We’ve all been there before. Seated at the drafting desk, or perhaps the workbench, depending on how your layout room or workshop is set up, notebook open, pen in hand, writing out a list of desired traits for your soon-to-begin model railroad, maybe sketching possible track plans in the margins. A tale as old as time – the model railroader’s brainstorming session. It’s a time-honored tradition, and a useful one; after all, what better way is there to reach a verdict on the crucial decisions that must be made prior to the construction of your layout?
I can’t necessarily speak on behalf of others, but personally, one thing I often find myself sticking on in these brainstorming sessions is era. Aesthetically, it’s probably the most consequential decision we make with regards to our layouts aside from geographic location. Era informs everything, from the structures to the locomotives and rolling stock that would logically fit our layout, assuming we want adhere to relatively realistic, prototype-adjacent operations. If you like running a Turboliner on your layout set in the 1910s, more power to you! After all, it’s like we always say here at the Model Railroader offices: It’s your layout!
But if you want to adhere more closely to prototypical operations, era can be a limiting decision. Choosing a year, or perhaps an era in which your layout is set, inherently creates a timeframe on either side of that year upon which you decide, both before and after, upon which you could realistically feature certain locomotives, or businesses, or even cars! There are parts of this country which look more or less the same now as they did in, say, the 1980s, and in the 1980s, perhaps they even looked about the same then as they did in the 1950s. Generally, those areas are typically more rural, but not always.
What if you didn’t have to choose an era?
Suddenly, this limiting factor is… less limiting. How might one go about accomplishing this, though? How does a modeler create a layout which can suit multiple eras? Well, there are a few ways to accomplish this aesthetic feat. First, one could simply model a mostly rural layout, and choose structures and details that could suit multiple eras. If you have a few desired eras in mind for a layout which fits this description, perhaps a few rosters of cars or figures which fit your desired eras, which could be easily swapped out, would be a way to easily have your layout travel through time.
Or take, for example, Brian Moore’s 24-foot-long, HO scale Quisling, California layout which appeared in the pages of Model Railroader in January of 2020. This layout is actually a module designed to work with his Plymouth, England-based model railroad club’s modular layout, set in Central California in 1982. Brian, though, wanted to be able to operate, with relative accuracy, in both 1982 and 1954. Luckily for Brian, after a bit of research, he came to find that 1954 and 1982 in Central California don’t look so dissimilar.
With some careful consideration paid particularly to the structures on his layout, Brian is able to operate the module both as part of the greater club layout in 1982, and on his own time, recreate a part of Southern Pacific’s Coast Line in 1954, in the dwindling days of Southern Pacific’s steam fleet.
In 1982, the layout is home to era-appropriate locomotives and rolling stock, of course, but also billboards, figures, and road vehicles fitting the time period, among other such details, all of which heighten the verisimilitude of 1982. In 1954, though, the layout proudly features grimy Cab-Forwards operating alongside a roster of streamlined GS-class 4-8-4s, as befitting Southern Pacific circa 1954, alongside period-accurate figures, vehicle, and other details.
While time travel itself is as of yet elusive, Brian Moore demonstrates with his Quisling, California HO scale layout that it is perhaps within reach, at least for the model railroader!
Have you experimented with a layout with multiple eras? If so, how did you go about accomplishing this feat? We’d love to hear your strategies for building model railroads with multiple eras!
