The White River and Northern Model Railroad: Chapter 8

	The N Scale

	Model Railroad

Chapter 8: The Future

What will Version VI be like?

To quote Yoda, "Always in motion is the future." Such is the story of my life.

Admittedly most of my layouts have suffered the effects of emotional trauma as much if not more than practical matters such as moves—although there have been plenty of those, too. My life has been one huge roller coaster ride, and another, very personal website of mine reveals the most recent turmoil. Right now, circumstances are such that I cannot start another permanent layout.

As to when I might have the opportunity to begin another layout, the best I can say is no earlier than around 2012. Presently I am living in a condo that, like the condo I owned previously, is only temporary lodging. Of course, these could be famous last words, and I might be here for a very long time, but it is not my desire or intention; the length of my stay will be determined by the way life plays out. Ultimately my ambition is to build my own home, or at the very least buy something that will be seriously renovated.

The things that can be counted on, layout-wise, are a collection of features and attributes that have made appearances on one or more previous WR&N incarnations. Guaranteed the next layout will have full day-night lighting, hundreds if not thousands of lights, fields of fireflies, and many other sources of illumination. And it will have loads of animated scenes, since Version IV gave me the opportunity to hone my animation skills (the clinics provide details on many projects that will be recreated).

In addition, my Wish List contains such things as enhancements to the lighting system along the lines of stars that come out at night, perhaps a moonrise, and one item I'd been wanting to make for many years: the faint sweep of an airport searchlight from somewhere over the horizon. In life I was entranced by one as a very young boy, and I have some ideas about how to recreate the subtle effect. I'd like to have a couple of apartments or houses with detailed interiors that are just barely visible through the windows, and at night the living rooms would dance with the bluish flicker of television sets. Leveraging new technology, I'd like to have a drive-in theater where a movie of my choosing is actually projected onto a screen (as opposed to the current trick of using a miniature LCD display as the screen—clever, but not realistic enough for me).

I have visions of animated scenes such as a four-lane highway with lighted vehicles in motion, a forklift truck that actually moves items from one location to another, an army of loaded cement trucks churning away, a street cleaner with spinning brushes, and a riding lawnmower making the rounds in someone's yard. More subtle items I've considered animating include: twirling ceiling fans in a restaurant or bank lobby; doors opening and closing on a bus; shoppers riding an escalator in a small department store; the front end of a broken-down car being lifted by a tow truck; and swinging tails on some contented cows. Some of these may perhaps seem almost too subtle to bother with, but such tiny things can add the spark of life to an otherwise static little world.

Some things that had been started for Version IV but never completed remain carefully tucked away in project cabinets, waiting to come to life. I began work on a playground that would include working swings, see-saws, and a roundabout. One scene the previous layout featured was a vast underground cavern, complete with stalactites, stalagmites and a lake; this "tourist trap" was to eventually include an elevator for the visitors; I got as far as creating a couple of flash cameras that would fire off at random intervals. I'd built a fully-articulated excavator that dug gravel out of a pit and loaded it into a dump truck; the plan was to have the dump truck dump the gravel back into the pit. It sounds like a contradictory and unrealistic operation, of course, but it was a practical way to provide a continuous supply of material for the excavator, as well as an excuse for more animation opportunities.

One of the biggest lessons learned from the WR&N IV was the need for more careful planning for the placement of detailed and animated scenes. For example, I'll be sure next time to locate the barber shop a few inches from the layout edge so you can see the boy in the barber chair getting his hair cut; the gas station repair bay will face visitors square-on so you can see all of the greasy tool boxes and the car on the lift... you get the idea.

Readers may get the impression that trains are perhaps a secondary consideration in my model work, since most of my ideas seem to center around almost everything except trains. But in truth the trains remain the centerpiece; they are already self-animated and illuminated, and there aren't that many accessory railroad items in need of motion. I've already animated crossing gates, enginehouse doors, loading cranes, a water tower spout, and so forth. When we model the rest of the world surrounding our trains, the possibilities for exciting dynamic effects are virtually endless.

During this "layoutless" period of my life I've not been entirely idle, as I've investigated Layout Photography in the Digital Age and Code 25 rail?!? Plus, I'm keeping my modeling skills honed by working on a temporary Z scale layout, the James River Branch.

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