Design notes on bases for dioramas and micro-layouts

Base for Moon Mail Madness diorama after Cell-U-Clay had hardened.

I thought I’d spend a little time writing down my thoughts on how bases for dioramas and micro-layouts should be designed; well, maybe I should back off a bit and say these notes are about how I like to design bases. I think about this topic from time-to-time and it popped into my mind again after participating in the recent scale model show held here so I figured maybe this was a good time to put some notes together. I don’t claim any originality or universality here. No doubt many modellers have gone down this road too and touched on many of the same ideas. I can’t say that these notes apply to all situations; your mileage may vary :-)

I used the models to sketch on a big sheet of paper how each would be positioned on the base.

Ok, let’s move on to the first topic. These notes aren’t in any particular order, just what pops into my head as I write.

The arrangement went through several iterations; this one is close to the final

Inspiration: MacRae, Smith, Bennett, Adams, + ...

To me a diorama isn’t just a few objects or figures set on a base to show off a model in a more favourable light as implied by the show’s flyer, which noted that for their purposes we’re looking at a diorama when the following condition is met: “As soon as ANY [JDL: All caps theirs] objects are added to the bases other than the model, it will be classed as a “diorama””. To me a diorama, in the context of scale model work, isn’t simply a collection of objects, but is a model display that tells a story. The story is the primary feature and the models support the telling. A few objects or figures on a base accompanying a model isn’t a diorama, it’s simply a way of displaying a model to best advantage.

From time-to-time eye level views were assessed as the arrangement was iterated.

I’m much inspired by the dioramas of Bruce MacRae, especially his Wine Tasters diorama, as well as the scenes constructed by Michael Paul Smith, Amy Bennett, and Kim Adams. 

Now the work of Smith and Bennett aren’t dioramas in the sense that scale modellers use. Smith created what could be considered temporary scenes for purposes of photographing them, and the temporary scenes Bennett builds are for creating paintings from. However, the key here is they both use models to create scenes that tell stories. 

The objects Kim Adams makes are closer to that of classic model making diorama-ists, but the content of his work is very different. His stories are often ones of exploration into alternative possibilities of our physical world, not just highly detailed reflections of it.

But, the connecting thread running through the work of all four artists is that the centre of interest in their dioramas isn’t one or two particularly well detailed models, but stories. 

Scraps of foam sheet to be used to make the base.

In the model railroading world, E. L. Moore is my main influence. Not everything he built centred on a story, but a lot did. Over the last few years I've been impressed by the layouts shown in the French magazine Voie Libre. Ok, yes, this has an air of shameless self-promotion since a few photos of the Loonar Module appeared there in 2023 in a micro-layout feature, but in my defence I submitted photos there for a couple of reasons. I was impressed by the small layouts they'd written about over the previous 3 or 4 years, and I had never seen a layout set in a Canadian scene by an actual Canadian in their pages! I wanted to fix that injustice :-) The rest is history :-)

I quite enjoy all the layouts Voie Libre has featured, but I especially like the work of Bernard Junk and Detlev Horn, notably their layout called The Island.

Continental Modeller is also a good place to see innovative layouts. And, yes, yes, more shameless self-promotion, the Centennial Experimental Farm layout appeared in its pages this year. 

All I'm saying is that there's a lot of interesting work going on in the wide world of model railroad layouts

Tracing template was cut out after finalizing the arrangement.

Shape: Base Shape Helps Story

The footprints of many dioramas and small layouts are simple geometric shapes: squares, rectangles, circles, and ovals. This is quite understandable as these are readily obtainable in the form of pieces of wood, picture frames, display plaques, and so on. I’ve come to think though that the footprint should help tell the diorama’s story.

Sometimes foam sheets were glued together to make suitably sized pieces

I didn’t really understand this when I built the Loonar Module. I used 2’ x 2’ by 1” thick insulating foam sheets for the base because they were easy to buy at the local home renovation store. But, I wound up building a round island on a square lake! It turned out ok, but if there’s a next time the base’s footprint will reflect the story since water isn’t square :-)

Later, when I was building the Centennial Experimental Farm layout I could have just gone ahead with a rectangular footprint for the base, but I thought it more appropriate for the base to be rectangular at the Carling road end since the road was all straight edges, and rounded at the streetcar return loop at the farm end. There it matched the graceful loop of the track, and didn’t present dead corners to be filled in as it would if this end was also square. So, curved lines at the natural end, and straight edges at the urban end.

