I have always enjoyed Model Railroading, for as long as I can remember.
My question for this Friday is this: How long did it take you to figure out what you really wanted from your train layout?
When I was 6 all I wanted to do was put trains on the tracks and run them in circles on my layout in the garage. Oh what fun I had.
As an adult (or close to it), I have built five personal layouts, and they all have been different. At the time of each construction, I really thought most of them would be the perfect layout.
In High School I built a 21 square foot layout with big ambitions that it would be part of my future permanent lifetime layout. Kind of the way John Allen built the oringinal Gorre And Daphetid into two future layouts. Mine was kind of similar (on purpose), and had an engine terminal and two loops of track. Expansion tracks on both ends of the layout were intended to make it part of a peninsula on a much bigger layout in the future.
I kept that layout until I was 19 years old. A few apartment moves and some neglect later, and it went into the landfill. My Punkette girlfriend, Jeanna, had a lot to do with its final demise.
As time went on, I met my wife, we built our dream house, and I had 800 square feet to build an N Scale empire. I designed this house when I was still in High School. I never dreamed it would ever really get built. This layout was going to be amazing, huge double track mainline run, long staging tracks at both ends, and enough action for 8 operators.
The dream house layout reached the point where I could run trains from one end to the other, but it never became fully operational. The East yard was completed, and most of the rural scenery was completed, but the industrial and city areas were never completed. I amassed an amazing collection of around 75 Atlas/Kato locomotives and 400 MTL train cars.
What happened is a story where I keep the details to myself, but the house was torn down less than three years after it was built.
If life had not interfered, I think I would have completed the dream house layout, and I would still be in N scale today with a magnificent empire.
This is where my thoughts on the subject begin...
I was never given the chance to become tired of the dream house layout, and it was something I had dreamed about for years. It was well planned, and I had room for everything that I wanted. There was nothing wrong with it that needed to be improved upon when I built my next layout.
The next three layouts were all compromises. I never had a proper train room again, I had daughters to raise, and I had a career to attend to.
Along the way I swiched to HO scale, I changed eras from 1968 to 1954, and the SGRR was no longer primarily a coal hauler.
This is what interests me. I have no desire to switch back to N scale and build a massive double track empire. I just want to build a mid-sized, well detailed, single operator, personal layout.
These changes happened over three layouts where I tried different things because I could not builld my dream. I found new things that interested me, and my hobby ambitions changed.
Is this just because I am older and my desires have changed? Would I still be happy with the dream house layout?
The Final HO scale Lifetime Layout will be 160 sqaure feet. That is not an empire at all.
I am now much more interested in building unique freight cars, detailed buildings, and small scenes with personality. This is a lot different from 60 car freight trains running through massive scenery.
How did you arrive at the proper formula for your personal model railroad happiness?
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I can’t remember much past my 8th Christmas (1945) when my Dad gave me my first train, a Lionel 027 gauge 2-6-2 with three cars and a loop of track.I was a daddies boy and he kept the fire burning by building an almost full basement train layout. In the early to mid 40s the War limited finding track so a worker friend of his made us a die for making 0 gauge rails. Very simple, a 1"x2"x12" chunk of metal block with a groove length wise down the middle and a T bar that fit in the groove. A used cut up food can laid across the groove and a couple of swats with a hammer and a rail was born.We used carpet tacks to anchor the rails to the layout plywood. We used the Lionel curved track on a 4’x8’ plywood for the main area and used 1”x12” boards for an around the walls to a 4’x4’ turn around and return.We moved from Murray UT to El Paso TX in December of 1949 and left my layout in Utah.My Dad was still wanting to keep my interest up but the new house didn’t have any room for my 027 stuff. No basements in El Paso. Next best thing was the garage, my Dad took the front half for his shop (single car garage) and he gave me the back portion. He built a wall forming two rooms, he used the two swinging doors and the back room had a walkin door, perfect for a 13 year old.There still wasn’t enough room for my 027 trains so everything was on hold for awhile. I went shopping with my Mother one day and found a magazine that changed my life forever.There is an article in that magazine about John Allen’s first Gorre & Daphetid, that hooked me on HO gauge and his layout for life.I’ve built four layouts all around John’s original Twice Around Design.
