screens around it but was one I spent the least time watching. St Ruth gets it right.

 

Also I find, personal viewpoint, that most layouts are over lit anyway, and when people fit flashing things they are also too bright. I particularly liked the castle layout at SWAG 22 as the lighting produced the effect of genuine daylight not a film set.  

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by john new

[doilum]

I had best be careful , given present company (!!!), but one of the few drawbacks of the ground floor at York is the inability to control the daylight through the massive south facing glazing. I remember thinking that many visitors would have left slightly underwhelmed at the Gravett's Arun Quay. I had been priveliged to see it earlier that year in the gloom of the Pontefract sports hall where it truly lived up to the deserved hype. St Ruth was more fortunate being tucked away at the back near the Squires stand. I have missed my Easter Monday family day out.

[john new]

13 minutes ago, doilum said:

I had best be careful , given present company (!!!), but one of the few drawbacks of the ground floor at York is the inability to control the daylight through the massive south facing glazing. I remember thinking that many visitors would have left slightly underwhelmed at the Gravett's Arun Quay. I had been priveliged to see it earlier that year in the gloom of the Pontefract sports hall where it truly lived up to the deserved hype. St Ruth was more fortunate being tucked away at the back near the Squires stand. I have missed my Easter Monday family day out.

Don't disagree, and the heat is an issue. Had my Hornby-Dublo layout there many years back now with a creme-egg on the bogie bolster wagon. Came in on either Sunday or Monday morning to find it had melted! The open glazed mezzanine is even worse! We ae aware but it is what it is.

 

Not south - it is roughly East - West facing, but the point is the same.

[The Johnster]

Absolutely agree about lights on some exhibition layouts; far too bright, too many flashers (RTA, house fire, contraflow,&c), loco tail lamps lit when it is coupled too or hauling a train, pre-80s dmus with twin tail lamps (should have single paraffin tail lamp on bracket, insanely bright steam era loco marker lights with cool cast, overbright coach interior lighting; horrible. 
 

On a steam era layout, the loco and tail lamps should emulate paraffin lamps, which were about equivalent in strength to car side lights of the same era, 5 watt filament bulbs*.  The light on your phone is much stronger.  Coach interior lights were 15 watt filaments, and you could dim them!   Most building interiors were lit with filament bulbs of about 60 watts; 100 was considered normal for commercial premises.  Street, platform, and yard lighting was not much stronger than the gas mantle lighting it had replaced.  
 

IMHO, a general guideline should be that if tour lighting is obvious in the layout’s ‘normal’ daylight ambient room lighting, it’s too bright.  I sometimes operate Cwmdimbath with the ambients on the lowest cool setting and use building interior lighting to suggest very dull and wet conditions (as we all know these are highly unusual in South Wales…). 
 

Even in those days, it was rarely totally dark at night, and night operation is done with the ambients off and layout lighting alone.  The railway room lighting is off and the door left open, so there is a soft glow of background light.  This is too warm in cast, but I’m working on it…

 

 

*I realise it might be difficult to imagine this for those who have grown up in the light polluted brilliance of the last 40 years, but, yes, we used to happily blast along at 100mph only able to make out about a dozen sleepers ahead of us!  Nerves of steel, boyo, nerves of steel…

Edited May 16, 2022 by The Johnster

[298]

On 16/05/2022 at 10:52, doilum said:

I had best be careful , given present company (!!!), but one of the few drawbacks of the ground floor at York is the inability to control the daylight through the massive south facing glazing. I remember thinking that many visitors would have left slightly underwhelmed at the Gravett's Arun Quay. I had been priveliged to see it earlier that year in the gloom of the Pontefract sports hall where it truly lived up to the deserved hype. 

 

TBH I completely missed the intentions of Arun Quay when I first saw it, having been on holiday to the south coast that year I associated the area with warm sunny days. 

 

 

On 15/05/2022 at 16:16, F-UnitMad said:

For those of you contemplating doing night-time layouts, be aware that the realism bar has been set very high indeed.... 😉

 

 

I'd say the bar itself has been set by Prof Klyrzr's Brooklyn 3am, which assures you of the time and location. By comparison my gaudy rip-off uses many more light sources and includes RGB strips to change the ambient colour from an unexciting old NEC style sodium orange to the blue preferred by hollywood movies. 

 

Another issue I found was having to over-do certain weathering effects to get them to stand out at night, and having to mention on the layout's rider that it'd work better in a darkened room as it doesn't travel with a Bedouin tent. But the biggest con of all is the over-processing of the photos from this to this:

 

 

 

 

[SamThomas]

I do like the effect of the standing water.

 

Often, I find that what may look good to the naken eye looks terrible in an image, especially with "point & shoot" camera's & vise-versa.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

An interesting topic which has become more interesting as it has developed - which is not always the case!