A layer ready for cutting out with a hand saw and knife.

The Mt. Lowe layout is where I’ve really started to apply the ’base shape helps story’ principle. Mt. Lowe had several scenes that I wanted to capture, but they had to be somewhat separated from each other. The trefoil seemed to help realize that desire with its three prominent lobes, each providing a separate scenic area. Thinking about the trefoil’s scenic potential a bit more I realized its footprint actually allows for 7 scenes: the 3 lobes, the 3 concavities connecting the lobes, and the aerial view, which in this case is a mountain top observatory.

Lots of scraps and foam dust after cutting out the pieces.

With the Moon Mail Madness diorama I took the principle further. As you can see in this post’s photos I designed the base’s shape as I used the models to sketch out the story; both developed at the same time. And what is the story? It’s a slice of life in the lunar postal service: two lunar postal workers meet at a crossroads and one takes a photo of the other as he begins to remove letters from a mailbox :-) I thought the base’s footprint should match the shape of the road intersection to emphasize the crossing. Also, why make the base square or rectangular and have to deal with dead space that needs filling? The only external limit on the footprint was the show’s specified requirement that all dioramas had to fit in a 2’ x 2’ area, not be a 2’ x 2’ area, which was no problem fulfilling.  

White glue holds the stack together. A rasp and sanding blocks used to form the final shape.

Presence: A Subtle Call to Look

Over the years I’ve come to like thick bases for dioramas and small layouts. 

A lot of dioramas and small layouts I’ve seen present the viewer with a decent top side model and scene set on a thin, platter-like base. Sort of like a meal that has been put on a dinner plate. Some might say, well it’s the modelling that’s of interest and not what it’s sitting on, much like it’s the meal that’s important and not the plate below.

An anti-slip mat was cut and glued to the bottom of the base.

To me though a diorama or layout is a complete, integrated object; a type of three-dimensional sculpture. A diorama doesn’t consist of a good part (the model work) that is to be enjoyed and an irrelevant support part (the base) that is to be ignored. The base’s footprint helps to tell the story, and its height helps to command you to look at that story by establishing the diorama or layout’s physical presence amongst all other objects that vie for a viewer’s attention.

This is another idea that at first I didn’t fully appreciate. The Loonar Module’s base is 3 foam sheets thick because I wanted it to be quite rigid and strong. Mission accomplished. However, looking at the result over weeks and months I felt the thick base gave the layout a solid look that I quite liked. It seemed like the island actually was rooted in something, not just sitting on something.

Anti-slip mat trimmed to fit the bottom of the base.

On the Centennial Experimental Farm I deliberately made the base height about the same as what I thought the tallest tree would be. It seemed odd to me to have big, tall trees (completely to scale regarding height and canopy volume) sticking out of a base no thicker than a pizza box. It didn’t seem balanced. It didn’t seem substantial.

However, like the Loonar Module’s base, I painted it black because I didn’t want the base to draw attention to itself. Its job was simply to say “here’s a story” and bring it to a viewer’s attention, not be the story. The base is to be the strong silent type component in this object we call a diorama: it provides structural support, it’s footprint provides narrative support, it’s height makes a call for attention and visually balances the models, but it tries to do all this in a subtle manner, not calling unnecessary attention to itself. 

The mailbox rise is glued to the base. Note commercial vac-formed crater to the right.

Moon Mail Madness violates the subtly principle a little with the inclusion of the postcard. I thought it would help the overall story, and it tries to be subtle while doing so. Sometimes on layouts that are structured like framed paintings instead of sculptural objects you’ll see a lot of labels, stickers, photos, warnings, awards, and other ephemera attached to the surround. That’s all too loud and distracting for me. The layout needs to speak for itself. Likewise, dioramas need to speak for themselves. They shouldn’t need any supporting documentation or ephemera hanging around trying to divert attention.

