How do you cope with limitations? (space, modeling skill, funds, etc)
After seeing one amazing layout after another on line and in MR, I find the idea of creating my own layout very daunting. I always read about creating realism, which is something I would like to do, but I know that I’ll never be able to create what I see, read and dream about. I could create a small switching or loop-style layout, but I know that operationally it will never fulfill my expectations of operating a “real” railroad. So ulitmately I have this on again / off again interest with model railroading.
What do you do to get past this obstacle, (which for me) keeps me from ever getting started and truly enjoying a hobby that I like? There’s never seems to be a shortage of inspiration, but there’s definitely a lack of everything else on my end.
Some people don’t even have layouts. They just build locos and cars and concentrate on super detailing and weathering them. Some people (like me) have layouts that aren’t that operational, but focus on scenery and detail. Not many of those guys with realistic basement empires did it on their first try.
A 2’x8’ switching layout can really be made to look great and be a lot of fun to operate if done correctly.
Just do your home work and have a solid game plan in mind before you start. You’ll find what your good at along the journey and focus on that. Skills are something acquired over time. They just don’t “happen” for most people.
As loathar says, start small and think big. Build the trestle now. Make it all so that you can cut the bents to the right height once you have your “best bet” layout under way…you’ll easily live with the length, but try for about 15" long.
Design something solid now, something modest but that you’d love to have. Then, build it in modules. Frame it all out in modules and stack them someplace where they’ll keep dry and warp-free.
Or, just build the one, say your yard. Frame first, then do the surface, and then have at the tracks and scenery. Should keep you busy for six months to do a good job.
Or, give yourself the challenge of making a convoluted loop fit in a 4X8 space, and make it look more realistic than “cute”. If you do a good job of it, there is no reason you can’t insert it into a grander plan in 10 years.
And, if none of that is possible, hone your skills with laying out track…perfect track, including turnouts. Build handlaid turnouts in quantities so that you have really good ones for when the time comes. Take a nice plank or shelf and lay out a 3-track yard with caboose track and main running past. Throw in a couple of double-slips and see what they do for you.
But you should be doing something, and ideally building…contributing towards what will eventually be.
I have IMO plenty of space, a layout room 12’x27’ in my basement. What I do lack right now is the time and budget to do it justice. The question a modeler needs to ask himself is “Do I need to fill all that space in one shot, right now?” Why is a basement-sized empire the only way to modeling satisfaction?
I think you need, especially as a beginner, is to approach your goal - a large railroad - in managable chunks. You also need a way to acquire experience and skill to one day achieve your empire-building dreams. You say that “settling” for a small railroad doesn’t do anything for you, but how about a small shelf yard that can grow with each passing year. Find a published plan you like and build a realistically-sized first section, say perhaps 2’x12’ or maybe a bit longer.
This way you’ll gain the construction, modeling and operating skill and know-how you need to grow the layout further, without being overwhelmed at the start. If for some reason you lose or change interests, you’re not out a tremendous amount of time and cash that you would
Time is not a limitation. Patience is a limitation. When you set a deadline, you make it harder to get the project done, and turn it more into something like work. One phrase we use a lot is “It’s not a race; it’s a journey.” Enjoy the journey.
You’ll find that learning patience will help with the funding problem, too. You can put away money and save until you reach a goal, or you can wait for an item to go on sale, or a train show comes to town with bargains, or someone else comes out with the same model for less money. Plan your purchases carefully, and you won’t end up like many of us, with boxes of unbuilt kits in the workroom, and shelves of engines that don’t fit on the layout. We all buy too much.
We all think we’re limited by space. It’s hard to have good operations in the kind of space most of us have. If Ops are really important to you, find a club and join it. Large club layouts are suited to operations, on a scale few of us could hope to duplicate at home.
Working within limitations is a challenge. Each one that you list has possible solutions.
Space: the obvious way to get more railroad is too work in a smaller scale. You can also double/triple deck. You can have the mainline pass through the scene more than once - this used to be very popular and was used on many famous layouts such at the Delta Lines and the Gorre & Daphetid. A less obvious way to fit in more railroad is to use sharp curves and turnouts with talgo trucks (coupler mounted on the truck). HiRail layouts use this in S and O to fit in more railroad, but you can also do this in HO and N.
