Acquisitions - 8 Track Plans for Modern Era Switching Layouts - Lance Mindheim

As most of you know I'm a big Lance Mindheim fan and to this point if it had his name on it I bought it. I didn't jump all over his latest release, "8 Track Plans for Modern Era Switching Layouts", though. As expected I already own his two other track plan books: "8 Realistic Track Plans for Small Switching Layouts" and "8 Realistic Track Plans for a Spare Room". Those two books are excellent but they are very focused on track plans with a bit of description, very much like what you would find in a magazine track plan article. Being a completist I broke down and ordered it expecting a book very similar to his first two. I was happily surprised that this track plan book is a different beast entirely!

First off this book is about twice as big as the prior two efforts. All three have plenty of prototype pictures and just about every plan in all three is based on a prototype. There are four cities featured in the Modern Era book; Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Baltimore and Miami and six railroads; BNSF, UP, CXS, Florida East Coast (FEC), the Canton Railroad and the New York New Jersey Rail. A little something for everyone in this book.

The introduction is really a chapter by itself. Its 20 pages long and goes into the how, why and the philosophy behind track plan design. How to wrangle realistic operations in our typically limited spaces and still represent the prototype in a manner that we can model and capture the look and feel of the setting we have selected. Maybe the most important bit in this section is how to modify a design you like but doesn't quite fit your space.

Then we get into the meat of the book, track plans! There is an introduction to each track plan going into a history and description of the area, key design elements along with construction and design notes. There are color photos of key areas that are included in the design, an overall map of the area along with the track plan itself.

This are pretty typical Mindheim designs. You will find that the plans are kept pretty simple, only the needed amount of trackage is included. The existing track for the given area is evaluated, condensed and reduced. Extra track to add complexity is never added, if its not on the prototype then it doesn't appear in the plan. The prototype keeps things as simply as possible and we should too, that's what reflected in Lance's designs. These are all urban layouts, benchwork is simple and kept relatively narrow, making for designs that can be up and operating relatively quickly.

I appreciate Lance's designs a lot. I'm not particularly interested in nor have the space for an immense layout that fits in with the Koester philosophy of operations. Small spaces don't lend themselves to operations that are oriented around how many trains can be run in a given period and how many operators can be accommodated. I like to think that I have managed to absorb and use some of Lance's philosophy for my own D&RGW Warehouse Row layout.  My interest is in the end result, the final delivery of a freight car to its destination and then the reverse getting that, now empty, car back to the yard to be assigned to its next job.

If you are interested in track plans then this is a must have for the book shelf. I think everyone can take something away from this book when contemplating the space you have and what might fit, especially if you are interested in switching operations.

New Model Railroad Book - "How to Design a Model Railroad" by Lance Mindheim

I'm a bit of a Lance Mindheim fan and I had to pick up his latest book "How to Design A Model Railroad" from Kalmbach Books even though I must have half a dozen layout design books plus numerous track plan books. All of his previous books have been self-published so its nice to see Kalmbach recognize his talents. I think I first came across his work when pictures of his East Rail layout were published in MR (Model Railroader) and later found some more of his work in a few issues of the LDJ (Layout Design Journal), I was pretty much hooked at that point and bought every book he published after that (much like Iain Rice, if I see the name I'm going to buy the book).

I appreciate is approach to keeping things as simple as possible but still managing to keep a design interesting. That approach is well emphasized in this new book.

This is likely to become my go to design book at this point. I think one of the reasons for that is Lance approaches layout design in a very integrated manner. Much like the Armstrong "Given's and Druthers" Lance asks his clients a series of questions but geared more to determine what the client can realistically achieve in the time they have to devout to the layout. This helps discern what the client is really looking for before getting into the nitty gritty Armstrong style questions. I can here it already what the heck are you talking about? 

Let's look at this from the standpoint of the classic armchair modeler who accumulates kits, rolling stock and locomotives with the idea of building their dream layout...as soon as they figure it out. The questions that Lance asks helps those people get out of the armchair and get focused on what that layout really may be. We don't always need to fill the basement just because we can doesn't mean we should. There isn't much point in filling a basement with a mountain layout if it turns out your interest is really in recreating your childhood memories of railroads in Chicago.

