I posted this on the Armstrong thread, then decided it might make a good conversation on its own. I know that many newbies jump into the hobby with both feet and build without thinking.They just wnat to get someting running. I was one. And it was an incredible waste of my resources: time and money. But there are many out there that advocate building the benchwork, laying down track and seeing what works.
Now for my previous post on Armstrong.
As all of you know, I’m still green around the gills. I’ve read Track Planning three times and I’m sure I can get more from it.
But I think what I got the most from it is what no one seems to be mentioning. It is that model railroads take PLANNING.
It’s more than seeing how much you can cram into a 4x8. Every section of track has to have a reason. It must fit your vision. Not just “I’ve got a grist mill and I need a place to put it.”
The vision comes from your “givens and druthers” followed by research, more research, and even more research.
Then you build a schematic.
Then a you finally draw it out, you make compromises based upon what is important to you from you givens and druthers and research.
IF you don’t, it’s likely you will be dissatisfied with your layout before you get around to the buildings and trees.
From my viewpoint, great topic. I’ve been struggling with this somewhat … I’ve done a fair amount of planning, Armstrong books, Koester books, Givens & Druthers, sketches, Layout Design Elements, etc … Have decided on railroad, basic location, era … Frankly, drawing a plan to scale is just not that interesting for me. I’m building benchwork and was going to go ahead with “plopping” and work in 3D. Just haven’t heard about many who go this route, and wonder if I will regret it.
I’m also of the theory that less is more and don’t necessarily want to cram the space with “spagetti bowl” trackwork, so am trying to convince myself that plopping is okay.
Put me down for a plopper and looking forward to the other responses on this post.
interesting observation , and very good advice for someone starting out in the hobby , or for someone with experience but who has been dissatisfied with his efforts .
my main involvment in the hobby over the last 30 years has been reading magazines and books on model railroading . one would think i’d know enough by now that i could just sit down and build a layout . not true ! it’s taken me the last year or so to get to the point where i really know what i want (i think!) because my reading and thinking has been much more focused , mainly due to what i’ve read here from people who are in the middle of building something and sharing the process with us all .
so i’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone who contributes here , that even includes those of you who ask what you think are dumb questions , because sometimes they are questions i haven’t even thought of !
Sorry, but I see you as a planner. You’ve done your homework and planned things out. You admit your weekness with scale drawings, but you have a sketch and a plan (albiet in your head.)
In my mind a plopper can have a drawing, even a scale one. They just do their plopping in the drawing first. But they have not done their homework, and often don’t even have a clue about what they want.
I guess I’m a bit of both, I just see things or scenes I like and think where I can plop them into my layout, so I actually do plan my plopping, hmmm…, I havent really done any concise research other than VERY basic, and then its only research what is available, how much it is, and dimentions, modelwise, not actual.
I guess the prototypicality of it isnt really that important to me, as long as the train goes from here to there with a kind of semi-purpose then I’m happy just building away.
Great question tho, I think we are all planners really tho, as we all have our own idea of what we want to see on our layout.
Well I’m off to look thro Walters 2005 to see if theres anything else I can ‘plop’ into my ‘plan’ [:D]
SpaceMouse,
You’ve nailed me to a T. I’ve read things for the last 30 years!!! I belong to a group that calls themselves the ORNRy bunch, who model in HO, and there are 10-15 of them and half of them have layouts that they’ve worked on for years. Some are heavily into OPS , some are prototype all the way, and others just like to model. They keep asking me when I’m going to start and I keep telling them that I have no clue as to what my pike will do. I’m strapped with an around the wall two feet wide situation with French doors on one end of the room and two other doors into different locations within the house and all of this in a space of about 10x20 feet. And on top of that, the CEO has made her givens and druthers very clear. I am a planner, but it really is very difficult to plan when you have no idea of why the railroad will be there.
I plan to plop I think. I am building a layout at the moment and my plan has sidings drawn into it but I don’t know in most cases what will be on the other end yet. I bookmarked a lot of scenes that I want to try to incorporate in my layout but don’t know where most will go. It does help help me to have an overview of what I want to model, i.e. a small town with the road crossing the tracks and plenty of people opportunities, a farm, some undermined industries, etc.
I am both, my table frames are done, now to get foam, then with a plan, sort of in mind, I will just plop things down and work to make them fit. I for one, believe that operations are taking playing with trains way to serious…
I’ve been in the hobby for about 4 years, I’ve also drawn out quite a few basic layout designs. It just seems like a daunting process to actually draw it out to scale with cardboard on the floor. But on the other side of the coin I enjoy custom modeling diesel engines per customer requests. Right now I’m doing up 2 SD-45, 3 SD-40-2XR, 2 GP-7, and a SW-7 in MRL colors, so planning and building a layout in my 31’ X 12’ attic have been put on the back burner. So am I a planner or a plopper? I’m just a railfan train nut.
First, I plop…'cuz it’s the most fun. Then, when I get close to plunking down money, I turn to planning. That usually delays any cash wastage…notice I said “delays”. When the planning runs its course, I return to plopping…and more fun. Eventually, I gain enough confidence that I feel I can execute the plan, and I begin to purchase suplplies (last night I built my first Fast Tracks #8. Let’s just say it looks like a good turnout, but my technique needs some improvement).
So, I am a vacillator more than anything. I have learned that both processes are as essential to success as sugar and flour in cookies.
-Crandell
P.S. I’m really a plopper at heart.