This is my current layout.As for the time frame, I started out in 1951 with my first HO layout and just never left the 50s. All my fondest memories are of the mid fifties. Mel My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California Turned 84 last July, aging is definitely not for wimps
I've had 3 layouts. The first was an O-scale Lionel layout that I remember when I was 5. That grew into a pair of 4x8s on the floor, which I got rid of because I switched to HO, again a pair of 4x8s plut a smaller section for a yard, this time on homasote and elevated on sawhorses.
My final layout, so far started with a 5x12 pink foam on a box frame, and grew into a 24x24 room. That probably would have been the last one, but I grew up, divorced and moved on, and will someday rebuild it, although a bit smaller.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Like most people my age, it started with a Lionel Christmas present. It was a used train my mother bought from another family, with some chips and broken parts, but it was the best Christmas present I can remember.
By high school, I forgot about model trains. Trains were out of my thinking for the next 44 years.
When I retired, I worked for one year on house and yard projects. I had no hobbies, so I needed something -- I finally remembered trains.
Since I was not allowed any large area, I was granted a part of a spare bedroom. Because it was a small area, I decided on N Scale.
Three months ago, I decided to take apart my four-year-old layout and start over, correcting all the mistakes I had made with the first layout.
I honestly think this will be my last layout. I just don't think I have enough time anymore to start over. I really think that what I have planned to build will take me to the point I either keel over or head to the nursing home.
Thanks, Kevin, for starting an interesting thread!
York1 John
SeeYou190 I have always enjoyed Model Railroading, for as long as I can remember.
I recall driving past the switching yard at Copper Cliff in Sudbury, ON, where INCO had one of its mines. It was steam. I think I left permanent dents in the rear seat side window facing the yard. This was in 1954 when I was already two years old. When I was five, we moved to Peru, SA, and lived at 14K feet in the Andes. It was steam there for another six years.
SeeYou190 My question for this Friday is this: How long did it take you to figure out what you really wanted from your train layout?
After two table-type layouts, both of which were a lot of fun, I recognized that I enjoy variety, but especially decent scenery with trains running through it. I realized that standing centrally, and pivoting, with the trains running around me, was a good use of space for that preference. Now I'm about to complete the third such layout.
SeeYou190 ... Is this just because I am older and my desires have changed? Would I still be happy with the dream house layout?
...
Maybe not building it, all these years later, but if it were to appear to you, completed, and functional, in a dream, how would you react....do you think? I still dream of my Kawasaki 900 from 1973. I walk into a garage, and there it is on the center stand. Something is missing, or wrong. No helmet, no license, and I usually awaken shortly afterwards.
I don't intend to attempt to goad you into coming clean on your secrets, but I sure would love to understand more about the nature of your home's demise. It sounds like a life-long bummer. I'm really sorry that you had to make such a drastic change of course.
And yes, you have changed. You would surely be thrilled to be projected back to the day you felt you had completed a major running milestone on that long-ago perfect dream of a layout, but you have learned that there's something more important than the dream layout. There's family harmony, there's a secure neighbourhood, there's better work, there's motivated and grounded children, and there's even YOU! You adapted, you persevered, and you made changes to your expecatations that allowed you to live, to continue to evolve, and to thrive ultimately. I hope you're still able to do that.
SeeYou190 ... How did you arrive at the proper formula for your personal model railroad happiness? -Kevin
Learning. Using my noggin, reading up and pondering what others here and on other fora related about their own changes of mind and evolution. Reading history. And comparing my efforts at each successive layout with some ideal. I think we all do that. We understand that a dream is merely an ideal for which to strive. We eventually understand that the journey is every bit as important as the destination, and often quite a bit better. Everyone experiences the lunchbox let-down, even if it is their version of the Gorre & Daphetid.
Two aphorisms that say much:
Qui non profict deficit. "Who does not advance falls behind." I think it was Seneca, but can't be sure.
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" -Robert Browning.
I love trains since I was a kid as many relatives from my mother side were working with railroad. My grandpa was an expert in fixing boilers in steam locos.
When I was in elementary school, a friend of mine had a small model railroad that we could put together a track and ran trains. We found it was a fun to shoot the running trains using a nurf gun .
