I have put the finishing touches on my mid size HO layout plan and am pricing things up. My main line run is just over 220 ft. I have been pricing all my HO stuff online looking for bargans. I have been to my local Home depot to price building materials for bench work. Im looking at prices for structures, vehicles and scenery materials, plus I have about 80 to 90 locomotives that need decoders. Then there is DCC and all related wiring,room lighting etc. I am trying to plan my work around the available money per year. I do have a 11X5 layout that I work on, and I’m thinking of not starting the new bigger one till I have a large chunk of cash in the bank. How do you all work around this? Do you sometimes have periods of time when you have no money for the next phase of the project? Are their long periods of time where nothing gets done? Do any of you feel getting some track down to run trains is most important or do you just work on smaller scenes so you can enjoy a part that is finished. It also would seem if someone or a small group of people help you, you run out of money faster. I am self employed so It seems when I have money I dont have time and when I have time I dont have any money. Any thoughts on this topic. Joe A.
Joe,
I too am self-employed and have the same issue. When you have money you have no time, and when you have time you have little or no money. Back in the fall I started into this hobby and spent some money for my bench work, road bed, and track. I also bought my brother’s collection of locomotives and rolling stock since he is no longer pursuing the hobby. In December I spent some money on locomotives, power supply, and a few model buildings. At that time I was committed to having my two loops done (approximately 150 feet of N-scale track by New Year’s Day. I made it! My trains were running by the end of December.
Now business is slow and I’m not spending any money on my layout or anything else for that matter. However since I have lots of time I have spent the last several weekends plugging away at the model buildings I previously purchased, soldering feeder wires to my track (yesterday), wiring the main buss, and fixing trouble spots in the track. None of this has cost me any additional money because I already have what I needed. I can see I’ll be starting to lay out some scenery soon as well either using foam or cardboard strips; both of which I already have. Once it gets busy again I’ll have the money to buy some more buildings abd scenery items but I won’t have the time to do anything with it until I get slow again. In the short time I’ve been in this hobby I am finding there is always work to be done, some that costs money, and some that costs time. I’m in no hurry so I spend it (time or money) when I’ve got it.
Rob
Sometimes I do not spend a $$ in weeks. But other times I can spend the $$$. In the last month I spent about $16,000.00 on 6 brass OMI engines on Ebay. I am a packrat. If it looks nice then I get it, weather I need it or not.
Mike
I stopped thinking about it. I have an expenses page on my blog but haven’t updated it in a while and will probably just remove it. I don’t consider my layout to be one big purchase, instead I just do different small projects at a time and eventually I’ll have a working layout. Just the other day the wife was noticing I have 31 CFL fixtures for lighting (and that’s just on the lower deck!). She asked how much each one cost and I replied about $7 including the fixture, hardware and bulb. “Over $200 just for lights?!?” The thing is each month I would spend about $20 on lighting and over the course of nearly a year all the materials were purchased and installed. Same way for benchwork, backgrounds, etc. The overall cost is high but there are months where I work on a lot of layout projects and dont spend a dime. Overall my spending on hobbies is down since I now do model railroading exclusively.
Another point of view: If I go see a movie I can spend $20 for a ticket and snacks and its over in two hours. If I spend $20 on the layout, I have a project to keep me occupied for a weekend and when it’s done I can keep enjoying it over and over for years.
Jamie
My layout is no where near the size of yours. I have a total of about 100 feet of track (40’ mainline) The layout is roughly 50 sqft. and I have 15 small brass locomotives. I’m a DC guy, so I don’t have to do decoders. So, my approach may not really work for you.
Anyway, I started with about $500 dedicated to my layout. That bought me a used DC powerpack, the first 30+ sqft of benchwork, roadbed and track, and one brass loco (used). Over the next 6 months, I spent almost nothing but time. I was building benchwork, laying track, etc.
Next, I spent about $20 on stripwood and spent a year building my curved concentric trestles, with a
1 1/2% grade. Money sort of accumulated during this period. Then came structures - All craftsman kits purchased on eBay for half of retail cost or less. It takes about a month of evenings for me to build one of these, so the money stretches pretty well.
I bought about $20 bucks worth of WS scenery stuff and 20# of plaster and made the scenery. I stained it with old wood stain I got from the Woodworkers Club I belong to. I got tree stuff at bargain prices at a couple of train shows. That’s also where I buy Floquil paints, and other materials.
