Modeling Cliches to Avoid when Building your Layout

[nachoman]

I think there was a pet peeve thread recently on the MR forums that may give you a few ideas.

Keep in mind, that some of your "cliches" are unavoidable due to spatial or scale constraints. In other words, you could make "too sharp of curves" a cliche that all layouts fall victim too. Or the mountain that is not large enough to warrant a tunnel as opposed to simply blasting a cut. Too many tunnels is true of most layouts, but if the options are to either have too many tunnels or see towns spaced too close together, most would opt for the tunnels. In the end, they are all our own layouts and we can do what we want to achieve the goals that we want. I want my layout to be a "dramatic characterization" with things "plausible yet exaggerated". I find the ultra-realistic prototype-faithful layouts to be somewhat boring. They look good, but are somewhat less inspiring.

In light of my profession, I will try to give a few things that bug me, and things I try to avoid (if possible) on my own layouts.

1) landforms that don't pay homage to the processes that created them. Real landforms obey laws of physics and nature. That means, the steepest slope you will ever see in uncomsolidated material is about 25 degrees. There are also particular geometries to meander bends, and the angles in which tributary rivers join their trunk streams. Floodplains are also well-defined by topography and vegetation. Thre are also particular relationships between topography, where and what kind of vegetation you see, and where talus accumulates. Sure, we all have exaggerated slopes and topography on our layouts, because if we didn't every layout would be "plywood flat". But I have seen some layouts where there is nowhere for the water to drain, no places fro rockfalls to accumulate, and streams with vegetated point bars and gentle cut banks.

2) layouts that pay little attention to the rock type beneath the land on which they are "built". I see too many canyons and cliffs of that ubiquitous grayish-brown stained plaster rock casting.. In the real world, rocks are many different colors - not just gray or brown. There are many different types of rockscreated by many different processes, but the model railroad standard seems to be to gray generic "country rock" of unknown type. I have been guilty of this in the past - mainly because of the issue of time and resources. But the reality is that it shouldn't take much more time or money to make more convincing rocks.