Post ModerN Modeling: Nothing is almost still too much

In my studies in college, we talked a lot about Post Modernism, the evolution and rejection of "modernism". It's tough to pin down a definition of "post modern", but this is the best I could pull from Wikipedia .

...postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality.

I've realized that the rejection of traditional modeling concepts has driven me toward trying many different things in my modeling. While many traditional modelers will often try to pack as much "railroading" as possible into a space, I've been determined recently to do almost the exact opposite, and pack as little railroading into a space as possible.

I was presented many possibilities for my home layout when I began it. Many of these suggestions were that I needed "more" in the space. My good friend Lee has built an entire paper mill and junction on his layout (online at WMRYWesternlines.net) in the same square footage that I afforded to a ridge of trees.

This drive makes many things tricky, like incorporating any operational interest in a small space. I believe in making scenes as large as they deserve to be, and I find trying to scale these things down to manageable and modelable sizes is an even steeper challenge than I bet it is for many others out there.

Take my recent work on a oNeTRAK module for BANTRAK for example. I struggle to fit prototypical scenes into my door sized layout at home, but fitting something that I felt worth modeling into a 1'x4' module poised an even larger challenge. At first I thought about trying to model something very mundane, which is also part of what I feel makes my modeling thought post modern.

My first thought was just a stretch of track, on a slight embankment, like in Macungie PA or this scene at Strasburg. (Just look at how post modern THIS is, it's even of the rear of the engine!)

I had thought about doing something like a simple block signal. This is something that is barely ever done on a model railroad. It seems like every signal is there for an junction, an interlocking, or just for show. I thought that doing an intermediate, boring, block signal location would be a fun change of pace, and something novel. I may still revisit this in the future, as I still think it is an interesting idea.

After discussing the clubs needs though, I realized that what was more important was a "destination" scene. Somewhere that would make some sense for trains to be going to. I agonized with this though, because I'm not good at this type of thing. I'm too aware of the actual sizes of things in real life (thanks there Maps.Live.Com and your damn 3/4 view), and this was making coming up with a convincing concept difficult.

After pouring over some Conrail ZTS maps, I realized that the ideal "industry" to model wasn't an industry at all. It was an interchange. But even with this minimalist maximalist destination, I'm still struggling.

This all made me realized I'm really into modeling "nothing", that space between the scenes that everyone else is building. For every junction in real life, there are miles of boring straight track, that can be interesting in its details, but never gets any modeling attention. For every "hot spot" where 6 different lines all cross there are millions of more simple interlockings where it's a simple crossover between two tracks. For every bridge over a river, there are hundreds of more small bridges over creeks, and for each one of those, I'm betting there are 50 culverts over drainage ditches. I feel compelled to model more of these "mundane" things than the big ones. I'm not sure if this is just rebelliousness toward the modeling I was "brought up on" (and yes, I learned how to read with Model Railroader, and it took me a while to figure out that most of the world thought 2-8-2 actually meant negative eight), or maybe it's the desire to make a better representation of the real world in my modeling.

Either way, I can attest to this. It makes planning anything "operational" a real pain in the ass.