What's your Scenic Highlight (or planned Highlight) ?

[Hobby Dreamer]

What's your Scenic Highlight (or planned Highlight) ?

 

Are you using/planning to add: foliage, lighting, structures, figures, vehicles..?

 

Is your layout cohesive w.r.t. scenery (e.g. small town, industrial etc) or a bit of this/that.

 

Are you modelling (or plan to model) a specific season, multiple seasons or no season?

 

 

Cheers

Rick

[KenS]

I don't know that I have a scenic highlight, but if I do it's a larger river crossed by several bridges, which is roughly inspired by the Sumida River where the Joban and Tobu Isesaki lines cross on parallel bridges, mashed up with the lower stretch where the Chuo-Sobu crosses above concrete abutments (see photo below, somewhat old at this point, but still showing an overview). I'm trying for a general "city with large river" impression, rather than an exact replication of anything.

 

My layout is urban, arranged into three broad "scenes": a large raised multi-line station with a bus connection and a tram line, a smaller suburban ground-level station with an adjacent subway station, and the river scene with a broad scenic curve, several bridges, and an urban residential/industrial neighborhood tucked between the tracks and the river.

 

Most strucutres are ready-to-place ones, although I'm using some kits and eventually will scratchbuild some I can't get otherwise.  I do modify these, mostly with better paint, but a lot of the ones on the layout today are straight from the box. Lighting is in place for the subway station and a few of the village buildings, with more planned. Trees and ground foliage are (or will be) placed where they make sense in an urban context. Figures are going in stations and other places where you'd expect people to congregate, as well as a few in and around buildings.  I'm also putting figures in trains. Lots of vehicles planned, although few are on the layout yet (the roads haven't been made yet in most places).

 

The season is late spring/early summer (dark greens), although I'm considering having a stand of blooming sakura trees (early spring) along the riverbank, which is probably a bit earlier than the season implied by the vegetation elsewhere.

 

The question you didn't ask is what era and kind of trains is it for?  Mine is contemporary, meaning roughly mid 90s to now, and with a focus on JR East commuter trains, although I also run freight, Shinkansen, and other railways (and a few "misplaced" trains I like, such as the Nankai rapi:t).

 

See my website's section describing the layout for more information.

[ianlaw]

My scenic highlight is probably the castle on the left hill top with a small river passing below. The railway leaves the station, passes through a very short tunnel, crosses the river on a bridge and disappears in a tunnel under the castle.

A second highlight is the temple on the opposite hill top with cherry blossom trees, even though the foliage on the rest of the layout is more like summer than spring.

Third is the long straight track along the river to enjoy an unhindered view of the trains, with another bridge.

The other three elements are: new town behind the station, old town in front of the station and depot=steam museum near the temple.

[Hobby Dreamer]

@ Ken

That's an impressive layout and site. Lots of train action at different levels!!

 

 

@Ian

I have a soft spot for card stock structures so your Z-Gauge layout is great fun!  Making your own structures results in an Unique layout!!

 

Cheers

Rick

[keitaro]

I have a plan for a large layout, well many different plans since i am not yet in a permanant residence and renting i really do not know what size layout i can build.

 

but planning what i would like to.

 

One thing that is in all plans is a large ghibli Laputa castle either floating or crashed on the ground.

[Martijn Meerts]

I have various ideas, but I won't be able to add them all to the layout..

 

I guess the most notable highlight would be the main station, which will have about 10-11 tracks, capable of handling 16 car trains. Around it will be a somewhat Tokyo inspired cityscape.

 

For me, the main highlight will be the Ghibli section though. The idea is to somehow fit all the Sankei Ghibli kits on 1 part of the layout, but I have no idea how that'll work out yet.

 

I'm tempted going with an autumn feel to the layout because of all the colours, and possibly go for a spring feel with cherry blossoms around the Ghibli area to make it stand out even more.

 

I'm also planning on adding day/night cycle lighting eventually, although I'm not sure how well that's going to work with some of the taller buildings.. The shadows might end up being a bit weird :)