Breaking New Ground

[jeffers_mz]

"If you want to break new ground, you better be prepared to tear out new ideas that don't work."

 

On the surface, that's just more common sense, but underneath at a deeper level, you almost have to head into a project thinking it's going to get torn out, if you're trying to build a model that approaches state of the art, or even has a chance to exceed state of the art, and that is definitely NOT the way I've been approaching our layout....

 

 

...If you want to have the best layout you can possibly have, you are almost certain to spend some, maybe a lot, of time taring out stuff you've already built.

 

If that's the case, then how come we never hear about model railroad destruction?...

 

 

...If my logic is correct, there should be equal attention given to techniques for dismantling failed experiments as there is given to successful paint by numbers layouts.

 

Okay, I have reduced your observations and musings to these few quoted statements...under strict license, of course.

I am like the rest;  I prove stuff very shortly after I sit back and congratulate myself.  If it doesn't work, I don't rest.  Period.  I have never had to tear out any wiring, but I have had to redo countless solders of the type under the layout, you know, the ones where you have to place newspaper directly under the area or...?  I have torn out, by their wired roots, turnouts and sections of track that became useless after a while due to bad performance.  Recall that I am in my youth in this hobby, and have much to learn.  So, I learn many of my lessons the hard way, and have yet to relearn many of them.

So, you raise a good point.  How to do a repair in place, or surgery if we can use that analogy.  If I understand you, Jeff (or is it Mike?  Sorry.), there is a method to altering unsatisfactory places and functions on our layout so that it is not, as I seemed to say, destructive.   You want it to be viewed as a process of generating order, of amelioration.  In that respect, I agree whole heartedly.

-Crandell

 

Crandell, you got it, and took it to the next level. Over a couple weeks or months, I'd have turned this thing over in my head till most of the questions were answered, and I could post succinctly, but then there wouldn't be any back and forth synergy, or exposure of the ideas to other modellers. Distillation was the right idea, because it was too early in the thought process to make clear statements or ask well worded questions.

 

There's at least two ways to "break new ground".

 

If someone's never done it before, applying plaster cloth would be new territory.

For someone who's done it all, new ground lies beyond the current state of the art.

 

Either one is an experiment in its own context, and either one can fail.

 

I don't see a lot of attention to that idea, beyond, "if you don't like it, rip it out and do it over".

 

Having articulated that now, with your help, I see that a lot of our railroad has been built that way, without understanding why.

 

There was a natural reluctance to commit on large scales. Instead of painting all of the , say, medium peak foliage green, at one time, a small area was fully painted first, to see how the different colors, rock, dirt, foliage, etc, worked together.

 

The trestle I just finished, (trestle deck and bents, the free span has yet to be completed)being on a grade transition, was eased nto place one bent at a time, so that the transition could be tsted and only the latest bent would have to be removed if changes had occurred.

 

All the trackwork, with the exception of 3 feet of recently ballasted grade, was fastened temporarily, heads of the nails just below rail level, so that adjustments could be made at any time up until the track was set in stone by ballasting. The appearance of th loose nails wasn't an issue as long as the track wasn't ballasted, and those nails are heads up in the track right now, today.

 

Water experiments were tried in out of the way areas, easy to reach and tear out if it had been necessary (and it was, and probably still is, not all casting compounds are created equal).

 

All through the process there been a tendency to try something on a small scale, easy to back out of if it didn't yield acceptable result, see if it works, then completely finish that phase of work across the layout if it did, or keep experimenting if it didn't, without really knowing why. In our case, it's because we are beginners, but the approach seems like it should work for top modellers looking to expand the hobby's horizons too.

 

From there, the question of why this is rarely discussed comes up. Is it because this is so simple that everyone else always does it this way, so expected that there's never a need to mention it?

 

Is it because neither new or experienced modellers enjoys admitting failure, much less advocating that others plan for failure in advance, as part of the expected path to success?

 

It seems to me that there are, or at least could be, some rather advanced techniques that could allow experimentation, without risking large areas of a layout already in place, "easily reversible modelling" if you will, and that discussion of same would be of benefit to both new and experienced hobbyists.