P.P.S. - I am planning all the time…you know…for the next one? [:D]
Well, I have learned that there is no substitute for having a good and well thought out plan. However, even with the best computer generated model or most accurately set down drawing of what you want, there will be many changes to the plan as it unfolds as it is “plopped” down on the layout. In music, the definition of improvisation is: Making it up as you go along. However, for it to work well, you have to have an immense knowledge of theory, and the piece you are improvising. For example: You have to know your scales. Most jazz improv is scale work. You better know the chord progression (or as a gospel piano player friend of mine would say, “Ya gotta know da changes brother!”) You better know what style the piece is in. After all most most of J. S. Bach’s great Choral Preludes were originally impovisations he did in church on Sunday Morning, but that is a bit different from jazz, rock, or other styles. The same applies to a teacher writting plans for his or her classes, a weak teacher follows the plan to the letter. A creative and succesful teacher modifies “on the fly” as needed for that particular class.
To bring it back to our hobby: To be succesful, we also need to have some intense planning and knowledge of what it is we want to accomplish. A written plan is a major help. We need to know prototypical practices ( as the Dali Lama once said," Know the rules so that you will be able to break them properly"). We need to have a purpose for the railroad (roundy rounds tend to get boring quickly). We also need to be able to modify “on the fly” to create the look and feel we want and to make it work. To me that is most of the fun!
I think you have to plan in order to plop. Or plop in order to plan? Either way, I try to have fun and eliminate the frustration by doing both.
The constraints are the key issue when it comes to planning and plopping. Above all, you gotta know where the layout is going to go and exactly how much space you have to work with. Once you’ve determined the space, the planning and plopping begin.
Another key contstraint are the actual materials you choose. For example, I did my last layout with Shinohara and Tru-Scale Roadbed. I spiked the track and used alignment gauges. It was serious and tedious work for me and I didn’t enjoy it at all. And that took a ton of planning. On my latest layout I started 2 months ago, I began using some Peco flex and turnouts with Homabed on risers and plywood ribbon sub roadbed. After doing a loop and a couple turnouts I abandoned the whole works, stripped back down to the bare bench work and decided to go with Kato HO Unitrack!
I covered the open grid bench work with 1/2" plywood and decided to go with the WS Risers and foam. My point to this is that with the Unitrack I am now an official plopper because I am able to “see” my layout, actually run some trains and make changes instantly to my track plan - before gluing down the track.
I will lose some of the realism of the flex track/ballast look with the Unitrack, but based on some of the results I have seen from other layouts, you can achieve a reasonably convincing layout with Unitrack. And the operational qualities make it all worthwhile.
In working on my layout under construction, I’ve planned the general arrangement of things, but the final plan is what gets laid out full scale on the subgrade with templates and tacked-down flex track. I guess you could call that ‘planned plopping.’
As Mayor Pragma of Rome said, many years ago, “If it works, it’s good.”
CHIP , one of the things that working in the semiconductor industry for 25 year taught me, and I suspect many of you guys out there also, is the P to the 6th power rule. In other words, Proper Planning Prevents P… Poor Performance. I have read these threads for two years, and have read MRR Mag for many more. I have bought and read many Kalmbach books as well as others. This has given me a very good insight as to what kind of benchwork I would use in my 10.5’ X 20’ around the wall space. It also gave me insight as to using 4’ wide benchtops and how to to this without worrying how to reach the far side in case of trouble. Using 4’ wide bench on one of the walls around the room gave me plenty of room to use greater radius tracks for larger engines, and plent of room for yards, turntable, scenery, etc. It is hard to place very much on a 24" table top without it looking long and linear and not very realistic. Sometimes that is all you have , so you have to live with what you have.
So I am definetly a Planner. But even with all the planning, their will always be some degree of " plopping", particularly after you get going and someone gives you a building, or you see something new that you had not considered, and just have to find a way to add it to the layout…“where can I possibly PLOP this”.
Both spacemouse and greyfox ,in particuar, offer good advice. Let me tell you, once and for all, building a model railroad that you will be happy with, and not get bored with, takes a lot more than running to the Home Depot for a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and foam. You will end up with a toy train set running a few short trains around in circles. To avoid this disaster, looking for a place to happen, you must do enough planning to get where you really want to go. Give thought to what you want your railroad to be. That entails every possible decision such as era to be modeled, steam transition, post transition, present day? How about urban, rural or both, plains or mountainous, free lance or prototype, gauge, freight or passenger, or both?. And, whatever else you need to decide on before you lay pencil to paper.
I have been designing layouts for over 60 years and the most important thing that I learned was this: Whether freelanced or prototype the essence of a good layout design in my opinion is that it replicate how a real railroad functions.
A railroad’s function is to move people or goods from one place to another as expeditiously as possible. It doesn’t start from point A and end at Point A. It starts at Point A and ends at point B. Point A can be a terminal, an interchange with another railroad, a port or some other end destination. Point B can be the same. Trains NEVER run from Point A to point A or vice versa. There may be branches to other cities, coal mines, or what have you along the way. No train that proceeds to the West returns from the East.
Before wasting your time drawing a layout, try drawing a schematic track plan. A point to point layout must either have terminal facilities at each end and a means of reversing direction whether it be a return loop or yards and a turntable or wye. If you want industrial or passing sidings sketch them in where appropriate. When you are satisfied that it is true to prototype practice you can then place Point A where you want i
Trains NEVER run from point A to point A? Check the Yamanote Line of what is now JR East. The tracks follow a rather less than more circular path around and through the older parts of Tokyo, and the same set of EMU cars will pass through the same station in the same direction several times during the operating day. Of course, the passengers who were aboard the first time it left that station have all detrained before it gets back.
Beware of the words ALWAYS and NEVER. One contrary example invalidates the whole thesis.