On Sunday the 13^th September, the EMRIG members visited Johan Leeflang’s “Little Switzerland”.

As Helgard Meyers layout was unique in being historically themed, so was Johan’s, however, pictorially themed.

Johan’s model is based on Switzerland where he has visited before and photographed. To totally understand Johan’s vision, one needs to have visited the country and fully understand the vastness and grandeur of the Swiss Alps and valleys. By placing the layout high with the scenery higher, Johan has tried to re-create this grandness and has pretty much achieved this.

Also, as if one scale is not enough to model in, Johan models in 4 “gauges” but one scale, being HO. These gauges are: – HO; HOm or meter gauge or 12mm track; 9mm track which is HOe and lastly, HOi or 6,5mm track! As mentioned, all one scale being 1:84 or HO. Johan had a fantastic template explaining the relation between gauges and scale which will be used for a small article in next month’s newsletter.

 

With reference to the photo above, using his photographic expertise and a pro lab, his backgrounds are in between 2m and 6 meters wide! I am sure that by looking at the photographs here, one can gain some kind of perspective as to the atmosphere and grandness they give.

Johan is a professional photographer, and has used his skills, profession and resources to create a unique layout, which by Johan’s words is arguably 20% complete, but certainly looks amazing and substantially more complete when taking in the backgrounds which constitute a large part of the layout. As Johan said, when starting a home layout, one wants to start at the back and work forward. It becomes more and more difficult to put in a wonderful background when there is a substantial amount of scenery and buildings placed on the layout.

Above is another amazing scene where Johan has worked with photos to make the backdrop and together with the bridge, frames this scene amazingly. The only sacrilege here is that the photo was taken without any train of any sort traversing the bridge.

With this photo above, Johan dimmed the room and switched on an ultraviolet light strategically placed to shine on this backdrop. The background magically transformed into an amazing night scene with a wonderful clean deep blue night sky so common over Europe. Also showing itself better was the half-moon faintly visible on the upper left of the image as well as stars!

Night transforming into day, and vice versa.

The below is difficult to explain, but behind the main town “Ostermundigen”, Johan has been very cunning to create an awesome and amazing backdrop. He had a large photo developed and placed this on a wooden background. The sky was then cut off of this backdrop so as just to show literally the mountains, and no sky. This mountain backdrop was then fixed between 150mm to 200mm in front of the wall behind which has been painted a sky blue with clouds. Now between the mountain backdrop and the wall behind, Johan has placed a selection of lights which together with a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) create a sunrise and sunset effect, happening “behind” the mountains, which is honestly, something to see.

Now, that is not the end. Hopefully many of those reading this newsletter have been to Cape Town and witnessed the clouds rolling over Table Mountain. Well, again, Johan has cleverly re-created this effect by purchasing a “smoke machine” commonly used on stages for shows or musicals. He has channelled the smoke that is generated, to flow out between the backdrop and wall to create the same effect over his Swiss mountains. Again, something to see to be believed and appreciated!

On the next page is a series of photos that have been taken of this set up to try and show this effect. However, honestly, these photos just do not do justice to actually being there and watching it with one’s own eyes.  By viewing the photos one after the other going down the page, you will see the progression from night time, through dawn to a wonderful sunny day.

The town in particular here is Ostermundigen.

Currently night time over the Alps

The first sign of the sky lighting up

The sky getting more crimson

Slowly turning orange

And now the early morning mist rolls over the mountain

The mist clearing.

And a new day has just begun!

Simply brilliant!

Moving on to the layout, Johan mentions that by learning from EMRIG, he has gone the modular route. All his bench work is modular steel frames which is the medium he prefers to work with. Talking about his upcoming move to the Western Cape, Johan says it will be fairly simple to pull apart the various sections ready for transportation. The electrics is something else though J.

The layout consists of two return loops around their respective towns, Bergun on the left and Solis on the right of Ostermundigen. Between these towns are some substantial bridges, enveloping whole scenes as can be seen to the right and below.

In a separate room, Johan has his staging where there are multiple tracks again with a reverse loop. Then there were the towns themselves. A lot of scenery still needs to be done, but at least trains are running and there are buildings in place giving the effect of the scene.

Although separate from the main layout, Johan had other scenes showing his modelling prowess. To the left is a module which he built for a convention as well as for use in the EMRIG layout that is the largest module I have seen yet. It is a scene from Durban harbour with a container ship placed as the centrepiece and again, a photo backdrop of the Harbour to set the scene. It did not end there though. Below, there was the water scene together with what was happening under the water. By using a Perspex sheet for the water, Johan had gone a step further by placing rocks on the sea floor, together with a Shark eyeing out a scuba diver. Also, “under the water” were old rusted cars, trucks and junk!

The visit was again absolutely awesome and well enjoyed by the members.

In next month’s newsletter, Johan will be explaining more about how he did the sunrise and sunset effect as well as his Scale vs Gauge template. So keep an eye out for that article.

To enlarge the photos above, simply click on them.