 

Outside of fixing experiments gone wrong, there's a whole new world of possible experiments to be tried. Gloss medium should be capable of creating pointed waves or ripples, just like textured ceiling paste does, if caught at the right point in the drying process. Viscuous, clear caulks and glues might be able to extend flowing water models beyond where the state of the art lies now. Successful experiments are not rare here, and once photos are posted everyone wants to know how the new effect was achieved, but in the larger view, there desn't seem to be widespread encouragement of the experimentation process itself, it just isn't a part of basic how-to's, and I think that rather than being a rarely mentioned "second cousin" to the layout building process, encouraging experimentation should instead be one of the cornerstones of the hobby.

 

 

[R. T. POTEET]

Your post raises some good points, jeffers-mz, and one to which, perhaps, we fail to give proper note.  I detect the essence of your post to be: Why do we do the things that we do and why do we do them in that particular way?

There have, indeed, been modelers and their layouts which have assumed near-legendary status; they have, I feel, become that way because of certain facets in their modeling.  The originator of the Virginian and Ohio, Allen McClellan - I may have just mangled his name and I apologize if I did - is credited with originating the 'beyond the basement' concept of operation - have your trains going somewhere beyond the physical restraints of the layout - but he was hardly the first to do this.  McClellan's trains went off the layout into a storage area on the 'west' end to reemerge at a later time after a rendezvous with an 0-5-0 switcher.  For the life of me I cannot remember the modeler's name and I am unable at this particular moment to research it, but he had a layout in the late-'30s into the '70s called Delta Lines; in essence, he did substantially the same thing as Allan McClellan does on the V&O.   In the mid-'60s Model Railroader reran a previous series on this layout titled The Art of Model Railroading which I read with considerable interest.  Trains did not just run on the Delta Lines; they went somewhere and eventually they terminated at a yard.  There was a through running capability and I will presume that it was used to effectively extend the length of the layout.  Peddler freights worked along the mainline and had to keep out of the way of superior trains.  Right smack dab in the middle of the line was a division point yard and here trains were switched before the cars proceded to their destination.  This division point yard did, when boiled down, what modern hidden staging does.

What makes McClellan's V&O memorable and legendary?  Because he promoted it through writing about it.  He did not, I feel, do this out of vanity; I met him on tour at the recent national convention in Cincinnati and he is a very down to earth and likeable guy and his railroad and modeling are, indeed, inspirational. His writings have made us intimately familiar with the V&O as we are unfamiliar with the PD&Q Railroad.  What railroad? you ask.  Exactly!

 As most of us who entered the hobby in the '60s will attest, we could not help but be inspired by John Allen and the famous Gorre & Daphetid - I may have that spelled wrong.  Over the years I have tried to analyze my infatuation with John Allen and the GD and I have conluded that the thing which initially captured my attention - and which has continued to capture my attention - was his photography. I know that this is blaspemous and it is only an opinion on my behalf and there are those who will advocate that I be punished with a fate worse than Savanarola but John Allen's layout was a mess. It was a bowl of spaghetti!!! It went into the mountains - it came out of the mountains and down to Port - then it went back into the mountains and came back to Great Divide where it completed its oval.  In doing this his trackwork climbed the face of the same cliff four times. His treatment of this topography rendered a reality which had been unknown up to that time and which inspires much slobbering to this day.  In real life John was a professional photographer and the composition of his photographs reflects that professionalism. If nothing else the GD was photogenic. His layout was designed with photography in mind and he admitted as much and he is as much an inspiring legend to me today as he was forty plus years ago when I was first introduced to his outstanding modeling. John Allen is the inventor of 'clutter'; that attention to detail has been taken up by the likes of George Sellios who, I am certain, is on his way to becoming an inspiring legend also.  I know one thing: I would love to capture the photogenic quality of John Allens layout - and George Sellios' also - and be as photogenically accomplished as he was - I DO NOT, HOWEVER, DESIRE TO BUILD A LAYOUT LIKE THE GORRE AND DAPHETID.  My modeling aspirations do not lie in that direction.

I am not necessarily a 'one track through one scene' modeler; I am also not a 'bowl of spaghetti' modeler.  Joe Fugate, another of those legends in the making, and I had a short dialogue concerning operation when he first introduced his postings on that subject some months back.  I am a railfan operator not a 'lets see how many cars we can shove into our side tracks today' operator. The NMRA's Layout Design SIG - it might be the Operations SIG charges that that railfan philosophy will, because of the limited space which we are forced to operate in in our model railroading environment, automatically promote spaghetti bowl design.  I like to shove a few cars here and there but I mainly like to see the trains roll which is what I watch for when I go railfanning at trackside.

