Hobo Jungle

[healey36]

My clock here is 08:38AM, but the site time is 01:38PM...what are we running here, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)?

Thanks for the nun pic, Dirt. Saw those and went into the fetal position for a couple of hours. Those were tough years...the sight of a meter-stick still weakens the knees...

Healey

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Really, really nice Murph. ... The trees, as always, are great...would love to learn how to do that some day.
Happy New Year everyone...
Healey

I can help you with that right now, if you wish, Healey, but you probably instinctively know a lot of this already. If the desire is in you , I'd say that was Step1, truly.

Step2:You've heard the old axiom - You need the right tools for the right job, or something like that? Purchase everything you need ahead (I do not like stopping once I have begun just because I don't have an element at-hand) of time - ground-covers (I use a combination of ingredients from Dennis Brennen's website and from Jim Elster's Scenic Express); trees in a variety of sizes, tones, hues, species; low foliage in great variety (all from Scenic Express); variety of glues (detailed later if you like.) Skimping is anathema - it chokes enthusiasm and creativity. Buy too much rather than too little. Someday, you will use it all.

Step3: Find yourself a space that can be, even if it's just for the duration of the project, exclusively yours, with no need to pick-up after yourself or be neat, a place nobody would dare molest.

Step4: (a.) Select a comfortable chair that keeps you upright and perky for long stints. (b.) Array all the ingredients you have made ready around you on a palette. I usually make a U-shaped table, around me on three sides, out of 3/4 plywood sheets atop garbage cans in the garage (so we have agreed that one of the cars gets exiled to the driveway for the duration.)

Step5: Go for a drive (I'm not kidding) unless a recent one or one particularly sharp in visual memories has inspired you to start this quest. For me, the solo-drive helps relax and "get me in the grove" for time to be spent exclusively on craftwork. However, usually, I have so many impressions leaking out of my imagination that I am loaded and raring to start crafting.

Step6: Start grabbing and arranging trees and shrubbery from your handy palette (no ground-covers as yet and no mini-foliage, unless the spirit moves you, because they will just get in the way of the gluing process.)

Step7: When you feel yourself getting tired/fatigued or at-a-loss for the next creative impulse, take a walk, snack, or do something else - just not laborious tasks. Remember, it takes as much food-energy/nutrition to think as it does to play football for an hour. You will notice that as you create, particularly when inspired, you will find yourself getting hungry. Snack or have a light meal.

Step8: Once you have the main building(s) (if any) and trees exactly (even though they will not end up exactly there) where you want them, take a good look at what you have guess-timated and remove it all. Gluing the trees comes first. Water-based glues cannot go anywhere near the working surface, at this point because they undermine everything and can get us frustrated. elect a strong glue you like. I use Gorilla Glues and Liquid Nails. Glue the trees down and let it al cure until the trees are in good and sturdy.

Step8: Once the trees are in-place, then you can have fun with the low foliage and ground-covers
(To be continued...) Regarding any attempt at "realism," I do not trust my memory alone. If I'm not sure, I go take a look. For example, I thought I knew what a forest floor looked like, esp. since I was a great one for taking long hikes into the woods when I was a child and an adolescent in a suburb near Pittsburgh. However, I decided I needed a refresher-course. I needed it for sure.

Sometimes I took photos to be sure I had it right. I've, also, used photos from friends, like the tractor-featuring one here from Pete and the bridge-featuring one from Hev; note the ground's features at the foot of the support.

Rule1: Don't get cute. Or precious. That is, don't treat any scene, finished or on-its-way, as already so adorable it freezes-up your creativity and need to explore and express further options. Also, at times, it's wise to walk away, for some moments or for a day or two, to get a further perspective on what your hands have created up to that point. I have ripped apart more than a few scenes that I thought were lies.

For example, here is a between-the-tracks hot-mess, which I am ashamed to even show here, that I thought was adequate at the time (2006) but subsequently came to regard as a hot-mess, so it got ripped out. To me, ground-cover and lone tree came to look like a pile (of products) not like anything even approaching realistic.

