Vince Valley - Applying Lessons Learned From the Circle

The originating  story of this post goes back as far as last October when I was exploring weathering techniques on old plastic kits, many of them Revell. Exploring the American Southwest sure was an excellent way to be immersed into an ubiquitous presence that have always been there in this hobby.

And let's be bold. If I wasn't modelling Canadian National and its adjacent themes, I would either model 1870s 4-4-0 trains or simply the king of model railroading: ATSF. If you have grown up looking at box art like me for hours as a kid, you have been saturated with Santa Fe locomotives and cars. Geeps in dark blue and yellow, F-units in Warbonnet and classic big steamers like the 4-8-4 and the 2-10-4. I blame Bachmann for that, but Life-Like and Model Power didn't help. It's iconic, it's in your face, it's powerful, it's glamourous, it encapsulate everything about cool model railroading.

Classic ATSF steam at Raton Pass in 1954 (credit: Ed Olsen)

The idea of modelling the Southwest grew on me when I was thinking of transforming the Monk returning loop as an American themed shelf layout. Imagine, the main layout is CN and the hidden staging in the other room is Colorado or New Mexico. The idea didn't go far, but then, I explored it again as a lightweight shelf layout in my office room. Would be cool, but cumbersome. Then Merkiomen made me superdetail cheap kits using SP and UP... and ATSF, colors and details. Later, Merkiomen died and it resurrected from its ashes as my childhood friend Vince's long gone old layout. It had been built by is late uncle and decorated with sand to replicate the Southwest with a classic dry riverbed with a low trestle and the ubiquitous Arlee Station.

My friend's original layout track plan

Having collected by accident a few Union Pacific locomotives that were supposed to be kitbashed as CN locomotives, I had a head start... but then, I started to collect a few BLI ATSF steamers. Second hand for some, but also looking at refurbished one. Having seen pictures of the ATSF Fast Mail Express, I had some ideas in my mind. I waited for almost a year until I found the exact BLI Blue Goose (1950s appearance) to recreate that iconic train. I was settled.

Playing with elements to get the feeling right

As I said, I had that idea to recreate my friend's layout because I kind of liked the pragmatic yet versatile track plan. A station on a side with two sidings and a long passing track, and a classification yard on the other side, both separated by a scenic divider that was nothing more than a low kraft paper hill.

We derived countless hours of operation out of that simplistic layout, but let's accept the fact it was quite straightforward and made with brass snapswitches in a classic sectional track approach. Forget about easement, smooth transitions in the yard, superelevation or anything else related to quality track. It was an issue back then, it's even worse now that my standards have been significantly raised in 30 years.

I had to make that layout more jazzy, more curvy, more natural... more grounded in reality. Since ATSF was in my mind, I quickly thought about Raton Pass on the New Mexico border. Far less impressive for railfans than Tehachapi Pass, but quite inspiring for people interested in subtler scenery possibilities.

At Raton Pass, the line follow the river (credit: Eugene Diller)

At that time, a few months ago, I was using extensively AI and Copilot to flesh out the concept, including town names, operating schemes, train consists and even scenery. It was new, flashy, exciting and... full of blatant errors. I had to quickly acknowledge I was fed garbage 50% of the time. Some ideas were cool, but nothing to write to your mother. The sycophant aspect of AI was showing off and at the end of the time, it was just saying what I wanted to hear. A pure definition of an echo chamber... so AI got the boot and the project stalled for a little bit.

Switchlist lore generated by Copilot

That said, some work happened on the layout, including making foam splines and exploring a few ideas I will share in a next post. What really changed my approach was that I explored Gosford Railways ideas using the same footprint.

A twisty previous version of Q&G

A particular picture of Lake St. Joseph station struck my imagination. I put it in a double S-curve and it worked magic. That's an old trick, but I recall seeing it on a beautifully designed small Japanese HO layout and felt it was worth trying again.

Lake St. Joseph on QLStJ Railway (credit: BAnQ)

Tracks follow valleys (credit: BAnQ)

I added these curves to the Vince Valley, my project file name for the layout, and it started to bring life to what was just a typical 4' x 8'. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with the riverbed and it was left as just a small ponctual feature in a corner.

Building something from scratch

I recall Copilot provided names such as Toluca station and Haskell yard for the main feature. I my mind, it was to be a helper district with an engine house and some sort of facilities to replicate mountain railroading. The creek and pass got named Ringtail as a nod to Raton Pass, though it never congealed perfectly into the concept.

The revised concept was still quite crude

Fast forward to last week and it was time to revive the Vince Valley concept. Once again, I started to play with the Gosford. Archives pictures shows that line followed closely rivers and valleys, curving here and there to conform to the topography. It opened perspectives but closed others. That was clearly resonating with Chris' ideas on the circular JNR layout concept. I thought it would be worth it to use the river not as a scenic feature, but as the backbone of the layout.

Revised Quebec & Gosford with the river on a paper towel

The track would follow the river as long as it could to explain with the railway was so curvy and twisted. Hills would frame that river to make it geologically plausible and realistic. I really liked how the JNR design closed the ends of the layout with higher ground instead of treating it as opening space. It was now two large scenes, back to back, that curved on each side in a realistic fashion. The scenes were neither approached in a frontal way, but rather diagonally. In Toluca, it was all about standing by the river and looking upstream. You could see the train emerge from the treacherous valley/pass, curve around the meander, stop at the station and continue its route. It also helped to frame the area in from of the station. With the long river crossing the entire scene, it made it cohesive and the "distant" hills really started to make sense. Small rural stations located at a river crossing are one of the classic thing in railroading. It emphasizes the depot as a nodal point point around which everything radiate. No need to model the village, we know it isn't far away...

Revised ATSF Vince Valley design without the bulges

At Haskell, the yard was no longer a contrived set of parallel track, but something flowing into the topography. There was a small natural plateau where the railway built the yard and it made sense.

How scenic bulges are framed (credit: Chris Mears)

All these interesting features would also be accompanied by a free form fascia that follows the scenes and expands where needed rather than framing the 4' x 8'. It's all about breaking that sheet of plywood and it's linear nature. Where the eyes and camera requires a larger foreground, it does expand. The perimeted created alcoves and bulges that are naturally responding to the layout with the goal, at the end of the day, of fooling us believing these is more than meet the eyes.

As for conclusion, the last lesson learned was to use watercolors (highly diluted acrylic paint on my desk!) to shape layout designs. It's incredible how the fuzziness of a brush is much better at grasping scenic ideas than anything else and in just a few strokes.