Regardless of the many different kinds of themes that you can use to create wonderful model railroad layout plans here are the five golden rules that you need to take into consideration when creating any theme.
1.
Season The season you decide to depict will decide the colors of the landscape.
A winter wonderland will have lots of white show over the ground, hanging off tree branches and sliding off buildings.
A summer theme will have greens as the main color of vegetation while fall will have the browns and oranges associated with fall colors.
It is possible to combine snow with another season theme by having towering mountains in the background that are snow capped.
Choosing the season also helps to decide the activities of people in your theme.
In a winter theme the activities can include skiing, building snowmen, ice skating, shoveling snow and all of the other things that you do in winter.
A summer theme will have different activities depending on the next part for choosing a theme.
2.
Location Where do you want your theme to be located? If you want a beach theme, then your people would be doing activities relating to the beach, such as surfing, swimming and sun bathing.
A nature theme would have people out maybe camping or shooting as well as hiking the woods.
However that could all change when you decide the next part of your theme! 3.
Time of Day If you wanted a night time theme then sun bathing at the beach would be out! Also the time of day will affect the colors of the items in your theme - a sunset theme would have more pale colors than a midday sunny theme.
4.
The Time Period As a starting point is there a particular era that you would like to work on, for example, steam engine era or something more modern? What era do you want your model railroad theme to be set in? If you want a theme that relives your childhood and you were born before 1960 do not go putting the latest SUV parked outside an internet cafe in the town as these things were not around then.
Always keep everything relating to the period, unless you want to have one odd thing to see how many can find it! If you do that with objects that can easily be replaced you would be able to play "one of these things just doesn't belong here" with your grandchildren and see if they can spot what it is.
5.
What Do You Want Your Trains To Do? Another way to think of themes is what you would like your model railroad to do.
- Long coal trains going through mountains from the mines to places that use coal - Logging trains, moving logs from where they are milled in the forests to the mills for cutting to the factories that use wood to make products - Passenger trains taking people to and from towns and cites, to work and recreation areas As you can see from the above ideas, there is a set purpose for each theme.
Your trains should have places to go otherwise you could get bored just watching them go round and round!