In Italian, the word “opera” means simply “work,” but to us English, it refers to a piece of art where robustly-sized talents exercise their robustly-sized lungs in a language we don’t understand. “Opera” the base for the model railroad jargon, “operations,” and as we consider our audiences’ responses to our layouts, the operator is one of the more challenging ones because they are themselves part of the work. Of our four audiences – casual visitor, railway enthusiast, operator and now the layout builder – they spend the most time behind the curtain after the builder themself.
While our visiting operators are a more challenging group to influence, maybe they are also the ones that can have a deeper exposure to the story or central idea of the layout. How can the big idea of the layout be expressed to the operators?
While we were discussing this question back in September, Gary Hinshaw shared his Tehachapi BC layout’s central idea is that mountain railroading is still hard, even in the 21st Century with all the technology we have to throw at it. His layout is a technological marvel, with Centralized Traffic Control running on the dispatcher’s laptop next door, turnouts that you can operate with your phone, and tiny N-scale locomotives with all the lighting and sound features you’d struggle to fit into an HO model.
Gary’s frustration is couplers. Those locomotives pull long trains up steep hills, and sometimes the couplers fail. But maybe those coupler failures are exactly what should happen to operators to make them get the sense that mountain railroading is still hard. Okay, the tail of the train probably shouldn’t take off and roll all the way to Bakersfield, but maybe it’s okay if couplers break once or twice a night. Mountain railroading is hard and dangerous, and a visiting engineer should get a feeling of risk.
James Hilton’s book, The Art of Railway Modelling, suggests a number of scenes where a switcher simmers at the ready, waiting to knock some trucks about. This feeling is difficult to instill if the first thing the operator does is to wind up the sound system, which acknowledges it is ready with a friendly toot.
Never having owned a layout like this, I don’t know how successful they are. However, what if such cameo layouts were always on, the locomotive burbling away, like an aquarium, and popping and hissing occasionally, unlike an aquarium. Would they instil in the operator or owner the sense of impending motion? Like the real thing, it would always be ready, waiting to be called upon.
As for Pembroke, where the key feeling I’m seeking to evoke is one of optimism and industry, I believe I’ve bungled in the right direction, at least when it comes to industry. The idea has always been to require work to drive the train. That is why there is no push button for the turntable, and why the turnout levers are not toggle switches. It is the reason I am planning to build a steam throttle this spring. And, if I could figure out a way to make firemen shovel coal, I would.
Image credit: Florida Grand Opera, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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I enjoy these contemplations, thank you for writing this.
I didn’t know the history of the word “opera”. Cool! This year, I am making good on my challenge to myself to listen to one opera a week. I say things like “I like opera” but then feel the guilt of “well, if I do like it so much why do I never spend time on opera?” Easy solutions.
As you know, my experience with the hobby is always one staged here in the living room. More than just a label on a space in our home it is, truly, the room where the living happens. All the living. If my model railroad was in a “train room” then I could exert a curator’s rule on who saw my work, when they saw it, even how they see it, just like how I might decide what I do or don’t include on the layout.
Instead my layouts are here and when I am working on them or working with them, I am realising that I am part of a performance piece: Mears Makes Model Trains. As my family circulate around in the same space, in their patterns of living, they observe me at work on my models. They overhear the sounds of making models and the expressions of joy when the work works and the cries of sorrow when the work doesn’t work.
Once I realised this, I started to interrogate what this performance needs to look like. I say I like model railways and what should that look like? How can I perform that? Express that image? Is a blank of pink foam and a stack of unopened boxes it? Equally, is observing me trying to do this normalizing the practice of learning anything. We communicate the value of what we do by how we portray our relationship with it. I like to think they see me trying and they can better appreciate the effort isn’t in divinely-inscribed talent but practice, evaluation, and curiousity.
Lately, I wonder if this realisation is equal or like the rubric we would apply internally when selecting a prototype. We are familiar with questions like era, complexity of scope, or how well will Scene X fit into my space. I think there’s a question here that recognizes me as a performer in a one man play acting the work of making this thing. Will this look like I am making something I’m passionate about?
When I was building my layout, The Shove, here last year it was a study in ambience inherited from the room around it. The Shove had no dedicated lighting rig and the room itself is lit only by the windows and a couple of normal room lights. As light in the room changed, day for night, the layout was lit equally. This subjected the layout to the same environmental conditions affecting every thing in the space and I feel was a way of connecting (“grounding”) the work in our home. We’re used to exerting force to control aesthetics like lighting of our scenes and I liked the feeling of releasing myself from that role. It was nice that, late at night when I operated the layout, it was dimly lit like the rest of house when it’s calm in those hours. Connected to me too.
We tend to like to control the layout’s reality. You touched on this with turning on the layout at the flick of a switch. The Shove existed across the room from where I sit to work most days. Existing in my peripheral vision it was always there and the decision to operate it or work on it was like crossing a busy room to be with an interesting person and converse with them. It wasn’t always demanding of my attention and we could move around the space independent of each other or together.
I once designed a very small layout based on St.Ives station in England. Two turnouts, two engines and maybe three freight cars, focussed on a small engine shed. Operations (the play) were really just shuffling engines in and out of the shed. The operating session, accordingly, would be very short. The real life location was by the ocean. I envisioned a subtle soundtrack of ambient ocean sounds playing all the time. This would create an aural scene that I was with long before and long after I was directly at the layout doing something. Like with the observation on ambient lighting, the idea was to come into a scene already there. I didn’t want the scene to start when I wanted it to and I didn’t want to control when it ended. I didn’t want to contain the experience. I wanted to modulate my relationship with it. That, just like in real life, operating the layout was like visiting the real thing. The real thing happens whether I’m there with it or not. The feeling of realism and not just the representation of it.
I’m rambling and I promised myself I wouldn’t write a blog post as a comment.
Chris
Hi Chris,
I’m reading this for the second or third time, so my apologies for the delayed response.
The view of yourself as an actor in a one-person play is fascinating. I’m sure my family, who share the train (er rec) room with me don’t pay attention to the mood of my one-person play. However, there could be an element of psychology at work. If I were to aim to look like I was enjoying myself, maybe I would enjoy myself. Perhaps thinking of the hobby as a one-person play, and considering the mood that you aim to portray in that play is a way to be deliberate about what you’re getting out of the hobby.
Your observation about controlling the aesthetics of the scene is also astute. In many ways, we seek to isolate our hobby from the room. Even Pembroke, which shares the room so intimately with the family activities, is delineated by a hard fascia. Turning on the model world is a distinct act, and when the lights are off, it is less connected to the room.
Thanks again for the ramble of interesting thoughts.
Rene