Crater glued on. White glue spread on foam prior to applying Cell-U-Clay.

Materials: Sheet Foam

I use foam sheets for my bases because they are lightweight, strong when laminated, easy to cut and shape, and low cost. I learned a hard lesson when I built the portable Lost Ocean Line layout from wood. It became too heavy to be very portable by me alone. Other materials can certainly be used. Foam sheets aren’t some magic one-size-fits-all solution, but I’d say put the wood back in the rack if it isn’t completely necessary. If you’re using wood for decorative reasons, that’s a different story.

Spare Moonscope wheel was used to roll in tracks.

On the Loonar Module I sided the base with sheet styrene to give it a smooth finish. I’ve subsequently learned that isn’t completely necessary. Smoothing the foam sides and then painting them with an artist’s quality acrylic will produce a decent finished surface. Although foam sides may seem a bit rough and soft after shaping and smoothing, the acrylic paint acts as a binder to solidify the surface as well as provide colour. Think of the paint job as applying a surface binder that just so happens to have a colour, which is black in my case. 

After 2 weeks of curing, cheap acrylic paints were used to colour the surface

Eye Level: An unresolved problem

I’ve always thought that the conventional way scale models (plastic models, train layouts, doll houses, every category really) are shown and displayed is odd. I think the best way to view them is at eye level because, usually, that’s how we encounter their real life counterparts. Yet, models are usually displayed so that the most common viewing angle is from above. I understand the practical reasons for this, but it doesn’t do justice to the models and the work of their makers. By setting out models on tables of conventional height only small children get the best views :-) 

Maybe conventional tables augmented with some sort of leg extensions would do the trick for model shows. Combined with showing dioramas or layouts with thick bases, this might almost solve the eye level viewing problem. Or maybe not. If you’re a long time reader here I’ve tried some experiments to fix this issue over the years, but haven’t been satisfied yet with the results. 

Ready for adding the models.

These aren't likely my final thoughts on the subject. They simply capture a few aspects of my current thinking. 

Oh, and before I run off for coffee, Sheperd Paine's book How to build Dioramas is always good to consult. Maybe I'll dive in again while coffee's brewing.

Awaiting the show.

Scenes from a lost model railway: The Lost Ocean Line, 2011 - 2017

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." - Albert Camus

Design Notes on Sight Lines: Roads, Paths, Sidewalks, and Track

Main street on LOL II, aka the 'Way Out Layout'

Photographing the Red Car Barn revived my thinking about an organizing principle I like a model railroad to have: lines I can sight down. Along with buildings one can see into and through, I consider interesting sight lines essential. I like to have a sun roof in a car too, but that's another story :-)

These lines can be provided by roads, paths, sidewalks, and of course track. It was on the LOL that I first played with lines, mainly through the addition of roads and sidewalks to connect the different parts of the layout. I'd look at various areas and think, could someone walk or drive or cycle there, or if they took the train or streetcar, how would they get around when they got off? I made physical changes in answer to those questions.

I think when I had developed the layout to a certain point sight lines became obscure, and that was a contributing factor to me taking the LOL apart. Looking back, when I added a shelf extension for the World's Biggest Bookstore I inadvertently changed a long, open view of the main street into a canyon that was harder to look into. Some interesting pictures resulted, but in the end it was limiting.

Ocean Alley

The follow up to the LOL, the never finished Alta Vista TC, was a sight lines disappointment. I didn't learn from bad sight lines created on the LOL. I built a main road on the Alta Vista TC for the streetcars walled in on both sides by buildings. I focused too much on having open real estate for buildings, and not enough on looking at them and the streetcars once everything was in place. I'd have to look over the back sides of the buildings to watch the streetcars. Eventually it seemed to me that as well as being far too big for my workshop, it didn't have enough possible views, and was going to become a boring exercise in making buildings simply to fill in open spaces along the main drag. The main drag was a going to be a drag.