This raises one other point and goes to the issue of what is prototypical; one should, it is advocated always stay on the same side of the tracks.  Allen McClellan does this; so does Eric Brooman; if you cross over to the other side of the peninsula those people railranning your layout are going to lose track of your train.  I understand this and I find this when I go out train chasing; I frequently loose track of my train and have to race to the next photo location and, in doing so, have to cross to the other side of the tracks.  The train which was coming at me from right to left at the last station is now coming at me from left to right.  The rational for avoiding this is that to get the train in this position the track must cross over itself and this is unprotypical.  Twenty car trains behind a Big Boy is also unprototypical and I'll rest my case on this point.

I probably have gone far afield on this response; I had intended to make some comments on benchwork and trackwork with a few comments on foam - which I have never used and probably never will use - as opposed to hardshell scenery which I have used successfully for twenty-five plus years. We are going to continue to use those materials and techniques with which we are comfortable.  I have an extensive electronics background but DCC scares me to death although I am going to do it on my new/next layout.  Why does it scare me?  Because it is new and flies in the face of my (model railroading) electronic experience. If it works I may just write an article on building the XY&Z railroad which will put me on the fast track to becoming a legend!  Move over, John Allen!

[selector]

"If you want to break new ground, you better be prepared to tear out new ideas that don't work."

 

On the surface, that's just more common sense, but underneath at a deeper level, you almost have to head into a project thinking it's going to get torn out, if you're trying to build a model that approaches state of the art, or even has a chance to exceed state of the art, and that is definitely NOT the way I've been approaching our layout....

 

 

...If you want to have the best layout you can possibly have, you are almost certain to spend some, maybe a lot, of time taring out stuff you've already built.

 

If that's the case, then how come we never hear about model railroad destruction?...

 

 

...If my logic is correct, there should be equal attention given to techniques for dismantling failed experiments as there is given to successful paint by numbers layouts.

 

Okay, I have reduced your observations and musings to these few quoted statements...under strict license, of course.

I am like the rest;  I prove stuff very shortly after I sit back and congratulate myself.  If it doesn't work, I don't rest.  Period.  I have never had to tear out any wiring, but I have had to redo countless solders of the type under the layout, you know, the ones where you have to place newspaper directly under the area or...?  I have torn out, by their wired roots, turnouts and sections of track that became useless after a while due to bad performance.  Recall that I am in my youth in this hobby, and have much to learn.  So, I learn many of my lessons the hard way, and have yet to relearn many of them.

So, you raise a good point.  How to do a repair in place, or surgery if we can use that analogy.  If I understand you, Jeff (or is it Mike?  Sorry.), there is a method to altering unsatisfactory places and functions on our layout so that it is not, as I seemed to say, destructive.   You want it to be viewed as a process of generating order, of amelioration.  In that respect, I agree whole heartedly.

-Crandell

[hminky]

While I'm here, I've got to say that the way you matched the perspective of the mountain behind the large rock face, from 3D into the backfrop, is as well done as I've seen yet. The anlge looks perfect, and imminently believable.

Question...how does it look from other viewing angles? Can "one size fit all" or do you have to sacrifice one viewing angle to make another one look that good?

 

Thank you, in that picture it looks reasonably good. I have thought about redoing it but will save that for another mountain backdrop blend. We have a new and last Wagon Road Creek tunnel portal for our Sn3.5 layout.

And if you are published enough you will become great no matter how unoriginal the thoughts you constantly publish and mediocre the parts of your large layout you really built.

Just a thought

Harold

[Midnight Railroader]

So, how did the great model railroaders become great?  Most of them were lucky enough to get published in the model railroad press, because of the quality of their work. 

Naw, come on.

Being published doesn't somehow make someone a great model railroader.

Nor does luck.

Danged hard work, done consistently and with an unwillingness to accept mediocrity makes someone "great" at this hobby.

[tomikawaTT]

Really far out experiments happen on the bench.  If they work, they get installed on the layout.  If they don't, the parts go in the available parts inventory or the circular file.

OTOH, I'm working from well over half a century of hands-in-the-machinery experience, so a lot of things get built once even though I've never built anything quite similar before.  I don't consider anything 'built' until all the tweaking has been finished and the division super (me) signs off the work order.  That includes yard throats with 3-way switches on curves and puzzle palaces of double slip switches.

