If you could do it all over again. . .

[thor]

Lots of good stuff in this thread! Definitely worth doing a compilation of various peoples observations, which is what I'm doing now and how come I revisited this.

Another one of my 'mistakes' was to try and avoid buying a 'proper' transformer/controller. If, like me, you're new to this gauge/scale be aware that the power requirements are HUGE compared to HO if that's where you're coming from as I was.

I kept putting it off because my hobby money budget is tiny and everytime I went shopping I saw two or three 'must-haves' I could get for the amount needed for a big power pack, so I got them instead and then regretted it next operating session.

So if you started off with a train set and the usual just barely adequate power pack it came with, take a deep breath and make your next expenditure a whopping great 'dualie' even if it means going for the next 6 months without any more trains! The little power pack will do fine for an isolated block or better yet for powering accessories.

[traindaddy1]

Be more selective and go for quality instead of quantity.  Thanks for asking.

[Sturgeon-Phish]

Negotiate for more space!

Jim 

[John Busby]

Hi MSTLbuff

The two things that really stick in my mind I think apply to all scales and types of train be it toy or model train.

These where learned the hard way

One ALWAYS design a point of extension into the track plan by means of one or two conveniently located sidings even if you don't plan on extending,

These things tend to grow and there is always that new brilliant idea or thing you want to add to the layout.

This was learned when I wanted to extend the first layout I ever built and it was not thought of right at the beginning, one convenient siding would have prevented layout demolition and 18 months of no trains.

Two If you cannot jump up and down on your layout bench work it is not strong enough.

This was learned when a section of layout hit the floor because it was too lightly constructed, and could not take the weight of the large plaster mountain built on the section.

I now make sure both of the above are built into any layout I build even though the chances are that the layout will reach demolition point first or does not have room to extend situations change as life moves on.

I have reached the point in life where I think the next layout should probably be the last so it will be extended and re-worked rather than demolished so I don't go back to 0 operations life is starting to slowly catch up with me.

But there are still many hobby I wish I had done?? or not done that, or what did you do that for moments to go we learn and grow as our layouts grow and change.

regards John

[4kitties]

5. Poured foundations are less prone to water infiltration - exterior water proofing is a must as are and interior as well as exterior french drains.  French drains should empty into a sump pump.

Speaking from personal experience, I couldn't agree more.  I would add, choose your home site carefully, and if your sump is very active, install a battery backup pump.  We have French drains inside and out, and exterior waterproofing.  Our water table really rises during wet periods, and the drains can remain very active for weeks following heavy rain.  Thanks to the drains my train room stays dry but I pay a big price in sump pump activity - almost 12,000 cycles since I installed a counter last summer, at roughly 5 gallons pumped out per cycle.  This much activity made me nervous enough to install a battery backup pump, and this spring it paid for itself when we had heavy rain and a 3-hour power failure while I was at work.

Joel

[Dave Farquhar]

My only regret is that I wish I'd started sooner. Whether that would have been a year earlier when I had a basement, or with a small portable O27 layout in my apartment that I could push under the bed or futon when I was done, I wish the thought had occurred to me to do something with Dad's trains before it did.

I can think of a couple of individual things I wish I'd bought, and a few more things I wish I hadn't bought, but I've made bigger mistakes than that elsewhere in life. I've made much bigger and costlier mistakes with the cars I've driven and with jobs I've taken than I ever made with the trains.

[Anonymous]

I've used sheet foam on our Holiday layout and found it to be pretty poor at sound deadening when compared to the Homasote - plywood setup that I used on my permanent layout.


As far as changes I would have made: Ross turnouts, some cuts to reduce the "flattop" look of the terrain and I would have put more soft bends in the trackwork to prevent it from running perfectly parallel to the table's edge.

Mike

[palallin]

Hi Pallallin,

    I haven't had him do the work yet, but I have talked to David Long at Kelly Creek Backshop, in Bozeman, MT about grooving some of my HO locomotives for traction tires. He worked for North West Short Line for almost twenty years, and I have heard Good comments about his work. He works in all scales, and should be able to groove some drivers for traction tires for you. The contact info is  David Long at Kelly Creek Backshop, PMB 252   1627 W. Main  Bozeman, MT 59715-4011,   Phone# is [phone]    Email:  [e-mail] Get in touch with David, he will likely be able to help You, I just don't know what the cost would be.