So, on LOL II, the main street (still unnamed) is built up on just one side so I can get as many long views, or sideways panoramas, as I can dream up. There're no buildings 'on the other side' blocking my view. The one way street, Ocean Alley (name still up in the air), is a quasi-canyon: buildings on one side and a broken edge of trees, buildings, rocks, and small buildings on the other, but there's a long, so far interesting sight line.

Then there's the sight line from the parking / unloading track that starts at Ocean Alley and sticks into the pad where the urban buildings are located.

And there's the view down the track that runs along the edge of the beach. You can also see the parking / unloading track that intersects Ocean Alley that I previously mentioned.

The last long sight line runs along the dirt path that starts around the Red Car Barn, snakes past the surf shop, beachside cottages and the Ocean View Hotel, and ends at the Barbecue off in the distance  

The bird's eye view shows dense packed buildings in the urban area. From above it's certainly not realistic, but there is method to my madness.

A few months ago I was cleaning up the workshop and moving things around. I collected up all the little buildings I could see and randomly set them on the layout just to get them out of harm's way. All of the Toronto buildings went upstairs and were placed on a shelf.

After I'd done a bit of tidying up I glanced over at the layout and rather liked the jumble of structures. It had that packed in feel I was looking for. Organizationally it was wrong, but it felt right.

The next day I started to slide the models around, looking for sight lines and opening walkways to the sidewalk along Ocean Alley. This created a number of secondary and shorter sight lines out to the ocean. I also found many of the buildings were in need of minor repairs, so maintenance was done along with urban planning. 

Planning a downtown Toronto micro layout

I also realized that my Toronto buildings were going to need their own little layout to properly capture the feeling I wanted to get across with them - that's something else I wasn't able to accomplish with the Alta Vista TC. 

While in an urban planning mood I did a bit of fiddling with those buildings too to see if a micro-layout would suffice. It turned out a layout a little larger than micro sized might work, but development of that is for another time.

I'm not done fiddling with the LOL II's organization, but I feel it's heading in the right direction. Maybe it always will be just heading somewhere and never really arriving. That's ok as long as it keeps heading to interesting configurations. 

I know this isn't model railroading. It's just me creating a layout based on what I like and want to look at. It's just playing around.

Getting back to the LOL II, this is one of the secondary walkways that connects main street to Ocean Alley. At the entry is the Towers discount store on the left and the Chapters on the right. You can see one of the tall beach spotlights off in the distance.

There are 4 of these secondary sight lines branching off the main street.

I made sure the little Centennial Experimental Farm, LOL III, layout also had a main sight line: the pedestrian gravel path that runs the entire length of the layout from the street .....

... to the apex of the turn around loop. The visual implication is that the path crosses the road and leads to the farm's other facilities.

There's also a secondary sight line along the gravel path that is used to lead the cows from an off site barn to the pasture on the layout. It crosses a road and the streetcar has to stop at the crossing.

So the paths lead the eye into the layout and are used to imply there's a surrounding world of which this is a piece.

 

Establishing sight lines on the Loonar Module was tricky, and I wasn't completely successful. I think it's because the layout is basically a circle.

In this case I tried to establish two leading into the centre of the island. One runs from the end of the dock and up the concrete steps to the shed at the top...

... and the other extends from the end of the causeway, across the circular test track, and up the gravel road to the parking spot.

I think in this case the visual interest is created by the 4 separate scenes - which blend into each other as one walks around the layout - carved out by the tall trees, which create an effective visual barrier. The Toronto layout will also use tall elements - skyscrapers instead of trees - to separate scenes.

EVRR's valley beyond the long dividing trestle

I'm not sure if E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley RR had any distinctive or signature sight lines. It doesn't look like it did. Maybe along the trestle that divided the layout in two?

I think what it was famous for was it's level of completion. Being a rather small layout at 4'x6' it was a good showcase of what a model railroader of modest means could achieve. The level of detail and finish that went into the layout was impressive, even by today's standards.

If it did have dramatic sight lines they would be difficult to photograph as it's my understanding that E. L. Moore used a Graflex press camera. Even a 35 mm SLR would be difficult to maneuver in and amongst the layout's features for dramatic perspective photos. The N-scale tribute layout and a digital camera might uncover some interesting views.