I only stated my own model railroad when I had my first job. I started with O scale and bought lots of tracks. But soon found out that O scale is too large to run with scenes. So I swtiched to HO. My first layout was just tracks with switches. I was too eager to run the trains so I couldn't make much scenes. Then due to family reason, I stopped making railroad for about 5-6 years. Now I am back and I also learned the importance of planning.
There is still a long way to go. I have too many locos and rolling stocks. My dream is to build a large layout (probbaly 400' to 800' mainline) with city scenes. I will keep on working. I have to admit I am not a good modeler and cannot make perfect buildings and scences, but the process is actually very enjoyable...
Jerry
Well, I don't think I have a specific formula. There's something intangable that lures me to the layout. I will enjoy going out there and I may do what I had planned, or I may get distracted off on a tangent and enjoy that instead.
But right now, I'm kinda burnt out on model RRing. I have very little interest in it. Can't even get my head into WPF, a highlight of my week... I have been back to my other hobby, 1/25 scale equipment, trucks, etc. From kits to full scratchbuilt.
I switch back and forth between the two hobbies, but when I do, it's the one OR the other. And when I do come back from one to the other, its with all renewed enthusiasm. I have gone through these cycles all my life, and know that the layout WILL call me back. So no worries, I'll be back. I can't say when either. The intangable draw will just happen. I can say at least, that the layout I'll be returning to is at the best place to return than it ever was! Plus, part of the equasion is that it's spring.
I don't know if this was the place for this, but I found the topic intriguing. Oh, I'd love to share my other hobby with YOU guys! But it's not honestly RR related. Oh, I could try to pass it off as G scale, but who would I be trying to kid?
On a healthy hiatus, I'll probably check in now and then. Dan
In a week I will be 65. I have been at this hobby on a pretty serious level since age 10? Surely by age 12.
I had the great fortune to have a father with the skills, knowledge and insight to set me on this path at a young age. And then i found other great mentors all thru my teens.
By age 25, I had a real good grasp of the breath and depth of this hobby from working in and managing a hobby shop as well as being a member in a very high quality model railroad club.
By age 30, I knew what I liked, what I did not, I got over the rivet counting phase, and I started developing and testing the concepts that will be in the new ATLANTIC CENTRAL.
There have been times in this journey when modeling was limited to club or round robin activities and model building - no layout space or no layout time. But 4 layouts have come and gone, each a learning experiance.
For the last 25-30 years, my layout and modeling goals have not really changed at all. Nor do I expect any big changes in them. I am not one who imbraces change just for its own sake.
While I have taken advantage of many of the changes in the hobby over the last 55 years, those changes have not resulted in any major redirection in my goals or interests in the hobby.
In fact, with the new layout, I will step back to some themes popular many decades ago and abandon a few approaches that are common today and that I tried on the last two layouts.
In particular - no multi decks and no shallow shelf benchwork/scenery.
And I will embrace the fully refined idea of only modeling one of each major element - only modeling one place, and letting the trains come and go from that place - but on a large scale - 1500 sq ft worth.
My first layout, primative by todays standards, but full of interesting features, was built for me by my father. 90 sq feet of benchwork, two complete routes which in placed appeared as double track and as single track in others. Features like passing sidings, hidden staging sidings behind the mountains, lighted structures and street lamps, and scenic details that copied local locations all gave me a good foundation in creating an interesting model world.
I can say planly, if I only had room for a little switching layout, I would not.......
Now, the new layout has a very serious ISL built into it. But that by itself would never satisfy my train running desires so I would likely never build a layout that was just switching.
So back to the changes that have occured in the hobby over 55 years. DCC did not change my view of the hobby - and while I still run DC at home, I have logged many hours on DCC layouts.
Sound - only sounds a little better than those first Model Tronics diesels from the 80's. I do plan to experiment with some layout based sound effects.
RTR - well ok, I buy my share, but I still like to build stuff, all the stuff - not just structures and scenery.
More accurate models - I like accurate models, again I buy my share - but I'm not OCD about it - note the "getting over being a rivet counter" comment above.
Same goals:
Breath taking scenery that shows more of life than just the 90' either side ofthe tracks.
Long realistic looking trains.
ALL types of operation - crews, lone wolf, mainline, switching, and good display value running.