Modeling skills: Training and practice. Many issues of MR and others have how to articles. The Dream Plan Build video series also include how to segments. Books and videos are available. Some train shows have clinics as do many NMRA meets.
Funds: Some items can be cheaper if scratchbuilt such as turnouts and buildings (especially if you make your own windows). To some extent you can trade time for money. Also over time even a modest budget will accumulate quite a bit.
One you didn’t list but is a problem for me and others is time. I don’t have a lot right now, but I trade money for time and buy as much RTR as I can. I build only what I must - it’s still slow going, but I am getting there.
In the end though, you just have to plunge in and start doing stuff.
I see a lot of first time modelers jump in with both feet and tie straight into making a large layout with super scenery and a train of questionable trainset quality. This usually results in said modelers taking two steps back and wondering the what the heck they got themselves into and where did they go wrong. As others have said, start small, do what you can with what you have and don’t over reach yourself. Look at me. I’m a disabled veteran with severe nerve and bone damage that limits what I can do. My monthly income is under $700 a month. My current layout started out as a 4 x 6 in 1995 but has grown over the last 13 years to where it’s roughly 8 x 10 and is by no means my first. Throughout that time I’ve kept within my limitations, both physical and financial. I built the benchwork for the really solid because it sometimes has to support nearly my entire weight and at 240+ pounds I’m no light weight. I buy what I can for the layout, do a lot of trading online and scratchbuild what I can’t get due to non-availability or price constraints. I also get some donations from other modelers who want to get rid of some things they can no longer use such as old freight car bodies and locos that need a good home.
What most people that see the great pictures that are posted here realizes is when done right a picture will make the layout look much bigger than it is!
Selectors layout is a perfect example.
Crandell is a true skilled modeler and it shows. Looks like a huge layout, but by many standards it is modest in sizes.
I am guessing 8 X 14 give or take. I am guessing I have 3 times the rails laid than Crandell, but his is much better done.
I sort of have two layouts, the main bench is U shaped. 19 foot x 4 foot in the center (never go over 3 foot wide) Then 5 foot by 8 foot on one end and 4 foot X 13 foot on the other. New section called K-10 mining is 5 foot wide and free standing X 9.5 foot. It is done much better than the old section, using a mountain as a divider and makes it look bigger. I enjoy running it by it self but the other section is much bigger.
I think for it being only 5 foot wide, looks pretty big.
Have fun with what you have to work with. It is more fun to have something that is not want you want than nothing at all. The new section when done will be going away! I am using it to learn on.
Well I have been at it for 2 years or so. No layout as we moved since I started into this. I have picked up a lot of old model railroad mags and (don’t yell at me) cut all the good stuff out of them and organized them into 3 binders. I have a binder of trackplans with sections I like circled so I can piece something together. I have a dcc section, a trackside photo section, a kitbashing section, a how to section(like trees, painting, scenery ect.) and a section for scematics for the engines I have.
Right now I am just practicing building engines and getting them to run really good. I have taken old riv diesels and steamers, rebuilt them to run really good then detailed and sold them. This gives me money to pratice some more. I have learned to solder well installing decoders and troubleshooting with the help of the forum.
So as I formulate a plan for a layout I will practice on small diaroma scenes and practice taking pics. So as you see even though you go through the ups and downs of how can my layout ever look that good there is always something to practice.
In many ways I think we get severly misled by much of the current thinking and leading articles on operations, track planning, etc. IE, you have to have CTC/TTO, multiple long trains working past each other with a lot of operators playing all the parts. With of course prototypically overwhelmingingly large structures, 15 decks, and so forth. I would be those giganto-normous layouts you see in MR each month make up less than 10% of the layouts out there. Probably most of us are in a corner of the spare room operating by ourselves or with one or two friends. My under construction layout goes 8 feet down one wall and 10 down the other as part of a bookshelf system, perhaps 34 square feet in all. DCC is a great concept but I run one engine with a 4-5 car train, though I do wish I had sound. Then when it comes to structures, we also get fooled by the price of some kits. First, if you think in terms of hours of enjoyment, putting together some of the better kits.is a good dollar per hour value. But beyond that, look past the RTR and shake the box kits into scratch building. It doesn’t get as much press today in MR as it did in the past, but guys like E. L. Moore in the old days created great buildings out of paper and balsa. Find an old MR and give that a try. Hours of fun for a couple of bucks and you get a building the equal of any you can buy for much less.