Then the design process can really start but the approach is very different from that of other designers, at least in my opinion. He is still following the same "rules" he established in his self-published "How to Design a Small Switching Layout" available on Amazon, but in a more refined form and showing how he uses his own process in designing layouts for his clients.

This is a very readable book, Lance has always been a good writer but this new book really shows a level of refinement that I really appreciate especially in the presentation of the material. Combine this with his self published "Model Railroading as Art" book and you have a winning one-two combination.

Acquisition & Review - Model Railroading as Art - Lance Mindheim

I bought this book a while ago and have been slowly making my way through it. Not because its particularly difficult to read but time seems to be in short supply this year and the puppy managed to eat it not once but twice, so this is my third copy of the book.

There are three writers that I really admire in the model railroad industry; Iain Rice, Tony Koester and Lance Mindheim. Earlier this year I was thinking that it had been quite a while since Mindheim had published a book although he is published in the model railroad press on a frequent basis. I did a quick search and my timing was perfect a new book was in the works. I was hoping that it might be a compilation or perhaps a complete guide on how he does creates his model buildings, but it was quickly evident that he was going to go in a slightly different direction than that. I ordered a copy pretty much as soon as it was available. I eagerly started reading and was about 2 chapters in when the puppy dragged it out of my backpack for a quick snack. I promptly ordered a second copy since the direction that Lance takes is quite fascinating. Being somewhat more careful this time I was keeping it my laptop bag which I unfortunately left unzipped and she found it again. Copy number 2 was good for a mid morning snack. At that point I took about a month long break before ordering my third copy of Lance's book. While the material presented was worth the wait I don't recommend having to purchase it 3 times.

Model Railroading as Art is a very different approach to the hobby than what we are used to seeing and reading. While there isn't new material on how to build something it does present an entirely different perspective on how we should (or at least could) view and design our layouts. I think Iain Rice uses some of these concepts, almost unconsciously, in his approach to design. Lance really does a fine job of translating how to take long established concepts of artistic design and philosophy and applying that to our layouts.

He takes on the visual elements of color, space and line and how we can use those elements to highlight features on are layout. Helping to direct the viewer's eye to where we want it to go and not see the layout as a model railroad but distinctly as a railroad. Scene composition becomes the key, we cannot represent the entirety of even a small part of a railroad in the typical spaces we have available, but rather than compressing our subject and perhaps trying to put to much in we should think about cropping our subject. Change our perspective around the physical boundaries, better element selection (time to stop buying all those cool kits, focus on what is important, time to sell off some of the stuff I have been accumulating) and how to think about placing those elements (or not placing as the case may be). This revolves around your focal point for a given area and requires you to look closer at spacing, scene compression, scale and proportion.

Scale is particularly intriguing within the context of the book. Its not so much about the scale you work in but how things within that scale look, not everything scales down very well. In particular how to deal with overly thick items that we just can't get smaller like hand rails. Lance maintains that the miniature people that populate our layouts also fall into that particular category. While I might agree that the current generation of miniatures that are available to us fall into this classification I think that is more a production problem within the model railroad hobby. If we look at the tabletop miniature world, fine scale miniatures and even our friends in the armor modeling world we can find plenty of samples of miniatures that fit very well within their scaled environments. I have compared some O scale miniatures available through Knuckleduster that not only are much cheaper than the O scale miniatures produced by model railroad companies but totally blow them out of water on both price and quality. So it can be done but we need some one to step up and actually do it in HO scale (at least for me).

None the less, that's a pretty minor disagreement on my part. I only wish that in a couple places Lance had gone into a bit more detail than is actually present but all the information is incredibly useful. This book really dovetails into some of the goals I have for my Warehouse Row layout and I certainly intend to take advantage of utilizing the  "Art" approach that Lance is pushing in this book. I definitely feel that this is a must have book for your model railroad library.