Influence

I have long been a fan of the L&N since it was one of the principle railroads that served my hometown of Pensacola, FL. I remember the L&N of the 70’s and early 80’s in northwest Florida and south Alabama. This is a portion of the line seldom thought of, much less modeled, as the L&N typically conjures visions of Appalachian coal hauling. The L&N I grew up knowing served the paper and chemical industries along with agriculture and seaport traffic. During this timeframe it became a part of the Family Lines System and then the short lived Seaboard System before becoming part of CSX. This period of transition hosted a lively mix of locomotive paint schemes from L&N’s classic grey and yellow to the smart FLS ribbons as well as a mix of predecessor paint including SCL, C&O, and even some colorful Chessie System livery. Run through trains across the subdivision regularly included foreign paint from SP, SSW, UP and a variety of other roads from time to time. Long an HO modeler, the opportunity to run locomotives in a variety of corporate colors coupled with the increased fidelity and operating quality of N scale models has influenced me to try my hand at putting together a modern era layout that would otherwise not be possible in a larger scale. Memories of watching the Y202 yard job come “down the hill” from Goulding Yard to pick up and shove interchange traffic to the small Frisco (later BN) interchange yard and then switch the port yard fostered the notion that it would be fun to model that operation. Modules are chosen as the format for construction since space for a “permanent” layout is currently being utilized for other family purposes. Also, a modular setup will allow me to transport the layout for operating sessions at shows and potential connection with other modules based on the Free-moN standards I’m following.

Since operation is to be a main objective the modules will be designed with that in mind and module subjects will be chosen for their value in adding operational interest. While I appreciate fine modeling and intend to lean toward higher fidelity modeling I will leave my super-detailing efforts to the larger scales and exploit N scale’s size by modeling only what can realistically be seen from a few feet away and paying attention to texture as I believe it can be easily overdone in such a small scale. I plan to utilize a bit of the “good enough” philosophy as well as a minimalist approach as I believe the mind fills in a lot of the details based on what it perceives. This is especially true when operation is the focus at hand. I can comfortably say this based on personal experience operating on friend’s layouts where, in some cases, the only scenery was simple kit built plastic structures (maybe even a few were cardboard boxes) and not much else. We still had a blast running the layout and didn’t miss the scenery one bit.

That said I don’t intend to model the “Plywood (or Styrofoam) Pacific” either. I plan to strike what I feel to be a reasonable balance of scenery to attain a nice looking operation oriented modular set up …think Lance Mindheim’s Downtown Spur layout. He has used a lot of “photo detailing” to quickly model structures that appear to have a lot of detail but really only contain those three dimensional details deemed necessary to provide the most impact. The look is great for his HO layout …so I’m sure N scale could exploit that capability just as well if not better.