My greatest limitation is time – between work, scouts and two kids in soccer, I couldn’t build a layout like the V&O, Sunset Valley, or NKP or any of the great layouts you see though I sure admire them.
Plan a layout for now, but take your good 'ole time.
Example #1: John Allen’s "Gorre & Daphitid "
Plan your layout so it can be incorporated later into a larger layout.
Example #2: Allen McClelland’s “Virginian & Ohio.”
You will find yourself taking personal ownership of the larger picture, where the layout dream extends past its space limitations, connecting with the world beyond the layout.
Example #3: 1/3 of the lower level for my N Scale “Conemaugh Road & Traction” is adapted from Model Railroader’s HO Scale “The Chippewa Central.” This smaller layout is incorporated into a much larger multi-level layout.
CR&T’s lower level will be surrounded by a 2-track Pennsy mainline, interchanging with the CR&T, before the helix into the upper level. Since the entire layout theme is traction, the CR&T overhead will be single-wire for an interurban, and; the Pennsy portion is now planned to incorporate catenary overhead wiring. Steam and first-generation diesel will also operate under the traction overhead wires. The helix may also have an additional CR&T gas electric doodlebug going from the lower level to only one of the upper level towns on a third helix track whereas the upper level is all Pennsy.
Also, especially due to planning patience, the under-valance lighting will be the same “small track lighting” now used under modern kitchen cabinets, easily placed on a dimmer switch, plus producing a ton of light without ever over-doing things. This compact lighting system never would have come to light (pun intended) had the process been a high-speed exercise!
I don’t worry about what other people do. I’ve had Many layouts, from 4x6 to the current 22x30 that currently occupies my basement. None of them come to the standards that some would call an actual Model Railroad. I build them because I like to, I run the trains because it makes me happy. When it doesn’t, I tear it down and start over. It’s a hobby, not a job nor a contest. Get yourself a sheet of plywood (or foam) lay some tracks, build some scenery, structures, etc, and run some trains. The rest of whatever is ‘lacking’ will come with time and practice. [8D]
I find this entire concept of “coping” with a limitation as a sickening post modern humanistic excuse for not getting anything done. Phooey and piffle on any excuses. If you want a model railroad, you are forced by the laws of nature to use whatever space you have and nothing more. Jim Findley’s Tioga Pass RR was about 8x10 or so and built in a corner of a mobile home. There is no excuse whatsovever why you cannot make a fine representation of a railroad in model form in a 18" by 48" space, using creativity and a well thought out theme.
My own HO railroad is being built in a series of 4 connected shadow boxes approx 2x4ft, each representing a specific scene or activity of my prototype. Each box is using well known techniques of shadowbox construction. I do not have any limitations on my railroad whatsoever, the “distance” between each shadow box scene is about 40 miles on prototype, but adjacent on the railroad.
Here is a photo (not very good) of the end module nearing completion. I have to finish the backdrop and some foreground scenery, but the module itself done and has independant lighting and power and it stands alone from the rest in it’s scenic content. The train exits to the right behind a building and emerges in the next module at a single gravel loader scene out in the country. The modules are completely protected from dust and damage by 1/4" composit board covers and pexiglass fronts. I have captured my entire prototype in a space of 2ft by 14ft. The last module on the right far end, when I get that far, will have another yard and a car float. In the mean time, I have a fully operational model railroad and as I add
I dont see the MR with the big aweinspiring layouts as something intimidating or unreachable. I am around a few dozen modelers whose skills far out rank mine and make me look like Im just a trainset person. That was 7 years ago. The room was given to me by the wife without any conditions except one. She gets the closet. So. It’s my time to start working on the railroad.
A work bench went up first. Ok then 5 feet of track, followed by a switch, then a power pack a engine and so forth. Now I had a caboose and a train of one car. Then 10. As the train grew I realized that the room is too small for my plans. So something had to go. Tore up the big plans and started the train layout in each of the 4 corners once I had a maximum radius (OR a minimum that I can stand with the stuff I ran) The Kato Track started flying.
Why Kato? I know that room will be restored to an empty room at one point to be determined in the far distance future. I have my head stuffed with the teachings of those Disciples at the Altar of Handlaying track switches and cork church. But for right now… Sectional track, makes things happen and fast. I’ll get to that fancy making track stuff when the new future addition to the house is complete… if ever.
