Ztrains: Z Scale Guest: Joe Fugate

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The Scenery DVD Series
June 2008
I first came across Joe Fugate's work when we featured his static grass video in the Ztrains Coffee Break section. I contacted Joe and he was good enough to help me build my first static grass applicator. As I began looking over his website I was impressed with both the quality of his work and his model railroad DVD series. One very forward thinking option Joe offers on his site is the ability to purchase individual downloadable chapters of his DVDs... a very cool option. Joe also features a forum on his site where he freely shares his experience. Visit Joe Fugate's Mode-Trains-Video.com website.


	Joe Fugate modeltrainsvideo.com

Ztrains: For people who are not yet familiar with your work Joe, tell us a bit about your DVD series.
Joe Fugate: I've got over 40 years of experience in all phases of the hobby, I love to teach, and I'm also very visual. So I elected to do an in-depth video series on how to build a model railroad layout, from soup to nuts. The reviews of my videos have been very positive for the most part, and I'm gratified that my goal of teaching many of the tips and tricks I've learned seems to have been achieved.

Ztrains: What initially drew you to model railroading?
Joe Fugate: I grew up next to the Southern Pacific tracks in southern Oregon. It was uphill past our house and the 100-car lumber trains sounded like they were rolling right through my bedroom at night either in run 8 (see definition below) going uphill, or with dynamic brakes whining going down. You can't help but get railroading in your blood with that kind of setting to grow up in!

( Definition of run 8 : Diesel locos have 8 power throttle settings on the diesel prime mover. Run 8 is full-bore. The diesel prime mover is going for all it's worth, but the train is only crawling uphill just above a walking speed. Very impressive in the daytime and "very loud" at night!)



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I saw my first Model Railroader magazine in 1967 and was instantly hooked by the detail and realism of HO scale model railroading. I have always been a "crafty type" as my wife calls it, meaning I also love to do artwork and build models. It's that visual thing again, and I've been an avid model railroader for over 40 years now, with 5 layouts under my belt

Ztrains: Tell us about your very first layout, and what you learned about model railroading from this first layout.
Joe Fugate: My first layout was pretty sad in many ways, but I learned many things from it so it was not a total loss - I was 15 years old when I started it. It was in a 12 x 15 foot room and I used well-weathered scrap barnwood for the benchwork. I hand laid my own track using brass code 100 rail, on scrap lumber roadbed. I build some hardshell scenery using ordinary plaster of Paris, and did some zip texturing to color and texture the terrain dirt and grass. I never really got very far with the layout because at 15 I didn't have much for money, but I was able to try my hand at several things.

Most importantly, I started down the path of learning the necessary layout building skills by building something, exercising poor judgment and making mistakes! I used to tell my kids, good judgment comes by experience, and experience comes from poor judgment! The good news is the poor judgment part doesn't all have to be your own poor judgment. If you're smart, you will pay attention to other people's poor judgment learnings, so you don't have to make all the stupid mistakes yourself!



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Ztrains: What do you see as common mistakes beginners tend to make on their initial layouts?
Joe Fugate: Most beginners dream too big and try to do too much at first. In the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, so your greatest need is experience! And remember, experience comes from poor judgment, which means you should plan on building something small as a "test bed" layout to make your mistakes on and plan to throw that first layout away. The other way you gain experience is by reading about other people's poor judgment learnings in the magazines and in forums and blogs, and by watching how-to model railroading videos.

Ztrains: Do you recommend a general size for a first layout?
Joe Fugate: To me the ideal starter "layout" is something small enough you can finish it completely within a year. The idea is to use this starter as your place to learn and hone your skills. Make all your early bad mistakes on this layout, and plan on trying things that will stretch you. Handlay some track. Build a turnout or two yourself. Get a starter DCC system that can expand and start learning DCC. Try your hand at some switching. And above all else, size this first layout project small enough that you think you can finish it in a year.

If the year comes and goes and you're still not done, then you will have learned something else: building a large dream layout will take you much longer than you first thought! Maybe you should scale down your dreams a bit?



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Ztrains: With all the electronic and alternative forms of entertainment today, where do you see model railroadings place in the mix?
Joe Fugate: I believe model railroading was a popular fad hobby in the 50s and early 60s, but now model railroading has taken its normal place among all the other hobby pursuits. The public seems to still have a fascination with trains, with Polar Express and Thomas the Tank still quite popular. I recently went to a World's Greatest Hobby show and it was packed wall to wall with families who had small children. The Thomas displays were 6 rows deep with people clamoring to see and/or buy stuff. I also checked out MySpace recently - it has a model railroading group with several hundred members, almost all of them under 40. So model railroading is far from dead - it's not the fad hobby it was 50 years ago, but it has a strong internet presence. Probably a third of my regular operating crew is under the age of 45 and I often get twenty-something visitors. I see the hobby has a good future, especially with all the cool tech that's coming to the hobby through DCC.

Ztrains: What do you see as the major advances in model railroading in the past 20 years or so?
Joe Fugate: DCC is the obvious advance. And it's not so much command control itself that's the advance, it's more that it's become an industry standard. Being able to run your trains on anybody's DCC layout anywhere is a great development.

The other major development that's revolutionizing the hobby, I believe, is the internet. For the first time in history, it's now possible for model railroaders anywhere on the planet to connect up. No longer is your neighbor someone who shares your zip code - your neighbor has become someone who shares similar interests with you, even though they may be half way around the world. Model railroaders in Australia, the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, South Africa, Norway and wherever else on the planet are just a few mouse clicks away. That's absolutely revolutionary and will do much to keep the hobby vibrant for a long time.



