Unusual concepts

Just about all of us base our model railways on branch or main lines, or parts thereof, or something like that (Beverley is the exception here!). How about we try to break the mould and come up with something completely different.

My suggestion is the abandoned railway. Modelling weed-grown track could be a real challenge in Z. And think how much you could save on locos and rolling stock!

I would then have to deal with that ghost train going down the old right of way, blowing its whistle and scaring the chickens.

I've been going to model train shows for many years and the layouts- modules that stand out in my memory are the ones that are unique theme oriented. Once seen, who will ever forget Brad's Volcano, Loren's moving traffic jam, Karin's Dizzyworld. I've been impressed by seaports, towering- rickety bridges, logging, and a few cities.
There are fantastic skillful craftperson's (PC) out there in all scales, and rivet counters too.
Example: I went to the Lionel museum, last year. It had a large layout with lots of BIG trains, but the scene I remember are welders with flashing tourches, cutting up a F-7.
There were many stations- but I don't recall anything outstanding.
Many strive to build the "real" world- warts and all. I'm striving to build the real world as I would like it to be. Some grafiti is fine and details are great, But I'm going to have a Pinkerton overseeing the cleaning off of grafitti also.
There is a building in Portland Maine that has a small plane "Crashed" in the roof.
People remember That! ( Well before 9-11) Or a car loaded thwartships on a lobsterboat, when the ferry's were on strick out to the islands. A plane taxiing over a bridge as a train passes under.
Recently I saw in Z scale a picture of a houe built on a bridge, and a train going under.
I lost my TRAIN of thought- a mind is a terrible thing to looze.
Fred

Well, I don't know what I am going to end up with but I had planned on doing a diorama of the IOC mine (Iron Ore Company of Canada, here in Labrador City) but run into real life space issues. So I aborted that and removed the track. Confused over so many possibilities I have decided to terraform my layout without considering any track layout. After all nature provided the original landscape that was utilized for the original rail systems. I know I want tunnels and bridges, a river, lake or port, a small town, country side, maybe a bit of farm land. I have three Marklin sets, two American and one German, this should prove interesting but gifts are gifts and I like to live past tomorrow I guess I can use my iron ore cars for coal mining with some repainting and new decals. What I could use some help with is ideas on how to build multilevel track systems. Is there any real value to tying together the three trains sets, or is this just extra work with no real payoff? Comments are welcome, thanks.

TerryH

Cliff Travis posted some pictures of the Tri State modules and that is where I saw the house built on a bridge. In my youth I wanted to build a house over a babbeling brook- Sort of like Frank Loyd Wright's design. Oh, They are posted over on Zscale site.
Fred