Maybe I should rephrase that as, "Things that work only get built once."

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[jeffers_mz]

Ok Chuck, I see what you mean. I'm normally the same way about track and power, it has to work right this time and every time, but we may differ on the priority. Effectively, the whole layout is "down" right now. It won't be "up" till the expansion track is laid, and wired, and the sound wired.

To manage that, I've got to finish a trestle, ballast about 6 feet of track, assemble three sections of bench (components are cut), and design, acquire materials for, and install a rack for the sound PC, the mixer, the sub, and a keyboard, then lay and wire the track.

 

Space is ectremely limited here, room for the layout, room for a nice shop elsewhere in the house, but only room for one or two sets of tools close by the layout. Getting things accomplished is really like a ballet, the tool and material flow have to be choreographed or else certain minimums, (like walkways and fire exits) are compromised and that just can't happen.

 

I'm interested in your statement that you only build things once. zi've seen some of your work and posts, you strike me as a serious modeller, how do you manage to build things only one time? I do a lot of research, read MANY how-to's before a job comes up to the top of the list, but there are some things I just don't KNOW going in.

 

Those things tend to be things that aren't included on many layouts, some of the sound system complexities, waterall construction, etc.

 

Are you staying on safe ground, doing extensive testing beforehand, how do you push the edge, yet only do things once?

[tomikawaTT]

jeffers_mz,

Note the quote - "Good enough - isn't."

An additional quote, from the same source (me) - "Perfection is approachable, but never attainable."

I don't demand perfection, but I do work to a high standard of reliability.  As a result, my layout construction will never challenge anyone's 'speed per square (fillintheblank)' record - but what I build only gets built once.

FWIW, the two things I insist on (in my own work) are precise trackwork and bulletproof electricals.  Any deviation from those standards is hunted down and corrected NOW, not left to cause problems later.  Other things (like contest-level superdetailing and absolute fidelity to prototype) take lower rungs on the priority ladder - rungs so low that they're out of sight under the floor.

In my years as an aircraft type, I never saw an aircraft that didn't have open discrepancies on its maintenance forms.  If we had demanded total perfection, the only things in the sky would have been birds.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

 

[jeffers_mz]

Harold, I've been watching your layout for a long long time, since we model a similar era, and since you've done so much of it online. I've seen enough to know that you could write a book on efficient tearout, just some of your upgrade projects I remember include the new tunnel portal, the cut for the wagon road, and the new rock face using the ceiling tiles. 

 

I'd be interested in reading that book if it ever get's written.

 

While I'm here, I've got to say that the way you matched the perspective of the mountain behind the large rock face, from 3D into the backfrop, is as well done as I've seen yet. The anlge looks perfect, and imminently believable.

 

Question...how does it look from other viewing angles? Can "one size fit all" or do you have to sacrifice one viewing angle to make another one look that good?

 

 

[MisterBeasley]

I definitely like exploring new ground, and working on new techniques.  At the same time, I don't care to re-invent the wheel on every aspect of the hobby.  So, I watch and learn, borrow and steal, but at the same time I try things on my own.  Of course, when I decided to model a subway system, I went out on a long, thin branch all by myself.  I'm hoping to do a few really original things with my models.

To paraphrase George Orwell, "All model railroads are unique, but some or more unique than others." 

I probably never be one of the greats since I have devolved into a truely minority area of modeling, Sn3.5 in the 1870's. Magazines don't like the offbeat. -- Harold

To me, Harold, you're already there.  Your modelling is consistently excellent, you've pioneered new techniques, and you've shared your secrets with the rest of us.  Thanks.

[jeffers_mz]

"Try new things.  Some of them might work."

I recall putting the above into a post some time back.  The obvious implication is that some new things DON'T work - about 50% of them, in my personal experience (including things that work for other people.)

So, the next step.  If the newly installed (fill in the blank) isn't working, and isn't responding to corrective action, take it out!  When it comes to things that impact keeping the trains on schedule, "Good enough - isnt."

So, how did the great model railroaders become great?  Most of them were lucky enough to get published in the model railroad press, because of the quality of their work.  A good many equally skillful modelers were never recognized outside their own little circle of friends.  Nobody ever became known as a great model railroader by advertising their failures.  Just as a professional model or actor knows which angles photograph well and which don't, craftspersons of all types show off their successful masterpieces and dumpsterize or drastically modify their ugly ducklings.