 

Time of day - for me, early morning - all my cafes are full of people having breakfast and tourists are queuing to get into their minibuses to visit tourist attractions.

 

Time of year - yes, a big issue. For me a big issue is the clothing on RTP figures. I want 'interesting' figures on my layout, but the clothes the figures wear sometimes rule out a figure I would like to use. If I want a winter scene having figures outside in shirt sleeves doesn't make sense.

 

As regards coach lighting - and internal building lights - that is again an issue for me. Mine is an exhibition only layout and , because it's foreign (very foreign), I feel that I have to have 'features' which catch the viewers eye entertain them and one of those is fully detailed coach interiors and plenty of detail inside buildings.

 

I was brought up in the 1960's/70's hating the unrealistic coach lighting in the coaches on the Fleischmann exhibition layouts which did the big London shows back then - totally unrealistic. So, I originally had no coach lighting, but I soon realised that viewers could only see silhouettes as the trains past by. After some experimenting, I feel I have the right balance - of course in real life, from 60/70 yards away you would not see all the people in the coaches and so it is unrealistic - but exhibition layouts are there to entertain the paying public. So, just as TV and films tweak reality to make a good story, I tweak reality so that the paying public get to see an interesting feature which would be lost on them if my lighting was truly authentic.

Edited May 18, 2022 by TEAMYAKIMA

[DCMarvel]

I built a small club exhibition layout based on a fictional 'Lake District' town terminus and set it on a warm summer evening, so painted the backscene as a 'reddish' sunset blending up to a darkening sky. It received a lot of comments, not all favourable initially but after I explained what it was depicting it seemed to get approval. I got the impression people were so used to seeing bright sunny summer scenery with green trees and lots of grass and blue sky backscenes, anything else is a bit confusing.

Another member has a superb US layout set in winter with snow and has black 'sky' overhead covers with blueish LED moonlight and looks great and actually gives you the chills looking at it.

The club exhibition layout is set in (and is called) January 1968 and depicts the last days of steam, slightly grotty engine sheds and grimy buildings, but at exhibitions people often say it needs trees or some 'greenery' but that would be completely wrong for the time period, but it shows that they seem to expect that sort of sunny summer scenery.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

22 minutes ago, DCMarvel said:

I built a small club exhibition layout based on a fictional 'Lake District' town terminus and set it on a warm summer evening, so painted the backscene as a 'reddish' sunset blending up to a darkening sky. It received a lot of comments, not all favourable initially but after I explained what it was depicting it seemed to get approval. I got the impression people were so used to seeing bright sunny summer scenery with green trees and lots of grass and blue sky backscenes, anything else is a bit confusing.

 

Excellent idea. My backscene sets the scene more at dawn and was inspired by these two photos .............

 

New York ............................

 

 

 

China

 

My backscene (painted by team member Gordon Massey) combines the two concepts. Whether viewers like it, or hate it, it makes people stop and stare - and isn't that half the battle?

 

[Al.]

I'm currently doing some authentic night time running on Remagen.

 

 

[DCB]

Duplicate

Edited May 19, 2022 by DCB
Duplicate

[DCB]

Interesting the way the thread developed.    I aim to run trains together sort of in sequence,  so the Sleeping car trains don't get in the way of the mid day departures as an extreme, and an express doesn't  leave hard on the heels of a pick up goods.

I think it's the "flights" of trains which interest me, there used to be sequences of expresses, from Kings Cross for which a gap in goods trains was contrived, Leeds/Bradford line and ECML, Newcastle, Scottish, often 3 at close headways followed by an express freight, then back to goods trains, very different to todays clock face departures.   The WR was unable to run goods on the Devon main line for most of Summer Saturdays as "Expresses" were nose to tail. A succession of trains, ECS, Parcels? then ran through the late evening. Likewise the North Wales Coast.

I feel altering the lighting is a step too far, the way daylight and shadow bring a garden railway to life is next to impossible to replicate, especially the shadows and darkness under overline bridges, I darken the natural shadow line under the arches indoors but its nothing compared to the way the colour changes as my class 37/4s emerge from my short tunnel under the path side wall outside.   

[Michael Hodgson]

24 minutes ago, DCB said:

I think it's the "flights" of trains which interest me, there used to be sequences of expresses, from Kings Cross for which a gap in goods trains was contrived, Leeds/Bradford line and ECML, Newcastle, Scottish, often 3 at close headways followed by an express freight, then back to goods trains, very different to todays clock face departures. 

Timetable compilation is an extremely complex juggling act because if it's right in one place it's always difficult somewhere further along the line.  The timetabling problem on the southern part of the ECML is now more to do with local services than with goods.  Flights are necessary even with today's 100 mph outer suburban services.  They may depart at the same time every hour, but twice hourly services still can't be 30 minutes apart. 

