How do I make my railway look proffesional?

I recently visited Model Rail Live and as usual I saw lots of brilliant layouts, but going to these shows always leaves me feeling a little downhearted about my own railway. Even flicking through the magazines you see these masterpieces and I wish I could have something similar. My locos and rolling stock are a complete mix and whilst some are super detail, all singing all dancing, the majority are second hand models, as is a lot of the scenery. I know that these railways are built over many years, with people with much more experience than myself and that it needs practice to become better but are the any 'tricks of the trade' that I can use to make my railway look more professional?
Thanks,
LincsWolds60163

 

Well you could start by spelling professional correctly in the title

 

Fair point, well argued.

 

Strangely I find that some almost non related things make a real visual impact on a layout.

Put a valance on the front edge of your baseboard, hiding the tatty edge of the scenery. Paint it matt black and make sure that the scenery comes right to the edge of the board. 4mm plywood works well and is cheap enough, cardboard shows the corrugations and card tends to sag with humidity.

The valance also needs to be deep enough to cover under board wiring and make it big enough to give the impression of depth. Try it with a piece of black card if you are unsure. Also hide the stuff underneath with a one colour curtain, black or dark colours seem to work best.

Then tidy up the half finished, unloved or forgotten parts of the layout.

For the real extra touch make an overhead frame with spotlights.

As for the layout istself avoid set track type curves and big gaps under joins in track panels. If you are missing sleepers at a rail joint the eye goes straight to it. Cut some sleepers off and old section of track, cut off the chairs and slide them under the rail where there are gaps. Also painting the rail sides with rust colour paint makes a major difference. It's easier before laying track as you just dip a small brush in the paint and using your finger held against the rail head to guide you run along the side of the rail. Four brush strokes later it is done. It's a bit more difficult once track is laid but still possible.

Also nice fine ballast makes a good impression, big coarse stones look toy like.

Buildings should be built in to the landscape and not just plonked down. Gaps under buildings show up as chasms, when did you last see a house in the real world that had it's walls with 6" of daylight under them?

Look critically around your layout and you will see certain things that catch your eye as 'strange' correct these and you are well on your way to giving a much better visual impression.

You could join a club and get loads of advice and experience by helping with building and running.

 

LincsWolds.
Having now looked at your blog pages I have seen a bit of your layout. Yes it's coming along and you should be proud that you now have extra skills. Keep going and you will be rewarded.

For cardboard kits where you can see the joins at the corners use a felt tip pen to darken the card that is visible underneath, same on the roof line, colour the white bits and it will make a big improvement. There used to be those big packs of felt pens in all colours of the rainbow and you can usually find a colour to match the surroundings, try the colour on a piece of scrap card and hold it nearby to check if it matches. The plastic windows in the kit always tend to bow so I tend to use thicker plastic sheet to replace them, real glass microscope slides also work but cutting glass at the right place takes a bit of practice.. If you have a new shirt the plastic stiffener around the collar is usually a decent quality, thicker, transparent plastic which makes good glazing (my modelling budget is very limited so I use anything suitable that's free....)

Check the platform height and distance from the track, to be real you need to consider that a scale person would have to use it to board the coaches, not everyone is a long jump specialist!

An underlay under the track helps realism and also cuts down on noise. You can make your own with foam sheet. When cutting strips of foan from sheet use a knife and hold it at an angle to simulate the edges of the ballast, commercial underlays are good as well. As above paint the rail and ballast the track and that makes a big impact.

Treat the baseboard to a dose of colour (a realistic colour) and sprinkle on some scenic materials. Flock powders are nice and make good surface covering. Fine sawdust is also good, though avoid MDF dust as 1) it's not good for you and 2) is generally too fine. Sprinkle sawdust on to wet paint and it will absorb the base colour.

Try to work in some scenery at the back of the board which rises up slightly, then a simple backscene or sky paper behind makes a big difference.

Look at your efforts and anything that takes your eye away from the model should be removed or hidden eg. full size brickwork at the rear, a backscene would cover this.

Don't treat any of this as criticism, like I said you should be proud of the progress you have made. These are just suggestions from someone only a littleway further on. I've been working for 30 years to make the perfect model and I am still no where near but I have had fun and made lots of friends along the way.

 

Thank you, your help really is appreciated. There are lots of good ideas here that I will certainly try out myself
Thanks,
LincsWolds

 

What I have found works well in this respect is to build the building onto a card base that is an inch or two wider than the building. Make sure that the building is properly stuck to the card. You can then mount the building on the baseboard by gluing around the edge of the card but NOT under the building. The card and it's edges can be hidden by scenic materials stuck down over it. Should you ever wish to remove the building for use elsewhere you can then cut through the card inside the area that was glued down and lift the building without damage.

I would agree with the comments in the other posts above. Getting started is often the difficult bit. If I'm trying something new, then I try it out on a small section, and then extend it to the rest of the layout as I get confidence with it. Observation is key to getting a good effect. Observation of the real thing is key, but as others have already said, look at your own model, and try and work out what doesn't look quite right.

Colours on models are often to bright. If you look around you'll notice that natural colours are often quite washed out, except on the brightest summer day. The artificial light we normally have indoors don't represent sunshine well - the shadows are all wrong, so I tend to go for the more usual sort of colours you see on an overcast day,

Use the largest possible radius curves that you can, particularly pointwork. If you have to use small radius curves see if they can be hidden. I once built a layout around 3 sides of a small shed where I had to use the smallest curves that the stock would go round to get around the end of the shed. That I placed in a tunnel and had fun with the scenery over it, but the visible sections I used the largest radius possible, with quite reasonable results.

Where I have tended to get it wrong over the years is by trying to put too much into a small space. I always started with the intention of keeping things simple, but got carried away. My last layout, started out as a sleepy light railway terminus - lots of space and not much happening, and after a couple of years had grown into a 4 track mainline terminus with MPD, and harbour branch. The light railway was still there as well. It just didn't look right - much too cramped. I've now changed scale to 7mm narrow gauge, and haven't got carried away yet - there is not much on the second hand market around here to tempt me...!

Keep going, experiment, and have fun!

Steve B