Age at starting a new layout

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

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

2

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

3

For me, I’m shot at almost 83. I’m not sure I’ll wake up in the morning. If it doesn’t hurt then it died and fell off.

As Rich said if you can do it, do it to it!

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

4

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.

5

Why not??

Wouldn’t working on the layout be better then sitting there wishing you would have ?

6

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.

7

At whatever age, don’t stop living.

8

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.

9

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.

10

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.

11

I say apply the KISS principle and go for it! Just focus on what you like most.

Simon

12

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.

13

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…

14

I started mine, about 15 x25 feet, at age 81. I’m 84 now and it occupies a great deal of my available time. Evenings and every weekend, both Saturday and Sunday.

Why just evenings and weekends? Because I still run a company I own.

When you’re in your 80’s, you have no idea whether your remaining time on this earth is one more day, one more year or 15 more years. Do what brings you enjoyment with each day. Don’t stop having fun with life.

15

Great Topic!!! Builds Enthusiasm, it’s working for me.

Thanks Guys

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

16

Because of so much free time, I have read a lot of threads these last days on the MR site and on other forum too.

A very interesting stuff for the most.

But I have found many people are speaking about age, and this age is a way to limit future train project construction like other project.

This is just my opinion:

I’m now 60 and just next from my 61 birthday date….

Woauw guy’s believe me I have projects for the next coming 200 years as a minimum !

I feel, have a project in any age is a motor to go further in a sort of never ending story somewhere, projects keep me in a vigorous way of life.

Even when I’m seak, I try to go further and not let this seak alter me.

In my case, at 60 I have taken the decision to left Europe for Canada and believe me it’s not a quiet river deal in any case.

Yes this has been helped by job opportunities for me and my lovely half, but remember I was able to retire in the next 4 years in Belgium, without any trouble; now I’m sure to work again around 10 years.

But this new project has acted on me like a power booster, like many other projects I have had during my life which really was not a quiet river life for sure.

I have a lot of projects in mind, some which will need years to be completed.

Of course one of them is the extension of my layout; this is a huge project expansion for my N scale layout, in an emphasis of a 550 feet of mainline; this is for sure a 15 years minimum project.

I have also an another hobby with big projects in mind, specially doable because I’m living in Canada now.

So I have some misunderstand feelings when I see people who say, “mmmmh I’m older I will not go in a big project now because……”

I can’t understand why a age must give us limit.

Mother w

17

You just never know. I have had a few close calls in my life and I have never been one to go for broke. I am 67 now and can still run full out and walk 20 miles if needed (5 plus is a normal jaunt for me). Had a few setbacks with injeries but nothing that lasted that long. I could still do an 8hr day of construction (did a few projects in the last 2 years or so but I don’t push it. My mom will be 99 this year and drove until she was like 93 but has since let herself go, good warning for me, never let yourself go, keep pushing it. So go for it, why worry about time, just make the asles a bit wider in case you have issues in the future.

18

I always suggest to people to make the aisles a little wider and the layout a little lower just in case you have mobility issues in the future.

Good advice.

-Kevin

19

While younger than many here, there’s never a “wrong” or “right” age to start a layout.

Someone told me that the only two rules for a layout:

  1. It’s may layout

  2. Have fun

20

True. You should always build what you want, and what makes you happy, and you should always have fun along the journey.

Too bad we can’t eliminate the occassional frustration.

-Kevin