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Ztrains: For people just beginning in model railroading, and with DCC becoming so popular... do you still see block wiring as viable for the future?
Joe Fugate: Just like non-radio controlled airplanes still exist as an economy purchase for model airplane enthusiasts, straight DC will remain the economy approach for model railroaders. So straight DC won't disappear, but it will become very much a niche in the hobby. DCC or it's technical equivalent will continue it's march to become the mainstream.

Ztrains: If you had to generalize, what do you think are the key elements to a satisfying layout?
Joe Fugate: Ah, this is a real hot button for me! I call it your "quality of run". I've written about it at length in the forum on my layout web site. Notice "quality of run" is more important than "quantity of run". Most beginner and intermediate modelers think the bigger the better. But once you have a larger layout project underway, you will soon realize that you can't have super-detailed scenes and equipment on a large layout and still have a life. Something will have to give, you will have to make compromises if you hope to finish the project sometime in your lifetime. I've decided it's quality of run that makes the layout the most satisfying. There's a lot that can be said on this topic, but suffice it to say that it's equipment and trackwork that runs well that makes the largest difference. As to trackwork, the quality of run key there is turnouts. The more reliable and maintenance free your turnouts, the better. As to your equipment, wheelsets that are in gauge and turnouts well maintained are crucial.

Going to the next quality of run enjoyment factor, it's the visual element. Try running your trains with your eyes closed some time if you don't think visual matters! When running trains realistically, you generally don't have a lot of time to just sight-see the scenery - you tend to focus on the train and what's near the track. So it's what's on the track, how it performs, and how it looks overall that really makes for a satisfying layout



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Ztrains: What do you feel are key elements to making scenery really come alive?
Joe Fugate: Proper color and texture are key elements, if you pay attention to modeling those more accurately, your model scenery will snap with a dramatic new level of realism.

Color can be tricky because inside layout lighting is dimmer and more yellow than outdoor lighting. That big glowing blue bowl overhead called the sky tints everything on a bright sunny day. You can get really technical trying to solve this problem but I've found the simplest way to get very good color results is to model from photographs. Find a photograph that has some scenery with the dirt color you want, for instance. Take the photo to the paint store and order a gallon of cheap flat paint that matches the color. Now if you come home and paint the dirt areas on your layout that color, it should match the photograph pretty darn closely when you view the photo under your layout lighting.

Texture is one that really separates the so-so layouts from the more memorable layouts. Even in Z scale, tall grass that's calf high is fuzzy, not lumpy like ground foam. Even in Z scale, broad leaf trees should be modeled using a medium grind of ground foam, while most conifers are best modeled with a finer grind of ground foam. Of course in scales like HO and larger, using ground foam for any kind of grass other than a very closely cropped lawn is just the wrong texture.Once you get the color and texture right, your scenery will immediately move up a notch it its realism.



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Ztrains: What advice would you give a newcomer just starting in the world of model railroading?
Joe Fugate: One of the biggest boo-boos I think newcomers make is to build a layout of some size without having any serious operating experience. If you don't know what you enjoy, how can you design and build a layout that will maximize it? For example, I have a fellow modeler who loves mainline operation but doesn't particularly enjoy yard operation. So his layout has a double-ended staging yard in a side room but all the visible layout is mainline run with no significant yard anywhere in the main layout room. He has maximized his layout with the thing he enjoys most, making very efficient use of his space.

Ztrains: What's up next for you personally... any new projects in the works?
Joe Fugate: Yes, as a matter of fact. My model railroading media company, Model-trains-video.com, has just finished my 5-volume how-to video series - and now we're embarking on my next big media project: a free downloadable rich media model railroading magazine.

There's lots that could be said about this project, but the magazine will be in PDF format, designed from the ground up to be read on your computer screen with no scrolling needed and be full of rich media content. By rich media I mean that besides text and still images, it will include audio and video content as well, plus things like virtual reality 3D images you can spin with your mouse.



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Imagine an article about a room-filling Z-scale layout where you can pan around the layout room with your mouse just as if you were there! Or imagine a DCC decoder install article where you can spin the finished install loco (minus the shell) a full 360 degrees to study the install. I personally would like this magazine to be more than just an HO-centric magazine. For instance, I'd like to see Z scale have a regular column in the magazine, and to regularly discuss the unique advantages and challenges of modeling in Z. Like any magazine, we need article contributions - so if you have an interesting article idea please contact us - we pay upon acceptance!

And yes, this magazine will be totally free, supported by advertising. The ads will be discrete, classy, and helpful, not the in-your-face, distracting ad junkyard like some web sites have become. The last thing we want to do is drive our readers away.

We plan to debut this new magazine in January of 2009 and put it out quarterly. If it does well, we would like to eventually be monthly, but we'll see. We don't plan to spend a lot of money on advertising ourselves, but are relying on word-of-mouth to let others know there's this cool model railroading magazine you can download for free. So spread the word that we're coming!

I believe it's high time for someone who understands model railroading and the power of the modern internet to finally deliver professionally-produced free content to model railroaders over the internet. Just watch our website, Model-Trains-Video.com, for details.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Elevated or “EL” Model Railroading

I received an email from a reader who attended the recent train show in Milwaukee, WI., and they told me about a new company called:
Imagine That, Laser Art Productions.

This new company is producing laser cut “EL”, or elevated train kits and components for several scales. I wrote to them and asked about the possibility of working in Z scale and was told that this may be in the future works for Z. Check out their site and maybe drop them an email if you'd be interested in this decidedly cool idea.

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