I enjoy a mixture of larger plans requiring weeks to complete and discrete tasks that I can do inside of a couple of hours. Fortunately, designing and then building a train layout provides ample opportunity to do both of those things. There's always something to do. Make your job fit the day...as the late Dick Proenneke would have said if he had to stay close to his cabin due to inclement weather.
I think we all get a little joy out of something that contributes to a project. Cutting baseboards and doing the first coat of primer. Then, painting them. Then installing them. Several days later, you're on your knees applying some drywall mud to the small holes left by the brads. When that dries, you sand them gently, and prime them. Then paint them. Finally, two weeks later, yer done!
On to the next project....
Hey, if you got the fire for it, age doesn't matter.
So maybe you'll work at a slower pace. So what?
Might not get very far? Again, so what? Life is a crap shoot. Do what you want today - tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
I say apply the KISS principle and go for it! Just focus on what you like most.
Simon
Bob, I am 72 and will be starting a new Industrial Switching Layout (ISL) and I suspect this one will need to last my remaining years.
The Highland Terminal is a good switching layout and one I thought about redesigning and building to my taste because there's to much track for a small switching layout.
To my mind the Tenderfoot is to hard to switch because of the crowed industries and I dislke having to move one industry car(s) in order to switch a industry on switchback. The Tenderfoot has a lot of possibilities with some minor changes.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I started my layout at 58. It's now dismantled and I am finally getting psyched up to reconfigure it and get as much up again as possible. I'm 73 now. I have heart issues and in a lot of high-risk groups for this virus.
What the heck. The virus is messing up everyone's lives, so I need to get started. At least I have something worth doing.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
This is interesting, and got me thinking of my layouts and ambitions through the years at different ages.
The list of my six STRATTON AND GILLETTE LAYOUTS:
1) High School Layout, N Scale, 21 square feet, 14 years old: This layout was started with big ambitions for it to be part of my future permanent lifetime layout. An N scale layout that grows. It 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.
Oh, the many track plans I drew that included plans for the expansion. Looking back on them now, they were all terrible ideas.
It went to the landfill when I was 19 and moved in with my cute-punk-rocker-girlfriend Jeanna. She was much more interesting at the time. The layout would have lasted longer.
2) Dream House Layout, N scale, 800 square feet, 21 years old: Within a period of less than 12 months, I broke up with Jeanna, met my wife, got married, was blessed with a step-daughter and had another baby girl on the way. That was fast.
My wife and I both had money going into the relationship to build a life with. We bought 1 1/2 acres of land and had my dream house built to be our forever home. I designed this house in High School. We were so happy and everything was looking great for us.
I don't like to get into the ugly details of what happened to us next. We encountered severe financial hardship and went into complete despair from a position of being flush with cash. We were very lucky and got out of the house and out of debt, but our credit was shattered.
The dream house layout reached the point where I could run a train from one end to the other, but it never really became operational. I amassed an amazing collection of around 75 Atlas/Kato locomotives and 400 MTL train cars. Only about 20% of these were ever were painted. Almost all of them were sold off to help out any way they could.
The house was torn down less than two years after it was built.
3: The Misfire Layout, N scale, 20 square feet, 23 years old: This layout was intended to be one end of a much larger N scale layout. After we left the dream house we moved into an 800 square foot 3 bedroom duplex. I had a small wall in the dining room I used for layout space. This section had a helix to staging, the turnaround loop, and some interesting scenic features.
The track plan was horrid, and it was no fun to run trains on.
In short order I decided to switch to HO scale, and this layout came down. The helix worked great, and was the basis for the design of my friend Randy's helix on his NORFOLK SOUTHERN N scale layout.
4: The Master Bedroom Layout, HO scale, 16 square feet later enlarged to 24 square feet, 25 years old: Based on a track plan from Model Railroader this was simply a switching module, I guess an ISL would describe it quite well enough. It had a run through track so it could be part of a bigger layout in the future.
While working on this layout, I changed my era from 1968 to 1954.
This one was finished like a piece of furniture, and it was beautiful. Scenery was completed, and it was a lot of fun. It was moved into this house we bought in Cape Coral, and was set up in the new master bedroom. A second section was started and this was well designed and added a lot to the operation.
5: The Spare Bedroom Layout, HO scale, 44 square feet, 40 years old: The Master Bedroom layout sections could not be fit into the spare bedroom, so they were sent to the landfill. The new layout was crammed into the 11 by 12 bedroom that was vacated when my middle daughter moved out.
My track plan was terrible, I made some bad decisions on construction, and I took some shortcuts to speed up construction. Lots of mistakes, and after a couple years of work and redesigns the progress stalled badly.
It came down and was hauled to the landfill in 2016. This was a disaster of an attempt, and I learned things I am not willing to compromise on.
6: The Final Lifetime Layout, HO scale, 160 sqaure feet, Not started yet: I will hopefully start this within 12 months. It was supposed to begin on 01/JAN/2020, but my job travel made that impossible.
Well, I have had an interesting time building layouts. Some have been fun and successful, others failures. I also built 4 other layouts for clubs or other people.
If I was 80+ and did not have a layout, I would certainly build one if I could. I have almost always had a layout and life without one for more than three years has been uncomfortable.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
At whatever age, don't stop living.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I'm only 72, so take this for what you want.
Age does not matter near as much a physical health and desire to do it. You say you are healthy enough and want to, so DO IT.
Why not??
Wouldn't working on the layout be better then sitting there wishing you would have ?
I'm 68 and after I move this summer, to a home with a ground floor master bedroom, I will expand my modules quite a bit. I was thinking I was a bit crazy to embark on the project. I admire your ambition.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
The average life expectancy in the U.S. for an 81 year old male is 8.34 years. And that is the average life expectancy, so since you are in "fair health", you should outlive that average. So, get started with that new layout, times a' wasting.
Rich
Alton Junction
First off next month I will be 81 and am in fair health and still fully mobile and just recently tore down my 15x17 garage layout due to my deciding to move into a villa after 55 years of home ownership (I wanted to give the children their inheritance while I am still alive and was fed up with home maintenance problems). I am now a renter and limited to what I can do and not do to the garage for a new layout.
All this leads to the question would you start a new layout at my age. I was thinking of just making a few modules one being of the Highland Terminal and the other the Tenderfood layout. Both of these are switching shelf layouts and that is what I prefer rather than continuous running. The other layouts I operate on are all continuous running and very heavy on switching so I still have access to larger layouts. So in a nutshell have any of you started a new layout at 80 and what size did you build if you did or at 80 would you start a new one?
Bob D
Bob D As long as you surface as many times as you dive you`ll be alive to read these posts.