That was two years ago. The wood went up this year. Last year the room was empty except for a circle of Kato track running a engine 25 cars and a caboose. It helped me discover a slope in the floor and caused to think about the pending benchwork and how to solve that slope.
Spring and summer will pass at the workbench building a industry. One that had a purpose and can be operated by one person using car cards in a manner of a load in of something and perhaps a load out of something going beyond the layout. I happen to like making Ball Bearings. So Hours and days were spent scouring the internet and books about Ball bearings. I used to haul the stuff and I used to haul the steel used t
Model railroaders are a strange eclectic group of people but then we all know that the one thing we all have in common though is not wasting or the need to fill up space. Weather your building a 5000 square foot super mega layout or a 4x8 we strive to fit in as much as possible in a limited amount of space some times to a fault. We want tunnels, bridges, turn tables, engine houses, power plants coal mines and the list goes on and on and on. In some or many cases you wind up with a bowl of spaghetti of track and switches and every type of structure known to man piled one on top of each other and most would never normally be seen any where near the other in the real world. One of the most impressive layouts I’ve ever seen was on the DVD MR puts out with your new subscription every year and forgive me for not recalling the guys name right now but it was an impressive switching layout shot in a night time scene with details beyond belief and until the camera pulled back you would have never known it was barely larger then 4x8. You need to pick a theme, a time period or an era if you will. Steam, transition, modern etc. and then set your mind to what you want to build or what you like most about that era. I have a friend who is now retired and has moved into a much smaller home to take care of his wife. He went from a massive 2500 sq. foot layout to half of a two car garage and he is modeling the UP engine svc. facility in Chyeanne Wymoing circa late 1950’s. When big steam was in it’s hayday on the U.P. He has a collection of challengers and big boys that will never pull a sting of cars but he is determended to build a super detail contest grade model. Operation and such doesn’t mean anything to him and he’s no less of a modeler.
We are all contricted by two things physical space and money our imaginations are limitless in fulfilling possability after possability after all we’re modeling the real world can’t get much bigger then that.
Jump in and try a few projects, even if its a 1x1 square to test scenery, or weather a car, build a building…
If we all waited for the perfect time we would never have anything. And space isnt always bigger and better, its what we want within ourselves and build our dreams.,. Will it be the PERFECT layout and everything to the level of a master? WHO CARES!!! You have to find it in ytourself to build, learn and enjoy. Do you think the masters did everything perfect the first few times?
Stop making excuses and start! Im building my dream and loving every minute of it! It has become my persoanl refuge from the world of work, kids, wife and stress. Its my place for fun and enjoyment. Will it ever be in MR or become a masterpiece? I dont think so, but its good enough for me!
Life isnt or ever gonne be perfect! BUT you can sure enjoy the ride and learn along the way…and relax, this is a hobby…do your best and youll find that the next time youll do even better! Thats part of learning and a part of life.
Maybe by my 20th marriage Ill find one with her own layout??? LOL
I am returning to model railroading after a 45 year break. While it might be nice to jump in with a large layout, both operations and great design can be done in a small layout.
I just read an amazing article by the late, great John Allen (of Gorre & Daphetid fame) about what it means to operate in a prototypical fashion. Allen devoted the entire article to describing how one should conduct the seemingly trivial task of putting a train into motion, accelerating to a reasonable speed, and eventually slowing down to a stop. His point is that on a real railroad, there is nothing trivial about getting a train moving and then stopping it again! His further point is that even on the smallest layout, even if you are doing nothing more than “running trains,” it can still be done in a protoypical manner.
Another lesson to be learned from John Allen is that you can start small but have big ambitions. The original Gorre & Daphetid was an HO layout measuring 43" x 80". That’s it! Over many years, it became a large and complex layout – what many believe to be the greatest model railroad ever built. But even the original small layout was a masterpiece of design and execution. It was full of clever ideas, brilliant scenery, and a sense of humor. (Gory and Defeated – get it?)
Model railroading does not have to be all or nothing. You can start small and still do it right.
Embrace your limitations , they help you think about what is important and what you can work on now .
Skill takes time .Keep working at it .
Space ; the limitation is only in your mind , look at the English they build small layouts that are operational and with a high level of detail .
Funds ; you can always buy a little at a time , I have a small modeling budget , so I make a list of what I want and figure out what I can afford , sometimes I have to buy the parts of a project a little at a time and once I have everything I start the project .
