You have your brenchwork done, trackwork operational,wiring done- starting scenery & you look & say I wish I had done that differently. My MRR is in an 8’X12’ room next to my woodshop. When I started the layout I was doing A lot of woodworking- custom furniture work etc. I thought about moving a wall 2’ to give more space for the layout but decided I could not spare the room off the workshop. I am no longer doing that much WW . The problem is I have an aisle just over2’ wide. If I had moved the wall I would have a 4’ aisle + 2’ more room on each end of the layout.[:(] To redo it now would require starting all over again.[V]
Tom
I’m still in the early stages, but there are a couple of things I’d do differently so far. I spent way too much time and money trying to hopelessly repair an old Bachmann 4-8-4. Eventually, I gave in and ordered the Bowser mechanism kit for it, and now it is the pride of the fleet. I should have just bit the bullet and spent the $80 and did that in the first place!
I’m currently building my first layout, and if I had to do it all over again, I might pick a simpler track plan. I chose one of the Atlas “spaghetti bowl” designs because it allowed me to have a double track and crossovers with mountains and a river. My main gripe is that it’s taking so freakin’ long to build. I kind of wish I started with something simpler, so I could just get the trains up and running ASAP. In the end, though, I think it will turn out nice enough.
-Dan
No regrets so far on this layout. It’s still relativly new and not enough track is in to hav a train but I’m sure that once I get it going I’ll find some. Ok I lied. I’ve been trying to convince myself that this won’t trouble me but I have a lack of industries and interchanges. I guess when I decided to go mountain railroading I knew that I couldn’t fit everything I wanted. This is one of the main things I’m learning from this hobby is being able to rationalize what I want and what I don’t need. It’s all comprises. I wanted helpers so I needed grades and mountains. So therefore i lost some room for industries. There’s always hope for a future expansion which I planed into this layout without much reworking the plan.
Andrew
Northing stopping you from taking two feet of the shop and using it for staging without moving the wall.
Plenty of regrets.
-Base. I used 1" thick white beaded foam. Errrrrrr. it should’ve been 2" for more stability. They didn’t sell the blue or pink crap here in CA when I started this layout. But I should’ve went with the 2" thick somthing for the track base. I have weak and saggy spots in the track ( which are a pain to correct) from this messed up base.
-Benchwork. The bench work stands up fine and does it’s job, but it could’ve been neater. Some joints are NOT perpindicular or level. A little sloppy. I wish I had a great set of tools to make perfect benchwork.
-Rocks. I didn’t use as many rock molds as I should’ve. I’m very dissapointed at the way most of the faces came out. I feel I can do rocks of ukguy’s caliber. I know I can. But I believed that was one area where I could save money, by cleverly using a single mold. ARRRRRRRRR. On top of that, I screwed up the coloration on some of them! They don’t even look real! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
-Grass. I didn’t use that sweater grass or fake fur technique anywhere on the layout. And since most of the basic scenery is done, it hard to work somthing like that in and have it look correct. My existing scenery looks good, but it can look better. I’m a sad panda.
Aggrojones- From all the pictures Ii’ve seen I would have thought you had no regrets you have a truly beautiful layout. I guess even the best modelers have regrets.
Andrew
aggro
From the photos I’ve seen you should’nt beat yourself up so much. Looks pretty good to me.[bow] But I know we are our harshest critics. My wife looks at something I have done & says it looks fine . I look at it & think I feel it doese not look right Tom
Wish I had a bigger yard, and room for a roundhouse and turntable. My last MR had one, and I’ve got them sitting on a shelf looking pretty lonely, right now. Hoping that when I get the staging yard built on the other side of the garage, I can somehow fit them in. Also, I didn’t plan any room for towns, so except for Sierra City on the new extension, all of the stations that the trains serve (3) have ‘off-the-set’ towns. Also, I didn’t plan for passing tracks that well–even though the layout is non-parallel double track. Have only one ‘slide-by’ track at Wagon Wheel gap, and only room for one spur to a cattle-loading facility. I don’t have much ‘on-line’ industry, and you’d think that since I’m modeling the Sierra Nevada that I’d have space for a lumber mill or a mine complex. But despite that, I’m still having a lot of fun.
Tom [:D]
PS: Aggro–don’t beat yourself up, what I’ve seen of the layout looks terrific. However, I can understand your self-criticism, because as a musician, EVERY artist is never satisfied with their work. And believe me, from what I’ve seen, you’ve managed to turn a hobby into an Art form, and that’s a VERY good thing!
Tom [bow]
This is my first layout since I was a kid. One of the things I really like about this hobby is that there is so much to learn and so many ways we can grow and develop as modellers. I have a couple of areas that I wish I had done a little better. The first is the curve radius. My curves are all 22" or greater except for one place where I fudged it a bit and the curve is too tight. To change it now will require a huge ammount of work, so I will live with it, but it means that my new Walthers passenger cars don’t run well thru this section. I also agree with Argo regarding my bench work. I used a lot of used lumber, not that this is an excuse, but there are a couple of places where the bench work join is sloppy. At the time of construction, it seemed OK, but now I realize the impact it had on track work and required quite a fix.
