Several little things cropped up in my musings lately while laying out the Dettmer Spur on my Emerald, Leemer & Southern route. One is related to the ideas recently expounded upon regarding how much detail is really needed. And my wife, who does interior design work. threw me this---we may be seeing a form of minimalism in model railroading.

An interesting thought about what she suggested is that we can depict more realistic details using less detail pieces. One could save time and money on the process but then again---what era are we talking about when we say realistic? In my case the era is the 70's/80's and in an area of the continent that was seeing a lot of abandoning of branchlines and such--tearing up of rails, half demolished stations and elevators, overgrown fields and overgrown lots as towns/villages became emptied of people/industries. My musings got me into an area that isn't modelled a lot precisely because we are talking about era's that were more 'busy' --ie more 'successful' as opposed to sort of hanging on. My details involve all manner of weathered buildings, roads, and even vehicles.

So, in a sense, a kind of minimalism works for areas that are much more recent--Soeberg's layout that depicts an American southwest image will, of necessity, show a clean lined reality based on a more recent development and geography vs, say, an Appalachian coal mining district of the 50's, which would be a bit more 'cluttered' as it were. Lance Mindheim's 'Monon Route' depicts somewhat another way of depicting scenes without doing the whole thing by 'suggesting'--here is another word used to describe minimaistic settings--a quarry exists by using the fascia as a partial quarry wall or face. On the other side we can see in Rod Stewart's maximal urban setting the opposite to that minimalism which is being sometimes seen. Urban clutter vs desert/semi-arid leanness?

Me? I'll stick with the approach that will use certain aspects of minimalism and still will lavish detail in areas needed---as my layout begins to take form some details I will display that kind of come close to the realism I'm looking for---- and I'll start putting some meat on to this skeletal musing of mine----