                                                                          Doug

 

Thanks for the info, Doug!  I will contact him.

[nblum]

I'm with John Long, no regrets, no real plans for the future except to keep having fun whichever way that day takes me.

[challenger3980]

For the hobby, I would not have turned to HO for many years.

 For the layout, I would have worked harder to reduce the ruling grade.  I have a traction-tire-less locomotive that won't pull more than half its train up the grade.  I will probably have to get creative about reducing the curve at this late date.  Is it possible to install TTs on a wheel that isn't groved for them?

 

Hi Pallallin,

    I haven't had him do the work yet, but I have talked to David Long at Kelly Creek Backshop, in Bozeman, MT about grooving some of my HO locomotives for traction tires. He worked for North West Short Line for almost twenty years, and I have heard Good comments about his work. He works in all scales, and should be able to groove some drivers for traction tires for you. The contact info is  David Long at Kelly Creek Backshop, PMB 252   1627 W. Main  Bozeman, MT 59715-4011,   Phone# is [phone]    Email:  [e-mail] Get in touch with David, he will likely be able to help You, I just don't know what the cost would be.

                                                                          Doug

[3railguy]

After 25 years of collecting, I would not want to do it over again. For one thing, I wouldn't have all the trains I have now. The grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence but often turns out no greener than the grass you left.

As far as mistakes are concerned. That's a fact of life. Either tear it up and do it over or sell it and buy what you want. Don't look back and keep going.

[thor]

Okay, I made a lot of mistakes and apart from the hideously stupid teenage one of swapping ALL my trains, O and HO, many of them irreplaceable, PLUS all my Meccano for a clapped out BSA 500....

I'll never ballast track again. It takes forever to do, it causes endless problems with tiny streaks of insulating glue getting into switch blades and mechanisms not to mention little stones turning up between the switch blades and generally being a nuisance. However the reason why I'll never ballast again is because you cannot get the track up again without damaging it and the baseboard. FasTrack makes it unnecessary for me to ever have to ballast again, thank heavens.

I'll never build a permanent layout again because much of the pleasure I get from running trains is being able to change track plans as needed. I'd like to have a decent layout with proper baseboards but I'll do it as a modular design with the scenery as modules too so they can be removed or replaced as required. When that day comes, I'm dumping conventional control and going with TMCC, saving me a lot of block wiring and hard wiring in general.

I'm not going to get into the vast main line stable rat race of huge expensive locos that can't run on tight curves and look silly on anything less than 72". My new rule is that if the locos can't live on the layout then I don't need them, meaning no shelf queens collecting dust. EXCEPT I really want the new Lionel Big Boy - God knows how I'll ever afford one - but only as an example of the biggest steam engine ever built and my own personal trophy of the Golden Age of O gauge (which this is, without a doubt). I'd like it to be able to do its stuff in a case, on rollers, so it stays pristine but can be admired and maybe run once or twice a year if I ever get the promised basement slot.

I'll never build another layout requiring acrobatics or contortionism to reach the distant places where all troubles invariably originate!

Since my layout is and always will be kid friendly, it must have a generous amount of space at the edges for children to run trucks and motorcars, load and unload railroad cars and build Lego and wooden block bridges, stations, buildings like the Lincoln Logs which they really enjoy doing first by sending the logs to the site, then erecting the buildings, then populating them with people and animals. Asherah is a farm freak and has whole herds of cows, pigs, horse and sheep that she likes to build corrals for and send them on journeys.

For the same reason all operating lineside accessories requiring manual intervention must be installed where they are easy for a child to play with and for a grandpa to reset, fix and generally keep running.

My layout must have signals, semaphore type, doesnt matter if they are 'correct' as long as they bob up and down when a loco passes and lots of searchlights, light towers, lighted buildings and so forth because 'night time' operations are hugely popular with the kids (and me of course I'm one too)

Never again will I make the mistake of getting suckered in to attempting to model 'reality'. I will admit that I'm a TOY train enthusiast and forget any pretensions of being a 'serious' modeller.

