I think most people would agree that the people who work on any aspect of the layout have to be capable of exercising care, regardless of the work involved. Therein lies the conundrum for those of us who choose to manage the club. Henk and I agreed to try to run the club for the benefit of all the members. One of our stated goals when we ran for office was to teach people how to do things that they didn’t have any experience with, and teach them to do it well.
We have compromised that goal a bit already by only having a couple of members laying track. We have justified that decision by saying that proper track installation is so crucial to the performance of the layout that we are not willing to let members go at it willy nilly. The same is not quite so true of ballast installation. Yes, turnouts have to be treated with great care, but our (the Executive’s) position is that general track ballasting is where we can get a bunch of members involved. Same with scenery. Those of us in charge, i.e. the President and the Vice President/foreman of construction (who happens to be me) will have to play a very active roll in helping people learn how to do the tasks, and in monitering their progress. We will have to constantly look over peoples’ shoulders. As far as I’m concerned, that’s exactly what I agreed to when I put my name forward to be the club V.P. Some work will not be up to standards. So what? We will take the person who’s work does not meet the club requirements and teach them how to do it again properly.
Dave, it’s my opinion that the two best bang-for-your-buck tasks in model railroading are painting the rails and ballasting.
A lot of folks seem to feel that this is boring work and many of them put it off to “do later”. Once you know the tricks of getting those jobs done, you simply need to just do it! It’s not a race…if you work at your own pace, and quit when you’ve had enough for a session, it won’t overwhelm you, and when you see how much it improves the appearance and realism, you’ll be encouraged to carry on.
I have only 55’ or 60’ of mainline left to ballast, with a little over half of that needing the plaster-on-screen landforms to be added alongside the track - just haven’t had time to do that yet.
WARNING, WARNING, DANGE, DANGER!!
Two nights before our annual show, all that remained to do on our new portable layout was about three hours of ballasting, touch up some of the scenery, and placement of people and vehicles for various mini scenes.
Unasked, a member who had previously been disinterested in helping, decided to be helpful and do the ballasting.
It required 17 man hours, to remove the very well glued down excess ballast between the rails. (Code 100).[banghead][banghead]
While I applaud your attitude to include all club members, please DO keep a VERY close eye on things, Dave.
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Yep! Been there already with our portable layout. In fact, we may be well past the 17 hour mark and we still can’t get trains to stay on the track in the yard.
I plan on only allowing people to do one part of the task at a time and only over short distances. In other words, don’t apply any glue until we have a look at how well the ballast has been distributed. Do apply the ballast over short lengths until I agree that you have the process down pat.
We have about 330’ of mainline and about 290’ of secondary track to ballast. That is a lot of track to ask just one or two people to do.
Overall, we have not had too many issues with people charging ahead blindly and creating problems. The less experienced guys are asking what they can do next and so far they have been following instructions pretty well. We have only had to adjust about four feet of track where it wasn’t as straight as it should have been, and even that probably wouldn’t have caused any problems if we had left it alone. There was a tendency to be a little skimpy with the glue when we first started laying cork, but it didn’t take long to correct that. One set of track feeders got installed backwards, but the buzzer let us know as soon as they tried to apply power.
Ballasting is not hard but it can get tedious. The biggest proble I ran into was getting rid of excess loose particles once I was done and that is where a Christmas present from the wife of a dustbuster came in handy. After all can’t have complaints of loose ballast getting tracked into other parts of the house.