Becoming a "great" model railroader involves luck.  Becoming a Master Model Railroader involves long study and hard work - and more than a few of the NMRA's roster of MMRs are unfamiliar to most of us.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

 

"Good enough, isn't".

 

True in the long, or even medium term, but not necessarily today, in my opinion. It comes down to priorities, doesn't it?

I have a spur that suffers intermittant electrical supply. I never use it, since the layout isn't "there" yet for ops, just a little "round and round" between work sessions. Gotta test the track, you know?

I'm assuming you're ok with that, because otherwise...you are saying that you'd rather not have a layout at all unless it is perfect from step one...and if that's the case, there's a whole chicken and egg thing going on, and further, that would be a philospphy I am currently unable to comprehend or even begin approaching without a better idea of how it works. 

Right now, I'm detailing certain areas that are about to suffer reachability issues due to an imminent expansion. The trackwork for the expansion will necessarily have to be wired, so that cranky spur will get fixed while the soldering iron is already hot, so to speak.

Given the volume of work to be done, it seems ok to streamline the approach, group similar tasks together to avoid setup and teardown time for tiny projects, and I think you'd agree with that, as long as the resolve is there to get it right when the time is right. 

Or am I reading you wrong? 

Does everything have to be perfect on your layout, before you move on to another project?

[jeffers_mz]

Well...this seems to be a philosophical question, although I understand its pragmatic applications, too.  I suppose it is that putting order, in the many ways that word can be defined, into something is much harder than putting disorder into it.  In other words, the universal tendency is toward disorder, or entropy, and not the other way around.  So, to create heretofore untold order will require extraordinary effort and insight...which few of us are capable of, or are inclined to do if my first assertion is wrong. 

I can bust up a layout in about one hour, but it takes hundreds of hours to generate something that I can appreciate.  It would take another set of hundreds of hours to put into effect the strokes of genius that history tells us we rely on to get the quantum leaps in ability and in understanding.

Besides, reading an article on how to dismantle something is not very interesting.

 

I see where you're coming from, and you're right, creation is much more difficult than destruction.

 

But utter destruction wasn't what I had in mind. If you tear something out because it isn't good enough, then you are pretty much by definition looking to improve the layout, not reduce it to the stable quantum flux of entropy, or quark soup, if you will.

 

We once got our grasses chewed by a salesman...seems he had charged a client $1700 for gutting his house and we had it down to a bare shell in two hours, made it look like we were overcharging (and having too much fun!).

 

Total destruction, I can handle.

 

No, if you're going to experiment, and you know going in it may not work, then the trick is to get a failed effort back out of there without messing up any extra terrain or area. Let's see...ideally, you would be able to effect the quickest removal to a bare slate, i.e. pre-experiment status, without increasing the chances of failing the experiment through planning for failure.

 

Now there has to be some skill and technique to that approach, yes?

 

No?

 

Maybe?

[hminky]

I like to try new ideas and I show what goes bad. That is the advantage of the web, I can have articles with the warts and all. An idea I will someday work on more is mylar film for water.

I probably never be one of the greats since I have devolved into a truely minority area of modeling, Sn3.5 in the 1870's. Magazines don't like the offbeat.

Our 1870's oil transfer facility in S scale under construction. Click image to enlarge

I like doing things different. Like making igneous rocks from ceiling tile. Visit:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/volcanic_rocks/

Thank you if you visit

Harold

 

 

[tomikawaTT]

"Try new things.  Some of them might work."

I recall putting the above into a post some time back.  The obvious implication is that some new things DON'T work - about 50% of them, in my personal experience (including things that work for other people.)

So, the next step.  If the newly installed (fill in the blank) isn't working, and isn't responding to corrective action, take it out!  When it comes to things that impact keeping the trains on schedule, "Good enough - isnt."

So, how did the great model railroaders become great?  Most of them were lucky enough to get published in the model railroad press, because of the quality of their work.  A good many equally skillful modelers were never recognized outside their own little circle of friends.  Nobody ever became known as a great model railroader by advertising their failures.  Just as a professional model or actor knows which angles photograph well and which don't, craftspersons of all types show off their successful masterpieces and dumpsterize or drastically modify their ugly ducklings.