In the future, I will put much more care into these important areas rather than ru***o get the trains running.
I built my 4x8 layout for my kids with a parking lot for trains. IT was set up for DC and the kids could take their train intact and drive it into their parking slip. Likewise they could drive their trains into Diagon Alley or Hogwart’s Castle. Well, the kids lost all interest in the trains so I converted Hogwart’s into Rock Ridge a 1880’s mining town and Diagon Alley became Train City (named by my son). The parking spaces, I’d like to be a yard, but it as well as all the spurs are forward facing, so all operations involve runarounds. In other words, it is now designed backwards. The “yard” is now lots of spurs with industries.
the only regret i have is that my layout isn’t in a 20’ x 70’ room…but…it’s really hard to find a home with such space without having to rent a building…so…i’m just stuck with what i got because i’m not moving or building another layout ever again…chuck
I don’t think any modeler can ever claim to be totally satisfied with his/her layout - the advertisers in MR and the other mags do a pretty good job of preventing that![:D]
Holy cow, Aggro, that’s the most sharing I’ve heard from you, like…EVER!!!
You’re not gonna get all soft and mushy on us, are you? [:D][^]
But, to be honest, the others are right. We understand what you are saying, but we kinda don’t agree. You have done well, and now see how you could have done better. Trouble is, friend, we …WE… are not up at your level, so it’s hard for us to relate. We would be happy with your abilities. Please…enjoy that thought. Next time.
What do I regret? Not a heck of a lot, truthfully, because I got exactly what I had hoped for when I first started my head-long rush into my layout in mid-January. Yes, I forgot staging [V], my soldering rates a whole C-, and the EZ-track will not appear on any subsequent layout, but I enjoy my road every day.
I’m getting ready to start building my next layout after moving into the new house. I have a nice 15 x 20 space for it here. My regret . . . I wish I hadn’t bought so much track in code 100 now that Peco now produces code 83. Now I have at least $1000 (retail) worth of track and switches that I can’t really use. Selling it on e-bay will return about $0.50 on the dollar at best. I should have exercised more restraint and waited till I was ready to start building to buy the track rather than buy a little at a time long before I was ready to lay cork. I know I will love filling up that room, though, so who cares.
Yes
I should have bought a larger house! [:D]
Gordon
Aggro,
Move the wall 2’ out and splice the layout on the ends to match the new space. A friend of mine did this and you can’t tell it was ever changed. He moved his existing layout from a bedroom (no, it wasn’t designed to move so it was a big job) and moved it to a new purpose built room. You could build a new wall before moving the old one or detach the layout from the moved side and then move the existing wall. Not easy, but those narrow aisles will get to you.
Ernie C
I am currently on my third layout. I certainly brought many lessons learned into the current layout. My last layout started as a 12 x 4. But as I did more and more on it it began to grow along the sides until it was very difficult to reach all areas of the layout. It was turning into a monster. So when we were transfered to the FLorida keys several months ago I dismantled it and salvaged all I could and started a new layout. This one is around the room. 52 inches to the top of the rail and the view is much more enjoyable looking slightly down and across. The layout is only 24 in deep so I can reach everything easily. I am building it in sections with the thought that we will be moving back up to the main land in a year or so. One large section shaped as an “L” is a copy of the Boston Union Freight Railroad in the Sept-Dec MRR. Lots of switching. I have a really neat expensive digital camera (actually my wife’s She is a State Trooper) and have lots of photos but I dont know how to post pics. ANyway lessons learned for me. Keep it modular, and easy to reach.
Terry
i regret that when we were house hunting i paid more attention to kitchens , bedrooms and bathrooms than i did to the basement
i regret not buying many now long out of production kits that i saw in MR over the years
not really a regret , but if i was starting over i’d go with On30 rather than HO
When I was a boy, I sold all my O-guage Lionels for $100 and moved to HO. I should have put the Lionels in the attic and borrowed the $100, or sold my sister into slavery. I’d still rather be modelling in HO, but I had all this really neat Lionel stuff - rocket launchers, exploding boxcars, the animated milk and cattle cars, a rotating searchlight car, you remember this stuff, right? I had the “switchman” who came out of his building whenever the train came by - for some reason they made him about 20 scale feet tall. I named him George, after my dad. I had the section gang car and the firefighter car, with bumpers on the ends so they would reverse direction whenever they hit something. I had a MOW car that would run down the track spitting out ties every few feet. Now, I never even see this stuff at shows. But if some kid is having as much fun with those things now as I did then, well, I guess it’s OK…