When the real thing looks like a model...

[railsquid]

Nice little rural German diorama:

 

01546 by Christian Wenger, on Flickr

[railsquid]

Can't share this one, but look at this US suburban street with a shared garden railway: https://flic.kr/p/22bNVUS

 

[MeTheSwede]

3 hours ago, railsquid said:

Nice little rural German diorama:

 

01546 by Christian Wenger, on Flickr

 

Wow, that foliage is very well made!

The engine looks a bit too shiny and plasticy to me though.  I'd put some more weathering on it.

And the cow looks a bit out of scale.

 

 

😉

 

[Cat]

5 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

 

Wow, that foliage is very well made!

The engine looks a bit too shiny and plasticy to me though.  I'd put some more weathering on it.

And the cow looks a bit out of scale.

 I think the foreshortening with the cow adds to the realism.  The shininess of the train is the big tell.  A little weathering and Dullcote would really make the scene.
 
We've picked up some German modelling magazines over the years, as well as various catalogues and Continental Modeller mogazines.  One thing that has struck Roxanne & I is that we've never seen a German layout with any hint of weathering.  Buildings and trains are all shiny and pristine.

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, Cat said:

We've picked up some German modelling magazines over the years, as well as various catalogues and Continental Modeller mogazines.  One thing that has struck Roxanne & I is that we've never seen a German layout with any hint of weathering.  Buildings and trains are all shiny and pristine.

 

On the other hand, I think many US modelers overdo the weathering to the point where the layouts look post-apocalyptic. I'm somewhere in the middle. I like the "cleanworld" look with just enough weathering to add some depth.

Edited January 23, 2022 by gavino200

[cteno4]

Well growing up in the 60 in an industrial, docks and warehouse area with many rail cars around to play on in sidings for the warehouses and one of the main marshaling yards for Oakland a short bike ride away, I would say I never saw any cars or engines that looked at all shiny. All rather weathered to the point it would usually get me in trouble coming home from an hour of climbing around cars and be very very filthy! At least it was before graffiti took over. 
 

on thinking about this my parents never cared that I got filthy by climbing all over rail cars! Oh well I’m still here 5+ decades later.
 

jeff

[gavino200]

9 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Well growing up in the 60 in an industrial, docks and warehouse area with many rail cars around to play on in sidings for the warehouses and one of the main marshaling yards for Oakland a short bike ride away, I would say I never saw any cars or engines that looked at all shiny. All rather weathered to the point it would usually get me in trouble coming home from an hour of climbing around cars and be very very filthy! At least it was before graffiti took over. 
 

jeff

 

No disagreement. I'm pretty sure it's the same in Germany. It's really an aesthetic thing. No reason we can't model an enhanced reality. 🙂

Edited January 23, 2022 by gavino200

[Cat]

Yuppers, B&M freight and Buddliners alike were all pretty grimy in the 60s–70s.

[cteno4]

14 hours ago, railsquid said:

Can't share this one, but look at this US suburban street with a shared garden railway: https://flic.kr/p/22bNVUS

 

I can see the real estate listing “elegant railroad siding traverse your driveway along the front of the property”

 

jeff

[Yavaris Forge]

23 hours ago, Cat said:

One thing that has struck Roxanne & I is that we've never seen a German layout with any hint of weathering.  Buildings and trains are all shiny and pristine.

I think it really depends where you look, most layouts on conventions are at least a bit weathered, but many hobbyists at home probably are very hesitant to make their (very expensive) models look dirty. Depending on what colors you use for weathering it might be a one way road. I myself kinda overdid it once on some Wakis 😄 

Some manufacturers started releasing pre-weathered models a while ago, although for a small addition on the pricetag.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Yavaris Forge

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Some very nice weathering on this tram, especially around the roof. A Tomytec Honda Jazz has just wandered into the corner of the picture, but I wonder who makes the Ford Focus and Fiesta?

 

 

A 1935 Blackpool Tramways 'Balloon' car takes its exercise; picture taken from the Tower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Tower

 

[JR East]

15 hours ago, Claude_Dreyfus said:

Some very nice weathering on this tram, especially around the roof. A Tomytec Honda Jazz has just wandered into the corner of the picture, but I wonder who makes the Ford Focus and Fiesta?

 

 

As some of you know, I'm also photographer (amateur). You can also play with a tilt shift effect to make it less realistic and more "model-like" (the shooting angle is not optimal for the effect to be correctly applied but ...). I made it with an online tool, not with Photoshop as it's not on this laptop. 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by JR East
typo, errors

[cteno4]

Love tilt shift. There were a few commercials here in the states a few years back with it to make the whole thing feel like it was a model set, quite an eye catcher.

 

also love the reverse of the hyperfocal software that combines multiple focus depths. I’ll have to dig some of them out we did like 15 years back, I was stunned by how it made a bunch of Tomytec buildings look so real to the eye just because a swath of them was all in focus like a prototype picture. The eye ignores the missing detail bits and such than in a regular model shot where the out of focus fields just say to our brain model and it then looks for all the missing bits. Shows how our minds eye and visual memory really screw with our perception of the world.

 

jeff

[railsquid]

The wild, rushing river water really lends this diorama an air of realism.

 

10004  Wassen  18.08.88* by Bahnbilder von W. + H. Brutzer, on Flickr

[railsquid]

I think the mountains were cut out from a magazine with scissors and stuck onto the sky.

 

]

FS Aln 460.2008 TEE Breda - Sala al Barro 19/12/1985 by Stefano & Roberto Trionfini, on Flickr

[chadbag]

These are cool pics.

 

I personally have no interest in weathering or even making my layout look "real".   I am not modeling anything.  I am playing with model trains.  And the emotions they invoke are the same if they are plasticky looking or weathered:  remembering riding the real thing, or wanting to go to Japan or Germany and visit and be on vacation, etc.

 

Just how I see it.  I enjoy the output of the real modelers.

 

[chadbag]

I think one of the reasons a lot of these real pics look like models is they are older pics on real film.  Which adds a certain feel to them.  SO ones already posed and set up to be more diorama like get this feel added which reinforces the "model look"