I’m quite surprised at how well my new layout is coming along. I enjoyed the old one…but it had that “unprototypical” feel about it that I just couldn’t put my finger on until recently. Now I know what it was: I was trying to cram too much into a small space…I had tunnels, bridges, double track…lots of switches…overpasses…a yard…sidings…It just didn’t look right. My new layout is greatly simplified…and that one fact alone has surprisingly done alot to improve plausibility. For example…the double track is gone…replaced with a single track main that gently winds its way through the countryside like the real thing does. Gone are most of the switches…I did leave one tunnel…the culverts…and some bridges…but yard and sidings are greatly simplified but will still provide enough to make the layout fun to operate. Overall simplicity appears to be highly underrated.
Good for you! And I agree…too much track just makes it the old spaghetti bowl. Land with a train running through it. Not trains and tracks with some land sprinkled in between them.
-Crandell
How about posting some pics? I am always looking for more inspiration…
Your new approach is certainly more logical and undoubtedly far more realistic in appearance. Way too many hobbyists today still build layouts, particularly the relatively more modest examples, with the same sort of design concepts as were applied to juvenile Lionel train sets and HO spaghetti-bowl pikes of the 1950’s, attempting to include one of everything that they think makes up a model railroad. This is perhaps the chief reason for most layouts looking so toy-like.
CNJ831
I totally agree. IMHO, the most realistic and beautiful layouts are the one’s that are simpler in design and don’t try to cram in as much track and detailing as possible. Granted, often times compromises have to and must be made in building a model railroad. However, the challenge is making those compromises fit seamlessly into the “plausibility” of the layout.
I definitely am an advocate of the “less is more” approach to MRRing.
Tom
This is something that is dear to my heart. Having spent a lot of time in the Canadian Rockies watching the CPR grind its way up those grades winding through the mountains I wanted a long uninterrupted run through the mountains on the layout I was building. As a result I have a 70’ run with no turnouts through my minnie Rogers Pass.
My layout is dogbone shaped, bent in a U. There will be plenty of switching at either end of the bone But I have my cross country section. Below is an old photo as I am further along now. The spline is my mountain run and will be getting the foam mountain treatment when I get that far.
Brent
Yes, cross country. That is the thing most missing from ALL the layouts I operate on. Seldom is there any country between towns. On a few of the layouts one has to worry about who is switching the next town because they are so close to one another. One can do a run around and wham into the crew doing the run around in the next city.
I agree
I think the multiple sidings are way over done ,
We learn as we go.
George
There is nothing lkie lots of room, eh.
George