[2railjon]

Murph, your approach to modeling is unique, and down to earth!
Obviously the reason your scenes are so admired.
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective!

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Thanks,Jon!
Here are examples of how my "immersions," as I refer to them in my own mind, into Nature, to try to understand low foliage and the use of trees as best I can, away from metropolitan areas like where I live, pan-out for me. Such excursions help me understand what the scruffier landscapes outside of suburbia can look like. Perhaps the influence of such places as I have pictured above can be detected in these scenes I made?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My clock here is 08:38AM, but the site time is 01:38PM...what are we running here, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)?

You can adjust that to be correct for your location in the User Control Panel

[healey36]

Murph – Thanks for that. Having seen many pictures of your layout over the years, it’s been obvious to me that the “art” of scenery is far more important than the technical assembly. That is borne out in your text. One can craft a great looking tree, but if you jam it in the wrong place it looks and works poorly.

As a pre-war tinplater I have lived in a world of luffa, wire, pipe-cleaners, lichen and pot-scrubbers. What fascinates me most about your scenes is the quality of the foliage and the realistic trunks/branches (putting aside the fantastic buildings). When you can see individual leaves on the trees, that’s impressive.

I’ll check out the suppliers you suggested. The materials would certainly be an upgrade over what I’ve toyed with in the past.

In Peter Riddle’s standard gauge book he advocated scenic’ing a tinplate layout similar to your methods…incrementally, in small sections, each on a Masonite base which can be developed off the layout, then incorporated on completion. This is similar to some of the pre-war “plot” methods Lionel developed and marketed during the 1930’s, only theirs being far more primitive in execution. I’m going to take a whack at this once the shoulder heals up.

Again, thanks for the pointers.

Healey

P.S. You're killing me with that VW bus...got to find one of those.

[healey36]

Done...thanks Rufus.

Healey

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Murph – Thanks for that. Having seen many pictures of your layout over the years, it’s been obvious to me that the “art” of scenery is far more important than the technical assembly...

...I’ll check out the suppliers you suggested. The materials would certainly be an upgrade over what I’ve toyed with in the past...
Again, thanks for the pointers.
Healey

P.S. You're killing me with that VW bus...

Scenic Express has such huge variety that my imagination gets stimulated just looking through Jim's website, and seeing his products displayed at shows and meets, like the TCA event @ York, Pa, I get hypnotized and leave loaded with new ideas which I can barely wait to utilize. The products themselves inspire me.

For example, you should see his O-scale Halloween figures. I had to have them even with no particular use in mind for them but bought them just 'cause they're so well articulated in their cuteness. His Santa & Elf duo is so good looking I used them on my re-do of the FAO layout this year.
Murph

[rogruth]

Murph,

CTT often will have a sidebar type of thing with some articles listing "Essential Elements".

Your listing of eight or nine elemnts IMHO are essential and should be available to everyone.

Listings like this from a modeler with the reputation and finesse of Murph and others should
be available to all.[Think I already said that.]

I have learned something from every model railroad I have seen.
That doesn't mean I have used what I learned.
Sometimes you learn stuff you don't want use.

One thing I learned from Murph and a few others was to not hesitate to try something and if
you screw it up or don't like it just tear it out, paint over it or whatever until you get what you want.

[webenda]

That's a lot of pictures Murph, thank you.

I don't remember seeing the Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building before. I like the rusty tin roof. I went over to Monongahela and looked for such a building--couldn't find it. I stopped in the Monongahela Historical Society to ask about the building.

Monongahela Hysterical.jpg (189.18 KiB) Viewed 1426 times

They had lots of old photos, but not one of your building. So I am wondering if you remember where the inspiration for the Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building came from?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

That's a lot of pictures Murph, thank you.

I don't remember seeing the Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building before. I like the rusty tin roof. I went over to Monongahela and looked for such a building--couldn't find it. I stopped in the Monongahela Historical Society to ask about the building.

