This question is mostly aimed at those older model railroaders, and Id like to know how long you procrastanated before you built your first layout. In my case it has been over 50 years and I have just now built my trainroom complete with AC and heat in half of a 2 car garage, or to be more exact 40% of the garage, have had a layout designed based on my needs, wants and space and am ready to build my first real layout. Im not ready for real retirement as i`m still mobile, good eyesight and hand coordination (dont play golf) so this hobby is a good way to spend my spare time even in my “golden” years.
Hi Bob: I’m almost 64 yrs. old and I waited about 30 years before I made the commitment. Then I spent almost 4 yrs. fairly consistlently working on my layout. I don’t play golf, either. I’m planning on spending my impending retirement on detailing my layout, locos, and rolling stock, and , of course operating. I can still crawl around under the layout, if I have to. This really is a great hobby!
To answer your question - that depends. Do I count the 4X8 layout I started in the 1950’s (with Dad’s help, I think - the trackplan was in Boys’ Life magazine) before I started high school in my teens (and got distracted with girls), or the start of another layout in the late 1970’s from John Olson’s ‘Jerome & Southwestern’ book (Kalmbach) (but never got the benchwork started and stored the lumber away during my divorce and after), which sat until a few years ago, when I pulled some boxes out of storage and decided to cut the 4X8 plywood into about 2 to 2.5’ X 4’ sections (I have two sections together now with track, and the plan looks like this):
It took me a while, and getting to these forums and the old Coffee Shop (now Elliott’s Trackside Diner IV, Now Under New Management!) to get things moving sort of closer to operations (still have to wire things up, though…)
So at age 61 years young, which should I count? [swg]
I think the basic answer to your question is “Long enough to figure what I want in my layout, and to get the motivation started enough to work on it” (or close to that)… [:-^]
I have almost always had a layout in some stage of construction, even if it was only a 4x8. Started my first one about 3 months into the hobby. There have been periods when not much was done - when my sons were in their Boy Scout years and I was an assistant scoutmaster, when I went back to college - but I still had something of a layout under construction. Currently, I am building a point to point as a trial layout to see if that’s what I want my retirement layout to be.
I think it may have been as long as 20 days. I received a Model Railroader magazine at Christmas in 2004, and I had my first HO item, a BLI Hudson 4-6-4, in hand two days after New Years. Doesn’t count? Okay, agreed. I mapped out a layout, and went and purchased supplies around 13 Jan 05. I set the wood in the basement for a week to let it acclimate, and to see if any of it would warp or twist. So, actual screw driving didn’t start until the 19th or so, but I had committed myself…that should be good enough.
Zero, I’ve had some sort of layout since I was pre-school. For a while I had layouts in four different scales at the same time. Five if one counts HOn3 as a separate thing.
Well I had American Flyer S as a kid, but just a train set…didn’t know you could buy things like switches and buildings. I only got to play with it at Xmas, it was put away the rest of the year. I got interested in model railroading because of the Woodcraft Hobby Show on TV here in the Twin Cities, plus my dad became their mailman and got to know them. After maybe a year of going to film nights and such sponsored by clubs in the area, I got a Tyco trainset and an MRC Golden Throttlepack for Christmas 1971, just after my 13th birthday.
I have had a couple of periods where I didn’t have a layout. Dropped out of the hobby for a few years in my teens, then after college took down my old layout to start a new one, but ended up not being able to do it for a couple of years. Then just recently, I moved into this house two years ago this month, and it took about a year before I could start working on the new layout. Just finished the “phase 1” part of the benchwork (or shelfwork I guess) yesterday, and got a shipment of five sheets of styrene sheets today to start working on the backdrop. Rather than building the whole thing (i.e. all the benchwork, then the track etc.) I’m starting with enough to do a switching layout, will get that pretty far along with track and scenery for a while, then do the next section.
I generally didn’t like not having a layout, but in the recent case I think the layout plan I came up with in the ‘time off’ was probably a lot better than what I first envisioned, so it probably wasn’t really time wasted.
On a serious note, in 1962 and 1963 I slapped some track down on a couple of bare-board surfaces; between 1964 and 1979 I was a member of three clubs but did not have a home-layout during those years. I suppose you could call that armchairing.
