The Little World

And the solution.

A recent trip to a model railway exhibition showed me a taste of the different styles of layout; the dogbone continuous runner, the oval with benefits, the back and forth…sometimes with magazine feed.

There were thin layouts and fat ones, and a couple of very large ones with the operators sitting inside the ovals. In all cases they were surrounded with protective fences around which spectators gathered.

The satisfaction of the spectators varied, and not because of the complexity of the layouts – it turned on whether anything was happening and whether they could see it clearly. In some cases the design of the things prohibited either…

a, The narrow layout with two faces is good for the operators who can walk round it with wireless hand controllers – but as they do, the spectators lose sight of the trains.

b. The side to side shunting layout is only good when things are moving, and you can only shunt a rake of coal wagons so many times before the police intervene. When they are not moving, the watchers leave.

c. The hollow oval is wonderful if there is a continuous back scene behind which the operator can control the trains and eat an egg sandwich. If there is no scene people can see that sandwich go down and again they will want to leave. There needs to be constant changing motion, and not just an electric Thomas The Tank Engine endlessly circling an oval.

d. A layout can pop a train out of a tunnel at one side and into another one on the opposite end and people will be charmed – several times. However, peek-a-boo is a tiring thing over a couple of hours.

e. Finally, people are not fools, except for the ones who are. They will know that a Santa Fe diesel switcher is not normally seen on an LNER 30’s layout. It will entirely destroy the scale bubble the enthusiast tried to create.

Pop!