 

Inner suburban stopping trains use the slow lines, but faster services to Cambridge and Peterboro have to run fast line in order to overtake the stoppers, but they have to get out of the way of the faster long distance services.  Everything running beyond Welwyn GC has to squeeze through the double track bottleneck over Digswell Viaduct and through the Welwyn tunnels and any station stops at Welwyn North compound that problem.  Until our new flyover was opened recently, there was also the pathing problem here at Hitchin of trains starting from the Down Slow onto the Cambridge branch crossing the Fast and both Up lines.  A new platform 5 at Stevenage with bidirectional running from Langley Junction has enabled Hertford loop trains to terminate at Stevenage and reverse without blocking the Down Slow while they lay over.

 

Once they've got a timetable that works, it does make sense for it only to be tweaked a minute or two here and there next year, but any of these capacity upgrades do tend to mean completely recasting the service.

[wombatofludham]

On 16/05/2022 at 08:34, SamThomas said:

 

 

How far to go with lighting effects ?

We could illuminate the road vehicles (how many of them on layouts are driverless ?), passenger trains too - & then we have to populate them - nothing like an illuminated (even to oil lamp levels) coach to highlight the lack of passengers.

And then what about features/set scenes that are fine for the day but not at night (talking of night, not evening) - schoolchildren or people enjoying their garden *** for example ?

 

We can get it close, but not 100%, it's all about compromise & what is/is not acceptable to the builder(s) of the model.

 

*** Could be updated to a barbie complete with patio heaters.

I had a long hard think about these things, as you say the kind of figures, their poses and way they would interact change between day and night.  I've compromised by not planning for full night, and setting the layout in summer when you would get a lot of people in the park, and kids in the playground, in the setting sun of a late evening as it is the "school holidays".  The market is turned back to the layout, disguising the need to have shoppers mulling over the wares after the point most markets would be shut.  All the vehicles are parked, and the internally lit buses from Rapido will be located in the bus station where the driver has got off for a smoke, with other buses parked up locked out of service in the parking area.  Other people are either window-shopping, or sat/stood chatting typical of the kind of pre-Covid socialising that would have gone on in a town on a warm summer evening.

It's a nice compromise, my trains run against a backdrop of a brick lined cutting, so you get a nice chance to show off the lighting, but in a setting where the miniature life looks like it would be there at that time.  It does take some thought though.

I must admit the lack of suitably clad winter people is a bit of a shame as I would have loved to have set myself the challenge of modelling a dreary wet day in the Black Country.

[doilum]

14 hours ago, wombatofludham said:

I had a long hard think about these things, as you say the kind of figures, their poses and way they would interact change between day and night.  I've compromised by not planning for full night, and setting the layout in summer when you would get a lot of people in the park, and kids in the playground, in the setting sun of a late evening as it is the "school holidays".  The market is turned back to the layout, disguising the need to have shoppers mulling over the wares after the point most markets would be shut.  All the vehicles are parked, and the internally lit buses from Rapido will be located in the bus station where the driver has got off for a smoke, with other buses parked up locked out of service in the parking area.  Other people are either window-shopping, or sat/stood chatting typical of the kind of pre-Covid socialising that would have gone on in a town on a warm summer evening.

It's a nice compromise, my trains run against a backdrop of a brick lined cutting, so you get a nice chance to show off the lighting, but in a setting where the miniature life looks like it would be there at that time.  It does take some thought though.

I must admit the lack of suitably clad winter people is a bit of a shame as I would have loved to have set myself the challenge of modelling a dreary wet day in the Black Country.

Wet day in Wednesbury. Has a ring to it.

[Hroth]

29 minutes ago, doilum said:

Wet day in Wednesbury. Has a ring to it.

 

How about Thursday Next?

 

[F-UnitMad]

15 hours ago, wombatofludham said:

I would have loved to have set myself the challenge of modelling a dreary wet day in the Black Country.

Already being done by Jim Smith-Wright. "Brettel Road". 

[The Johnster]

There are not many people visible at Cwmdimbath.  There are a few railway and NCB surface workers to be seen, and some passengers sitting in coaches, and of course loco crew on the locos.  A driver with a tea can is one of a group of three railwaymen engaged in a conversation outside the station office, but may not be on duty and is on his way to sign on at Tondu. 

 

People fix a time or period of day, so somebody going in to or coming out of the post office automatically suggests that it is between 09.00 and 17.30, and the pub indicates noon to 15.00 or 18.00 to 22.30 in those days.  I prefer to leave things a bit more open.  In a small mining village like this, everybody knows the timetable by heart anyway and can hear when the train arrives, especially as it's just blasted up a steep bank past the colliery, and, South Walian weather being what it is, mostly they stay indoors until they venture out for the minute or so walk to the station.  The drivers know the game and give a little pop on the whistle about 5 before departure.  So, there's nobody hanging around on the platform or in the streets, all of which contributes to a general atmosphere of bleakness and desolation appropriate to a South Wales mining village at the top end of it's valley.  It's all properly miserably slow black crow black Welsh...