I'll never again make the mistake of trying to use real water on my layout, it evaporates, encourages rust, is evil stuff around electricity just waiting for some horrible freak circumstances to electrocute an innocent, it attracts mice and insects, it doesn't even look like real water anyway and invariably leaks sooner or later and when it does, it invariably finds a route that will do the maximum possible damage.

I've learned that its a big mistake to lay down rails so they conform to the shape of the baseboard. Ones tendency is to sort of hug the boundaries but you get a much less regimented/geometric and more naturalistic look by placing the basic oval catty corner to the baseboards rectangle, so its offset. You may lose some room but you gain charm. I favor restricted speed branch line and small freight yard operations so wiggly track doesnt matter.

I'd better stop, I could go on forever!

[thatboy37]

nothing its all a learning experience.

[lionellarry]

Hi Jim---

Just read your comment about 2 inch foam not giving you as much sound deadening as Homosote. I was just about ready to use 3 inch blue foam insulation for grades with Gargraves track. Do you think the noise level you are getting has something to do with the the Lionel FasTrack with its solid plastic base? Have you ever used Gargraves on foam?

Thanks for your help. I don't quite know how the CTT post system works, so if you want to answer these questions directly, you can use my email [e-mail].

Regards---

Larry

[railfan23]

Just wished I used 072 curves instead of 054. Guess that will be this falls project.

[Prairietype]

I'm glad someone asked this question. Looking at my trains and knowing what they're worth; and I'm not talking about the monetary value, but, rather how well they were made, how significant they are culturally and historically, how much fun they are to play with, and the overall quality makes me appreciate what I have now. So take me back to 1961 and I wish I had somehow managed not to have lost the orginal boxes, stored them more carefullly, and that the battery acid had not damaged the aluminum on my 2561-2563.  I wish also that I had not been seduced into wanting a slot car set, even though my brother and I had fun with that for several years, but at the price of neglect of the Lionel trains.

Restoration began in 1979, when the GN Snowblower was taken out and test run for the first time in probably 8 years; it barely ran, but after it warmed up it began to run smoother and faster.  That gave me hope. Since then I have repaired and replaced missing parts and just before my dad died I was able to show him a restored Lionel crossbuck signal (one of the last things to be made operational again.)

No real layout until this year. That's another thing I wish had been possible then, but space and house design precluded that until now. I'm having as much fun now as I did in the early '60's, and probably have logged more hours playing with the trains this year than in all my childhood. 

    

 

[DCmontana]

I would have gotten back to running my trains sooner.  I went for several years without running them, but did buy additional engines and cars when I could not run them.  Also, I would have built a protable layout earlier as well; now when I move, I just take it down, pack it up, load it, and hit the road!

[BDT in Minnesota]

OofDa what a question??/ When I think back to some my five former layouts, I can think of allot of improvements for the next one....One thing that all five of them had in common, though, is the fact that I really enjoyed building them, and sharing them with other people.....On my next one, I will strive to make it easier to expand and upgrade...I plan on a fairly large layout, but those buggers can take forever to complete...So, I NEVER plan on completing my next layout..The plans are to put down a couple basic mainlines and sidings first so I can run some trains...The rest of the bare layout, in the meantime, will become a forest.....What???? ok... This is my simple copout idea to avoid a bare piece of plywood with tracks....I have several old fake christmas trees laying around....With a few scraps of styrofoam colored in shades of dirt and grass, with the christmas tree branches stuck into place, you can create a large area of "forest" with little effort...A few dead twigs here and there, along with a few small stones will add to a realistic appearance...If you have a few old lincoln logs laying around, you can put a cabin in the woods...an old junk car would also add to the effect....This is one simple way to buy yourself some time to finish the rest of the layout at your leisure....When the time comes to expand, the woods are easy to remove----or relocate....perhaps to the layout of some young person who could use a boost in getting started in this hobby....