The attachment Monongahela Hysterical.jpg is no longer available

They had lots of old photos, but not one of your building. So I am wondering if you remember where the inspiration for the Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building came from?

Pure sentiment:
The kit was purchased from Valley Model Trains, I believe, at least ten years ago, and I named the building just to get something on the layout, in those early days of Moon Township, that memorialized names from my youth in Duquesne and Mckeesport, Pa. The Monongahela R. passed between those two towns, and bridges were built to share lives of the people and to attend to needs by the mills (Duquesne Works; National Tube) to share product, like the so-called bottle cars that carried extremely hot liquid metal and were so heavy (lined with bricks to protect the outside world from their sun-like heat) a special span was built to cross the Monongahela to bear trains of prodigious weight.

Also, as a child, my mother nearly drowned in the river while swimming with her brothers along the shore, where there was a low shelf that reached out underwater into the main stream of the river for a particular distance; somehow, she had drifted too near where the edge of the safe area dropped quickly into the depths and the main channel, dredged to accommodate the barges carrying such materials as coke and iron ore, quietly but effectively muscled its huge way by. Her brother, Charles, immediately realized she had been grabbed by the deep water and reached out and grabbed her by the hair just in the nick-of-time. It always fascinated me, once I had been told that story, what a difference that day would have made in my life if he had not reached her.

So, that's my Monongahela story of how that building (modeled in a Pennsylvania red brick tone, modeling the brick of our house) came to be named.
Murph
P.S. The Monongahela bldg. was not situated in its present location at first. Here is its original site.

[webenda]

Thank you for the story Murph. I have been swept down a river. I just kept dog paddling toward the bank until I managed to grab a low hanging branch and get my footing. Even slow moving water can grab ya. In your mom's case it was a sudden drop-off underwater that sent her under. Thank goodness for a fast acting brother.

Most of your modeling seems a combination of memories and imagination. I would say the move of Valley Model Trains/ Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building was a good one. The building looks "right" in its downtown/city location.

I never tire of looking at your older photos. Got an idea for a new photo. Does your camera have a "Panorama" mode? You have shown us some "wide" shots before.
Example:

New Section

Wide Shot.jpg (44.58 KiB) Viewed 1557 times

But a panorama photo would show so much more of the train room in one shot.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Thank you for the story Murph. Most of your modeling seems a combination of memories and imagination. I would say the move of Valley Model Trains/ Moondog Cafe/Monongahela Club building was a good one. The building looks "right" in its downtown/city location.

I think you see the motivation at its heart. I had a wonderful childhood and adolescence in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The only negative memory, at all, was of course my father's death when I was 10; he was 41. Otherwise, all the relatives and friends, the solid work-ethic imbued by the steel mills at the center of everybody's practical lives, and the joy of so strong a Judeo-Christain community's value system, religious commitments, and ethical and moral environment pervading every aspect of daily life, have all blessed me with a deep sense of gratitude. Apparently, that joy has saturated my craftwork as memories surface from my heart to my fingertips and onto the scenery.

An aunt, upon descending the cellar stairs and into the train-room for the first time, when first looking across Moon Township (with no prompting whatsoever) exclaimed aloud, "Oh! This is Pennsylvania!) It's not deliberate, but I can see it is there via a happy childhood.

Conversations with you are always well worth their while and enjoyable, Doc. Wayne. Imagining you there in your house in Arizona, I have wished you joy, on more than one occasion, to say the least, sir.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

...a panorama photo would show so much more of the train room in one shot.

Not possible. Would that it were. The train-room meanders from one "room" to the next, taking a sharp-right at approx. 2/3 the way from the cellar entrance stairs to the last wall, in the new section, which was carved from the garage and added to the basement to accommodate an expanded layout.

The best I can offer is the following array, which walks you from the a portion of the first neighborhood viewable at the foot of the cellar stairs, along the "neck", to the rear mid-section and its valley, and then looks to the right into the newer section...
Fun?
Murph

[rogruth]

Looks purdy good ta me.