Westbrook

[jwb]

If you want a "look and feel" of Guilford, try this thread <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thewhistlepost.com/forums/ho-scale/11046-winter-new-england-mark-ii.html">http://www.thewhistlepost.com/forums/ho ... rk-ii.html</a><!-- m --> It seems to me that what Mal is doing is taking a basically UK style track arrangement, or at best a Timesaver, and trying to hammer it into an area, northern New England, where the spaces are much more wide open and the industries not what Lance Mindheim would tell you to build. This probably works on a site like rmweb, where the philosophy of modeling is about the same for everyone. One problem is that for those in the US, it's clearer that the country is highly varied in scenery, industry, geography, and so forth. You can't just say my shunty-plank is New England because, you see, it has a Guilford GP40.

Here are some areas where Michael Cawdrey's version of New England is much closer to the area I know fairly well:

-- Trees and ground cover are convincingly modeled and suit the region
-- A backdrop reflects the region and the season
-- Trackage isn't forced into a timesaver-style urban switching scheme
-- There's no attempt to crowd too much into a small space
-- There's more understanding that the branch line era is earlier and thus more emphasis on MEC, B&M, and D&H equipment
-- There's more of a sense that you don't build an instant layout with a few kits

Night and day.