 

Not many road vehicles, either.  An old flatbed hangs around the goods yard, there is a Morris Minor van, a Ford 95E sit-up-and-beg Popular parked outside the shop (it belongs to the shopowner), a hill farmer's SWB soft top Land Rover and a BR liveried LWB one.  Occasionally, a tractor is delivered on a 1 planker with the pickup, and sometimes gets posed near the pigeon loft on the mountainside.  There is a Western Welsh ECW single decker that comes up from Pontyclun that waits beneath the oak tree by the pub for departure time, incorrectly showing 'Penarth' as the destination and with an equally incorrect Cardiff depot symbol.  Some sort of NCB van would be suitable for the colliery yard.

 

The building lights can also be used to suggest time of day, and to some extent season as well.  A light on in the general store/post office means it's a dark winter evening, or all the building lights are on suggesting a dull and wet day,  Lechyd Terrace might have a light or two on in bedroom windows on winter mornings before the feeble grey dawn filters in over the mountain, but lights in the living rooms downstairs mean evening.

 

To get back to the OP's original question, as I type it is about 09.20 on an overcast morning in the early 50s at Cwmdimbath.. The first colliery clearance of the day left on time 10 minutes ago, but has not yet cleared the section at Blackmill, and the colliery Peckett has just run up to the exchange road with an empty GPV, as the next event on the running line will be the pickup.  This services the goods, mileage, and factory roads as well as the non-mineral needs of the colliery, and is today bringing up a load of pit props and an open of planks in connection with the pithead baths and canteen that is under construction.  This is an exuces for all sorts of loads, some of them in vans; building materials, pipes, tiles for the shower block, kitchen equipment, whatever.  The pickup is allowed an hour and 40 minutes to do it's work, and working at realistic speeds to real time can be a challenge demanding a bit of thought to the most time-efficient method of shunting it, but the colliery traffic is dealt with first in order to free up the NCB's loco to play with mineral wagons. 

 

A feature of many South Wales pits, and possibly in other areas as well but I don't know much about them, is that the limited space to store loaded wagons awaiting dispatch, the result of sites either hemmed in between a stream and a steep mountainside or built on a shelf on the aforementioned mountainside, means that loaded wagons need clearing asap to make room for incoming empties.  A reserve of empties is essential because if you run out, there is nothing for the washery loader to load into, and it will not be long before the blockage extends underground and stops work at the faces, which is what the expensive equipment and surface work at the colliery there to facilitate.  The ideal situation is to have the men cutting coal at the face, moving it to shaft bottom, raising it, screening and getting rid of the spoil (overhead buckets which squeaked and clanked so all-pervadingly continually that you only noticed when they stopped), washed, and loaded into empty wagons all at the same time, and a problem at any stage brought the whole shebang to an expensive stop.

 

So, from a railway pov, the game is regular deliveries of empties and clearances of loaded on the main line (one pit in the Rhondda Fach did this every 30 minutes!), while the colliery loco shunts the delivered empties over the weighbridge to establish their exact tare weight (the difference between this and the loaded weight is the basis for billing and invoicing), then exchanges empties for loadeds from the washery, then makes up a train of loaded, shunts it over the weighbridge again, ready to repeat the process when the next load of empties arrives.  Details varied from pit to pit, but were all variations on this theme.

[corneliuslundie]

An interesting discussion. I have not gone for a particular time of day, though I did have a discussion with a fellow club member about his next layout having lighting to simulate the passing of the day, along with appropriate background sound effects for the time - dawn chorus as the day starts etc.

But for my Sarn (think Cambrian Kerry branch in the 1930s) layout, I decided on early spring, so no leaves of=n the trees and hedges except last year's brown ones on the beeches and oaks, spring flowers such as celandines (too early for daffodils) and no significant grass on the verges, though the fields remain green all year as there is plenty of rain.

Being this area I wanted sheep and lambs - Kerry Hill and improved Welsh Mountain. Fine except that each sheep should have at least one and often two lambs. What can you usually buy? A set of ten animals, nine sheep and a lamb. Fortunately a nice trader at a show who was selling cast metal animals sorted out some lambs for me. The layout will also have subtle background sound with lambs, a woodpecker and crows (noisy thing) inhabiting two nests in one of the tree.

Back to the time of day, not a great problem on a branch where there was only one freight a day, somewhere  about late morning or early afternoon. And the few figures are dressed suitable for the season. (No, it is not raining!)

But not sure what I shall do for Nantcwmdu - South Wales valley) as the operating day will need to be longer. But I shall definitely set it at a particular season, and not the sort of ever summer that so many layouts seem to be set in.

And when it comes to timetables, Peter Denny did it all many years ago.

Jonathan