A believable but fictionalized theme that marks a time in history - a time before my birth, if only by a few years. For a lot of young people, that is like ancient history.....
Goals/interests I don't have:
Collecting models not related to the theme of the layout.
Dabbling in other scales or other themes/eras.
Following trends.......
The layout room is progressing, a bit slowly do to a busy day job schedule right now (means more train money), but I will be posting some progress pictures soon.
Sheldon
Great topic, Kevin.
I received a Lionel set for my 6th birthday. My dad put it on a 4 x 4 sheet of plywood that was propped against the wall. It was never sceniced, and I spent every penny I could save towards buying used stuff from Ces & Ronnie's hobby shop in San Antonio. My greatest score was a used ZW controller that I got for $20. I still have all my Lionel stuff, although it has been boxed and in storage for decades.
When I was 11, my grandparents gave my brothers and I a Tyco HO train set. As I was the oldest, and the favorite, it became mine. For years, all I wanted for birthday and Christmas presents were HO trains. In junior high, my dad helped me build a 4 x 6 layout that could fit in my room. In high school, we moved to a larger house, with an attic that had a 24 x 24 space. The problem with the attic was that it had AC ducts for the 2nd floor ceiling on the floor joists for about half of it, no floor on the rest, and no heat or A/C. My dad acquired used flooring that he taught me to install it with the caveat that I couldn't start a railroad until I had built a floor. I got about half of the space covered before I ran out of flooring, but he let me start construction. I was able to build a small yard, turntable, and a long, looping main line that terminated in a siding over an A/C plenum. By this time, I had left home for college, but I spent hours making up trains in the yard, running to the siding, and returning to the yard. No scenery, no ballast, but still lots of fun.
After college, I moved to Abilene where I promptly helped form a new model RR club. We built modules and stored them at the local mall hobby shop. The hobby shop owner helped us secure a space in a kiosk, and we built the funkiest shaped model railroad in history. Had a lot of fun, made a several life long friends in that club. Life intervened, and I got a better job in the DFW area. Joined the Texas Northern model RR club, even became president. Life again intervened, got married, and had much less time for model railroading.
The Texas Northern moved to the Olla Podrilla mall in north Dallas, which was great for the club, but terrible for me as it was an hour drive one way. I joined a modular club in SW Dallas County (I still run with those guys, occasionally). We moved a couple of times, ending up in Bryan/College station where I eventually opened a hobby shop. New set of modules to supplement a small existing club.
Fast forward to today. I gave away my modules when I moved to Kansas; where we bought a house with a 19 x 40 finished space for a train room in the basement. It is currently a big storage room for all of the train stuff I have acquired, as everything is either in clear plastic tubs (so I can find stuff) or in black tubs (from the move). My current project is to sort through stuff to consolidate, inventory what I have and what I will need for the layout, and then plan/build a layout.
In the metroplex I was also involved for a short time in a club that today would have been considered FreeMo-like; free form, hand laid track, Onboard Command Control. The club did not survive more than a couple of set ups. But I really liked handlaying track, and it is something I want to continue today. There were two things I really liked about the Texas Northern (who had the only HO club layout in DFW in the mid 80s); switching on the industrial branch line and operating sessions.
That has evolved into my current wants and druthers. 1) I want to hand lay a branch line. 2) I want to be able to operate the branchline; running a local passenger train and freight trains as necessary, from the junction to end of the line and return. 3) I want a long mainline run that I can run a variety of different trains that I put together from my modular days; primarily when we have folks over I can run trains (or let visitors run trains). Free-Mo is big here, with several set ups a year in the area, and I think I will build something so I can participate.
All of my recent plas have been hampered with my vision problems, but I see light at the end of the tunnel, and for once, it is not an oncoming locomotive.
I started model railroading as a hobby when I was 24. I had been kidding my wife that when our first child was born I would buy a train for the Christmas Tree.
Well she jumped the gun on me and bought me some HO trains for Christmas 1971. I found an issue of Model Railroader on the newstand and I was hooked.
The first layout was a 4x8 twice around layout in the back of Track Planning for Operation by John Armstrong. He recommended it as a first layout. I had no goals beyond getting some track down and running some trains. It lasted 6 months until our first son was born and took over the spare bedroom in our apartment.
