I’ve been on this wonderful community of global railroad enthusiasts on a site created by a person in the UK. I grew up with trains as my father got me a Lionel set and then created his own HO layout.

There were some big names in model reailroading when I was growing up and I would study their techniques in the pages of Model Railroading Magazine.

A few days ago Fred checked in with his amazing night scene of a harbor near a great city. The illusions created by Fred are some of the greatest yet done in the artform of model railroading. Somewhat into the domain of the brilliant box diaramists? Yet, here, there is something more and alive with various sounds and lights and life.

On exploring the creator of this scene above, I discovered the great interest in various sounds played through the city in a long loop. Sounds that are natural to specific areas within the larger scene. Listen to the sounds of the city as the above scene opens up.

We follow the train as it leaves the station out towards the great bay we can see outside the window of the passenger car we view things from. We can see some of the fakery of the scene as the camera moves back to the right, towards town and the new born day. Here, revealed, is the magic of that night-time site that enchanted so much in the day. But she has lost so much of her power.

A new place for retiree hobbies like model railroading? Maybe more than model railroading? Maybe the creation of new cinema worlds like the early footage of the above.

The large tracks of the old Lionel train sets give way to the modern layouts based almost on AI with all the sophisticated digital controls. More than anything in my mind is the incredible ability of creating scenes from life today. Like the above footage in the ficticious city we explore in the short video.