[cnw1995]

As others have said, hindsight sure provides a good learning opportunity. What would I change? Hmmm, I don't know. I would still stay with 027 curves - it gives me good self-discipline about what I buy to run. The things I would change are things I don't really know how to do.  I would've liked to finish off the space better: plank over the entire raised crawlspace where the layout is located so it's level; put in coved walls covering the insulation and add more lighting to the ceiling.... but I'm not sure I'd spend the resources to do it anyway --  it's a question of priorities of fitting the hobby into a youngish family.

[jonadel]

I'm with Frank53, my Dad's been gone since '84 and I wish I had made the effort when he was retired to build a small layout in his basement. I truly regret it.

Jon

[palallin]

For the hobby, I would not have turned to HO for many years.

 For the layout, I would have worked harder to reduce the ruling grade.  I have a traction-tire-less locomotive that won't pull more than half its train up the grade.  I will probably have to get creative about reducing the curve at this late date.  Is it possible to install TTs on a wheel that isn't groved for them?

 

[Dr. John]

I wish that I had not allowed my mother to sell my first Marx trainset when I was in high school (back in 1974).

If I had to do it over again, I would have stayed with O gauge and purchased a lot of late post war stuff when it was relatively inexpensive,especially accessories. I would have also bought as much Marx as I could.

As has been said, hind-sight is 20/20. 

[Jumijo]

The one thing I would have done differently would be to add a layer of Homoste on top of the 2" foam insulation currently on the layout. I really believe that the homosote would have made the FasTrack less noisy. When I built the layout, I thought the foam would be enough, but it's not the case.

Jim 

[Anonymous]

Most of us have or have had established layouts. Invariably, there is a lot of twenty-twenty hindsight vision in this hobby--I should have put the yard here instead of there or I wish I had not bought that engine. . . . So, if you could do it all over again, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I wish that thirty years ago, my first train set under the tree was O scale instead of N. While I enjoyed my subsequent twenty plus years in 1:160 prototypical modeling, I was really only a toy train guy displaced in a scale world not of my own.

Looking at your modeling and layout, if you could do it all over again what would you do? I am very interested in what O scalers would do differently.

Alex   

No regrets as I haven't begun construction yet... I will say that the next house (5 - 8 years from now) is going to be laid out completely different from the way the house my wife and I just bought is.

Here are the new requirements:
1. No posts to obstruct basement layout.  Plan the basement layout in conjunction with the rest of the house so the foundation can be poured accordingly, and support columns placed as to maximize usable space
2. Locate ALL service equipment in one location.  Spreading them out WASTES a huge amount of space.
3. Have at least 1 basement exit with a minimum 48 inch opening.
4. Walkout basements are nicer than in-ground basements
5. Poured foundations are less prone to water infiltration - exterior water proofing is a must as are and interior as well as exterior french drains.  French drains should empty into a sump pump.

Brent

[Joe Hohmann]

For the past 2 years I've been working on my small 5x8 semi-scale "O" layout. I have had no "wish I had..." moments. Joe

[laz 57]

 Nothing made a lot of mistakes and learned from them.  Great time.

laz57

[jimhaleyscomet]

I would not have sold all my conventional loco's, 027 rolling stock, and 027 track right after I started on TMCC and DCS / scale stuff.  Later I returned to 027 and had to buy the stuff over again.

When I pulled my childhood set out of the attic it had some rusty 027 track and an engine that I did not recognize (probably a frame/motors to a diesel).  I threw away that engine!!!!!!  Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!!!!!!  Even though it was probably not from my first set (it is still complete) I wish I had kept it!!!!!!

I wish we had taken more pictures when I was a kid!

Jim H 

[Swipesy]

I would have gone 100% with Atlas track and MTH locomotives instead of a mix of Lionel 027 track and trains.  Also I would have built my table in a rectangle instead of Mickey Mouse ears shape.  Gave up too much space.

[Frank53]

Ten years ago, I moved from Florida to New Jersey for about 18 months and lived about a half hour from my Dad.

If I had it to do all over again, I would have dragged the trains from the attic and built one last layout with my Dad in his basement. I will always regret not doing that.