The James River Branch Z Scale Model Railroad: Fine-Tuning the Town

Fine-Tuning the Town

Some modelers start with a plan and stick with it, down to the last square inch, to the bitter end. Some start with no real plan at all and allow the layout to grow organically. And others, like me, are a mix of the two: we start with a plan, but let the layout mutate along the way.

The James River Brach certainly had a detailed plan from the get-go. It's more or less a necessity for tiny layouts like this—there isn't much room for organic growth. But there is room for some revision, and as the access panel for the town came into shape, I started plopping half-finished structures in place, and immediately realized that what looks good on paper doesn't necessarily translate well into three dimensions.

What wasn't immediately clear from the outset was that the town is on an incline. Not only will this make street building and structure foundations more complicated to fabricate, it will also place structures at unexpected vertical positions, making taller ones shorter and shorter ones taller. This is all quite difficult to determine in advance using a flat plan.

And so Naughtright is now in a state of flux. The process of getting everything to "fall into place" is sort of like a checkers game, where structures, streets and other features get shuffled around until they look "natural." To help find the best-looking arrangement, I took lots of photographs, several of which appear here. The rulers represent streets.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in all of this has been the tendency to not want to give anything up. Some structures need to be placed such that they can be examined closely—for example, the Spano's Service Station will have animation and loads of detail that I would not want lost at the back of the layout. I also have certain favorites, such as the Triangle Bar, which is something of a "problem child" owing to is unique shape.

The process hasn't finished, and the next installment details more changes to come. Oddly, the design seems to be settling into an arrangement similar to the older layout plan...

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The structures are placed roughly in position on the town's access panel.

Rulers help define the locations of the streets.

The cluster of tall structures seems to dominate the foreground.

But then this arrangement creates an awkward area that looks unfinished.

Curiously, this one is closer to the older plan and may wind up the choice.