Stop It Right There!

I've been pondering all week long about the future highway overpass that will hide the staging area near Maizerets. For months, I doodled many possibilities, never pinpointing something interesting.

As you know, I recently commented about how this particular spot on the layout is becoming my favorite spot for its long sweeping curve. Adding an overpass to the scene will kill this nice setting. So after many consideration and doing field searches on the prototype this afternoon with Louis-Marie, I came to some conclusion. No need for an overpass with a weird and unbelievable design. I think it will only attract attention on a spot where I don't want people to look at.

Also, this is truly the staging area in the senes we build up the consists there. Adding useless structure will only make operation artificially harder.

I remember the time when I thought reproducing a prototype was to cram as much as possible prototype key features in the most improbable spatial organization possible. No, I'm not going this way anymore and looking at Maizerets grade crossing this afternoon and the magnificient French Regime Maison de Maizerets made me fully aware modelling the area with less compression would make it better.

I know I'm often stressing this point, but as I experiment more as a model railroader, I feel we put on ourselves a lot of useless constraints. We feel we need everything. We become obsessed with details while we totally miss the point about the global project. Less is not only more, it's about putting your efforts where it really counts.

I now have the chance to model almost full scale the storage siding between Maizerets and D'Estimauville. So far, everybody in the club agree the new scene - as it is - truly capture the prototype to a level we even thought we would achieve. We now have the choice to waste our time on gimmicks that will destroy this balance and divert our effort from building the cement plant. The room is small and the Ciment St-Laurent plant is very huge. Seriously, it takes about 17 feet of track which leaves about another 17 feet to reach the staging. The entire scene needs space to breath and equilibrate the behemoth industry.

By the way, we took many new pictures to make a better photo backdrop. Today was the perfect day for that. Lighting conditions were good and trees starting burgeoning. An interesting feature of late April/early May is that you have a nice mix of green grass and dead vegetation. Also, a few trees have small leaves. I'm not sure it will be easy to model, but I think it will help to blend the backdrop with the background scenery.