The second layout was a 6x6 1/2 ft layout in our rather large master bedroom in the apartment. It had a town based on the Timesaver layout with a loop of track for the mainline and a shortline that ran from the town up hill to a switching area above part of the main line. It lasted 2 years until we moved.
About this time I decided HO was too small. I experimented with S scale, but in the late 70's it looked like it was dying so I went with O scale. By that time we were up to 3 sons and the hobby went into hiatus for about 12 years.
In 1992, the boys were well into teenage years and I got more active in the hobby. S scale had a revival starting in 1980. So I went with S scale and built a 10x18 layout with double track mainline around the walls and a planned narrow gauge shortline in the center. I worked on this for a few years and decided a shortline was what I wanted rather than a PRR double track main line.
So I switched over to the Maryland and Pennsylvania RR for the next layout - 12x24 in the late 90's.
Retirement and 2 moves (and 2 layouts) later I'm bulding my version of Ma&Pa in the basement - 10 1/2 x 34 ft (with room for expansion if desired). All benchwork is done and currently track is mostly down for 1 town. Trains can switch in the town while I extend the mainline in both directions.
Over the years I have accumulated more than enough trains in S for the layout set in the early 50's. While the theme is the Maryland and Pennsylvania RR, I'm not rigid about it. So not everything is exactly prototypical - i.e. I have all the S scale cars from NMRA's Heritage and Living Legends lines of cars from a few years ago. I also am using some Plasticville and other O scale buildings as standins until (if) I scratchbuild some more prototypical ones.
Through it all, the hobby has remained fun for me. I still have all my HO and O scale stuff and continue to collect items that appeal to me and the price is right - eventually I plan to build a small layout in each scale.
Paul
SeeYou190My question for this Friday is this: How long did it take you to figure out what you really wanted from your train layout?... .. ...How did you arrive at the proper formula for your personal model railroad happiness?
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Good morning
It was my thoughts this interesting thread should be rescued from the second page over coffee this morning.
SeeYou190 1) How long did it take you to figure out what you really wanted from your train layout? 2) How did you arrive at the proper formula for your personal model railroad happiness? -Kevin
1) How long did it take you to figure out what you really wanted from your train layout?
2) How did you arrive at the proper formula for your personal model railroad happiness?
1) Somewhere between a year and a half and two years.
A full sized template of railroad-board taped together on the kitchen table stayed there for almost two years. The only objective at that time was to draw lines with as many bridge crossovers as possible without falling short of an 18" radius or exceeding a 2% grade. Mind you, the two more important rules learned from experienced modelers here on this Forum.
Went through 3 jumbo erasers and over 60 sheets of railroad board starting over but learning what to partially or completely change from the prior failure of not meeting the expected parameters.
This was the only objective at the time, not giving any thought to bridges as it was for certain they would all have to be custom made. That was OK while having a love for bridges and liking a challenge as well.
The only other expectations was to have a lumber mill, ore mining operation and a locomotive servicing facility with a turntable/roundhouse incorporated into a wilderness/mountain themed layout.
2) Lots of patience and perseverance to achieve the perspective goal.
Indecisiveness as a defect of character ain't the best formula for the quickest modeler in the world...
Still plugging away and fiddling around with all this stuff some 6 years later. Seems to be creating its own happiness always providing something to do
TF
For me it was an evolutionary process. The layout I had in my old home was a freelanced UP layout with some serious design flaws. It was at that time I started to conceptualize my next (and final) layout which I would build in my retirement home. I had all but quit running my old layout by the time I retired and was ready to move out. I had a clear idea of what I wanted in my next layout which was a freelanced fictional east coast railroad. I would correct some of the design flaws of my old layout. By the time I moved into my new home, I had a clear idea of what the layout would look like and how it would operate. I had sketched it out on graph paper and with just some minor modifications, it turned out pretty much how I envisioned. There was one major change to the concept. Originally, it was going to be entirely a fictional railroad with interchange from real railroads but by the time I began construction, there was a lot of great looking NYC equipment coming on the market so I modified my concept to make my fictional railroad a subidiary of the NYC which had traffic rights over my fictional railroad. I later added some passenger trains that were joint operations between Pennsy and my fictional road.