Being a fellow Arizonan, you know the problems. Living in apartments or condos, a house with no basement, and a HOT 2 car garage.
Like you, I have upgraded my garage with A/C, recessed fluorescent lighting and insulation all around including batting in the doors. I put two coats of epoxy floor coating down to keep the dust down. When I get the cabinets along the far wall finished and painted, I will be ready to get at it again after 24 years.
Recently, I have been acquiring some of the NH PAs, FAs, DL-109s, RS-1,2, & 3s, I-5s and other engines to flesh out my roster of NH power and have started on building some head end equipment from scratch, notably 20 each of clerestory roof, and round roof baggage cars and RPOs which are not availale comercially.
I can’t afford golf here, and its too hot when its cheaper. I haven’t been fishing in 6 years, but I am getting the urge again. There is plenty to do here in paradise.
I’ve been slapping track together and running trains since about 1956 when I started in HO (before that, I was a Lionel kind of guy, LOL!). So I really never actually ‘armchaired’, except when I was in the Military in Texas–even then I’d set up some kind of floor layout in my barracks room on the weekends.
Even on the occasions I ‘armchaired’, it was really more ‘tableing’, building models or tuning locos. The Yuba River Sub is my fourth layout (and hopefully my last), so since I’ve been a Happy Homeowner for the past 35 or so years, my garage has never EVER seen a car parked in it, LOL!
I built my first layout (a 5’ x 9’) in the attic in the early 60’s; a switching layout (2’ x 8’) in the early 70’s, and started a 12’ x 22’ room layout in the late 90’s, got the mainline in…
Then relo monster got that one.
Now I’m just finishing up an 18’ x 24’ room for a new layout.
When I got my first trainset at 3, it got put on a 4x8. That layout was active until I was 6.
For a year I had no layout, then got another trainset and started it back up. That stayed up until a few months ago, I took it down because whenever I got home from work, I’d find BB holes or stuff stuck into it.
As of now, I just use the local MR club’s layout. It provides a fairly good test of power, a helix with a fairly tight radius (I think around 24 or so) and a 2% climb. (I’ve gone up to 50 cars going up with my pair of GP30s, maybe the metal detail parts helped; but it was slow going)
Never arm chaired. Always had some kind of train running since I was 5. Took a break for a few years while I threw money into a hole in the ocean and didn’t get my money’s worth out of a diamond ring set![sigh]
(boat/marriage)
Having been involved in a club for a few years, didnt have much of a personal layout, but had modules. I had to move, a layout under construction was abandoned. Lumber pieced out and brought up, however that layout will never see reaility. Having been away from the club, getting jobs right, earning the bucks, I can focus on a really good layout. Been a few years of gurgling an idea. Now a basic design or concept is down I am working over equipment and getting it in shape or building up new equipment, IE wood HOn3 hopper kits… thats fun, madem before for the club, sold them, got more for my HOn3 stuff.
So now my really good tried and true layout is starting to kick in.
I received my first Lionel train set in the early 1940’s . Up until about 1951, I had a Lionel layout in some form either in my house or at one of my friends house. In 1953, I sold all my Lionel trains and went into HO. I had a 4X8 layout in my attic until 1957 when I went to college. From then until 1982 (25 years) I was busy with work and family and was armchairing it except for building an occasional kit. From 1982 until present I finished one HOn30 layout in New Jersey and I am now working on my second which is dual gauge in Memphis. Attached is a picture of a Bowser mountain that I kit bashed early on during my armchair years which was the largest project I attempted during those 25 years without a layout. It was painted with stove polish which was short lived technique some of the older folks might remember.
Clear back to when I was a pre-teen, if I was living in my own (or my parents’) home I always had some kind of layout, even if it was only a switching puzzle on a shelf or length of board.
Of necessity, there were periods when I had no choice about armchairing:
My first go at secondary school was a military institution with no tolerance for any kind of non-conformity.
As a military barracks-dweller, ditto. (At one base I was specifically ordered to remove the microlayout I had started to build.)
On those occasions when I was in war zones, where getting shot at was a distinct possibility and personal space was the impossible dream.
I don’t consider club time to be armchairing.
In all, I’d say about 15 years, total - about 22% of my total seniority as a model railroader.
