I see nothing wrong with incorporating elements of my childhood into my layout. I use some Child Guidence buildings with some details added on part of my layout and I have a few matchbox semi truck as well as mini Hess tank trucks (farther back as they are a bit small). Makes for a more child friendly and durable layout.
Joe Staten Island West
Quite a philosophical discussion on a hot day!
I think there is a point to the issue. Our layouts get more and more sophisticated in the aim of attaining more and more realism in our little model world. It is not only related to the electric and electronics part of our layouts, it´s in the intricate yet frail detail of our locos and rolling stock and our scenery, accessories, structures, figures. What we may end up with are beautiful, realistic looking layouts, but with very little "play" value - not only for our children or grandchildren, but for us.
I am in "this business" for 53 years now and I have built quite a number of layouts, each one meaning another step forward in realism. But in all those years, I have never again found that thrill that I had when playing with my first layout, which was a rather crude affair, Marklin HO scale tin plate track on a table, with scenery painted on, much like the layout shown in the picture below:
This is what your average home layout looked like in the 1950´s and 1960´s and, boy, had we fun with them!
I am not saying we should go back to our roots, but we should not forget that building a layout is not a race nor a contest and that we should draw a line where the fun ends and hassle and toil begins.
A friend of mine has just built a layout, which is so intriguing in its simpicity, yet effective in its atmosphere.
It´s a little 2 by 3 layout built to run is OO9 scale narrow gauge live steam (!) loco.
The layout incorporates nearly all the ingredients for a model railroader´s nightmare - flat MDF benchwork, grass mat scenery, bottle brush trees, no ballast, sharp curves, bulky manual turnout controls, but it shows how little can be so much!
More pictures of this charming, simple layout are available here:
OO9 Live Steam Layout
Just scroll down a bit for the latest pictures.
My kids have been playing with my trains since they were 2 years old. I have lots of old athearn blue box diesels that I turned into "push diesels". Removed the motors and gearing. The kids love to push these around the layout hooked up to whatever cars they desire. Sometimes they run trains too. Only twice has something taken the plunge, and that was easily fixed with a little super glue. If anything, the working crossing lights and realistic scenery makes it even more fun for them. They also enjoy playing in the town and lego cars and guys often pay a visit
I think you will find that those of us that have children and grand children don't build "do not touch" layouts if they want to introduce said little ones to the joys of model railroading. My best friends uncle provided my first intoduction to scale model railroading when I was 8. There have been numerous posts on this forum describing the same interaction today. Recently I have attended operating sessions that involved pre-teen participants without problems.
While I applaud some of the improvements in technology and modeling techniques over the past 10 years or so I wonder if maybe we have gone too far. Building ultra sophisticated and often delicate layouts which often feature "do not touch" to our children and grandchildren may have the unintended consequence of turning the young off to wanting to pursue this hobby in the future.
Everyone will draw the line at a different point on how much improvement is too much but if we totally eliminate imagination from a young persons mind I believe we do a diservice to their growth as well as to the future growth of our hobby. So where do you draw the line in how much to "improve" your layout? At the present I still run DC, have no antimation, no sound, and no lighting though I do plan to add lights at some point. There are other things that could be mentioned but you get my point. Where do you draw the line in the sand on your layout on sophistication?