What I did on my summer vacation

As any owner of a time machine will tell you, developing an understanding of the structure of time is crucial if you hope to become a master time traveller. If you accidentally skid on some banana shaped time and veer off into imaginary time you can slide into some weird time streams where so-called real time intertwines with fictional time if you don’t steer properly. I nearly slid into a knotted chrono-abyss this summer during my break when I took a banana-chrono-corner with no time to spare, and after some hair restoring retro-steering I wound up outside Frank Madwood’s office. He was still doing his radio gig, but had recently bought the old model streetcar magazine, wireLog, and was running it out of his workshop. Apparently an article of mine was in the current issue so he gave me a copy. I took it and got out of there quick because according to Frank I was supposed to be dropping by his office any minute to discuss a new joint project on time travelling space hoppers. I didn’t want to confront my chrono-double in case the chrono-contradiction ripped the space-time continuum. 

So, here’s all I have to show for skidding on some banana-time. Warning: I can’t guarantee Madwood’s ghosts won’t knock on your door while you’re reading it.

Lab results

Lost Ocean Line's track plan

With all the unusually good weather we’ve been experiencing this week I’ve had no motivation for modelling. Although, I’ve been dabbling in the lab :-)

I view Instagram as something of a lab where I undertake experiments. Some are me just trying to learn the things that Instagram can do, like figuring out how to create multiple image posts. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to post video clips. Other posts are meant as probes to see what people are interested in; others are just me archiving what I think are interesting pictures. So I try posting what I think are different types of photos to see if anything clicks.

Most posts these days get a fairly ho-hum response when it comes to likes, and most garner around 20 to 30 give or take a few. There’ve been a couple of outliers that have clocked in around 2.5x the usual number of likes. The post of Mels Diner at night on the old Lost Ocean Line Layout was one of those. 

The biggest surprise though was the photo of the Lost Ocean Line’s track plan. One day I realized I hadn’t posted any overview photos of the old LOL layout, so I posted one. It turned out to be one of the outliers in likes, and someone posted a comment saying they’d like to see the track plan. I soon discovered I really didn’t have a photo that properly showed the track plan, but I did have one that sort of showed it - it’s the lead-in one to this blog post. That photo turned out to get around 14x more likes than usual and continues to receive a steady trickle even now. The likes on most posts die out within 24 hours. 

The results of the LOL track plan experiment were quite surprising. Later I posted some track plan shots of other layouts, but no dice with those even as the LOL photo keeps generating a trickle of likes. Maybe the LOL track plan photo attracted an unusual amount of spam? Didn’t seem like it. Maybe people were just tickled by the layout's name and nothing more. Anyway, here at the 30Squares Media Empire we’re continuing discussions about that unusual lab result. Thoughts?

Picture organizing

The final Christmas outing of the Lost Ocean Line layout

I've been trolling through my model photos and posting a few on Instagram - no, there won't be any selfie sticks or food involved :-) It's been a topic of discussion with Vince lately, and is part of my attempt to modernize a little. And, I'm looking to see what sort of patterns there might be in looking at my small collection of miniature buildings in little square photos.

Lost photos from the Lost Ocean Line

I've been getting all nostalgic over the old layout, the Lost Ocean Line, and have been flipping through some photos. Here's some I don't think I've posted before, or maybe not in their current form.

My build of E. L. Moore's Jones Chemical Co. late one night.

Looking out to sea after being dropped off by streetcar at Feynman Beach.

Everyone needs a hobby.

Evening on Ocean Blvd sometime in 2012.

At the club in 2014

Downtown in 2012 well before the World's Smallest Model of the World's Biggest Bookstore came to town.

And, yeap, these days the Lost Ocean Line is indeed lost.

Layout Nostalgia

I've been starting to feel nostalgic for the old layout. It's barely been gone 6 months.

Around a year and a half ago I dropped by the car show.

There were the memories amid chaos.

And late night trips for cabbage juice.

Not too mention late night book shopping.

In 2013 Ocean Boulevard got widened.

There was rambling and more rambling.

Amidst somber end of year reflections.

We'll see where the future goes.