12-25-2011, 09:57 AM
Tyson Rayles Wrote:Choices 2 and 3 lend themselves well to majestic mountain scenery while 4 would make a great urban "canyon" layout. Seems like now you should be able to cross either #4 off and pick between 2 and 3 or cross them off the list and go with #4.
Nah. Part of the challenge is that Justin is not actually comparing themes. He is just listing railroads (SP, WP, MILW, BNSF, "random eastern"), regions (Oregon, California, "anywhere between Chicago and Seattle", Arizona or "anywhere along the east coast"), and rough eras (modern and transition).
Some possible themes:
Switching freight cars for local industries in a small town
Switching freight cars for local urban industries
Engine terminal
Car repair facility (could also be a museum setup - moving stuff to be restored into the workshop).
Another option would have been to go to some kind of layout where it would have been natural for continuously running traffic to go back and forth without turning - say trams, interurbans, railcars, subways, DMU commuter trains or some such thing. Either a point along the way, with both ends being hidden, and a timer deciding how long until the train returns, or a terminal or junction, where the car arrives from staging, unloads, reloads and leaves.
Or maybe some kind of intra-plant type of movements - say within a steel mill. Moving cars around dockside in a harbor. Or moving between a gravel pit and a transloading point of some kind, to be dumped, before returning to the place they came from to be reloaded.
Lots and lots and lots of possible themes. Within most of the railroads and eras he is listing. Well, probably not any harbors in Arizona. So if he wants harbors, I guess Arizona is out :-)
Smile,
Stein