Becoming a "great" model railroader involves luck.  Becoming a Master Model Railroader involves long study and hard work - and more than a few of the NMRA's roster of MMRs are unfamiliar to most of us.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[selector]

Well...this seems to be a philosophical question, although I understand its pragmatic applications, too.  I suppose it is that putting order, in the many ways that word can be defined, into something is much harder than putting disorder into it.  In other words, the universal tendency is toward disorder, or entropy, and not the other way around.  So, to create heretofore untold order will require extraordinary effort and insight...which few of us are capable of, or are inclined to do if my first assertion is wrong. 

I can bust up a layout in about one hour, but it takes hundreds of hours to generate something that I can appreciate.  It would take another set of hundreds of hours to put into effect the strokes of genius that history tells us we rely on to get the quantum leaps in ability and in understanding.

Besides, reading an article on how to dismantle something is not very interesting.

[jeffers_mz]

Bouncing back and forth the other day, between trestle bents, and landscaping, and painting, and vegetation, and ballast...I got to wondering about how the modelling greats, got to be great in the first place...

 

I doubt seriously that any of the MR legends got to be legends simply by building a layout from a kit, or from one book, or video, or how-to. There are lots of "standard" layouts around, "WS by the numbers" start to finish, and none of their owners seem to be icons of mythical proportion in the hobby.

 

Nothing wrong with that, we get a lot of pleasure from out plaster cloth/ground foam layout, but still...it doesn't answer the question...how does a good modeller become a great modeller?

 

Well, in any endeavor, a thorough knowlege of what others have done before you will save you time and mistakes, but again, there are lots of modellers who own every book and video ever sold and still they never rise to the ranks of immortality.

 

No, I think the great ones are the ones who break new ground, and pull it off.

 

After a while you can look at a layout and recognize most of what you see, the techniques that were used, the influences at work, but what really catches your eye are things you've never seen before, things that look so real you're asking yourself, "HOW did he DO that?"

 

So, waiting for glue or paint to dry, switching from one task to another, iIexplored this idea.

 

In the end, I came up with two basic conclusions.

 

One, if you want to break new ground, you have to try new things. Things you never saw in a book, or read online, or watched in a video. "Foam-plaster-gravel-paint-Envirotex-Gloss medium" might yield a perfectly acceptable river or lake, but it's not going to look much different than any other foam-plaster-gravel-paint-envirotex-gloss medium lake, and it just isn't going to stand out from the crowd. To be different, you have to...well...be different.

 

Two, unless you are already a modelling god, odds are that if you try new things, some of them aren't going to work. New ideas might sound good, might logic out so gorgeous you'd be an instant superstar, but if it was that great of an idea, somebody might have already done it, so you stand a good chance of just making a mess when you step off the beaten track.

 

Ok, pretty mcuh common sense so far, but what iIthought was worth sharing is this, a conclusion stemming from the first two:

 

"If you want to break new ground, you better be prepared to tear out new ideas that don't work."

 

On the surface, that's just more common sense, but underneath at a deeper level, you almost have to head into a project thinking it's going to get torn out, if you're trying to build a model that approaches state of the art, or even has a chance to exceed state of the art, and that is definitely NOT the way I've been approaching our layout.

 

(Now before I go any further, some disclaimage is in order. I am not a legend. I will never be a legend, nor will my layout ever be legendary. Even if I DID try a new technique that worked, odds are that some one, out of the millions of modellers that have gone before me, already did it, and so even then, I'm not the first.)

 

But that still leaves the central point intact.

 

If you want to have the best layout you can possibly have, you are almost certain to spend some, maybe a lot, of time taring out stuff you've already built.

 

If that's the case, then how come we never hear about model railroad destruction?

 

How comes there's no threads called "Weekly Photo Failures"?

 

How come Model Railroad Magazine never has a feature called Trackside Dung Piles?

 

If my logic is correct, there should be equal attention given to techniques for dismantling failed experiments as there is given to successful paint by numbers layouts.

 

Vendors should be advertising just how easy their products are to REMOVE from the layout, not how easy they are to APPLY, and there should be thread after thread here with titles like "Ripping Out Bridges", "Making Mountains into Molehills", and "How to Unwire a Reversing Loop".

 

There should be how-to's describing which Exacto blade cuts old plaster best, and discussions on whether a chainsaw is faster than a Moto-tool.

 

But there's not.

 

So the question then, is whether my logic is just plain wrong, or whether I am...

 

 

...breaking new ground?

 

:-) 

 

Thoughts?