By the time I had spent my first thousand bucks I was 5 years into my layout. This is how it looked:
Here’s that curved trestle:
Phil,
Is that Caboose scene a Woodland Scenics “Possum Hollow” ?? It really looks nice. Can you send me some more pics of that scene?
Mike
It is the WS kit. I’ll get you a picture over the next day or so. I’ll PM it to you, so as not to go off topic.
If you ask the wife? Way too much!!!
If you ask me? Not enough!!!
To me I can not put a $ figure in the hobby. I have stuff stashed that I forget what I have. Like other posters have said, Take the wife for dinner and a movie and you could have bought that GP9 with QSI and have it for life.
Pete
Phil,
That’s OK, I don’t do the PM thing. It’s a pain to click on here and reply to that. So don’t worry about it. I have that kit and was going to build it, and wanted some ideas.
Thanks Anyhow
Mike
Whooooooooeeeeeeeeee folks, way out of my leagues (I know that’s not an answer to the question) but aren’t we in some very tough economic times??? I guess not.
The HOUSE & CAR payments can wait. Buying MRR items is a + anytime. KIDDING, I am fortunate enough to have a great wife. I use my pay to pay house bills, ect. She gives me her check to use on my MRR.
Mike
Hi!
Last month I demo’d my 11x15 two level HO layout of 15 years, and am now working on a new one. In conjunction with the new layout, I am converting to DCC - so its a major project and expensive at that.
I’m now retired, so I have the time (not as much as one might think), and I have the wife’s full support, and money sourced mainly from Ebay sales of train stuff and silver coins. The DCC with decoders for 50 power units will run about $2k (NOT an exageration). Some new track, roadbed, several of the new Atlas # 8 turnouts, bus wiring, and several sheets of plywood and support lumber have been purchased.
Almost forgot, I did buy a few structure kits so I could get their footprint to allow for proper clearance.
So far this year, I have spent about $500 on the DCC, and another $600 on turnouts, lumber, roadbed, etc. The additional DCC booster, DT400 throttle, circuit breakers, and 46 decoders will wait until the layout track and wiring are in place.
What I am trying to say here is that this new layout will take a lot of money, but a lot of time to get it operational. One does not have to spend all the money up front, but can buy as needed. In fact, this is a good process to follow for one may change their mind as the layout develops.
In my case it took one month (Dec 08) to complete the scale drawings for the new layout, I demo’d in the layout in January. This month, I cleaned and painted the room, and added 4 inches to the around the room backdrop, and finished one half the room as of yesterday. The other half will be done by the end of February. Benchwork will be constructed in March, and as it is a two level layout (lower is staging/storage), I’ll be laying roadbed / track and wiring the lower level before I start the upper level.
So now we are into Apri
As I mentioned on some other posts I am getting back into model railroading after an over 20 year hiatus. It’s fantastic now with all the resources- Ebay, swap meets, Kijiji, Craigslist etc. I purchased 9 Athearn freight cars with Kadee’s for $28CDN from Ebay, a lot of track, and a gently used Digitrax Zephyr for 1/2 the cost my LHS was asking. Obviously there are items I’ll want to buy new but I’m still going to get the majority from the used marketplace.
Todd
If I have the spare cash flapping around I’ll buy all kinds of stuff–mind, with a short line I’m always looking for stuff that will fit in with the layout.
There are times however where I will go for something like a 9000 series or articulated maybe, or–[:-^]
I sat down a figured it out a while back , while not figuring in what I spend swap meets , of which I attend 2 a year and usually spend around $50.00 each time . I spend on average $30.00 per month on the hobby , with books and Magazines making up the majority of the expence and sometimes I will buy a model or scrap building supplies and an occassional car . I don’t really need anything at this moment . I could spend more but I am happy right now .
I guess I am getting off cheap at a little more than $400. per year .
I’m in the self-employed catagory also and do a fair amount of traveling. I try to stop in to any hobby shops in the neighborhood and grab any kind of deals I come across. I then just get it home, look it over well and stash it for the proverbial rainy day. I’ve already discovered the flaw in that thinking, that being I forget exactly what I have and having more kits than I can complete. I have acquired several brass locos from different sources, mostly ebay. I do enjoy fixing them up and adding more detail to them. My latest acquisition was a SP 4-8-8-2 for $125. Someone had attempted to paint it but was afraid to disassemble it, so I’ve been busy with the stripper.
To put an answer to the OP, it would depend on the deals, but an average would be $700-$1000 a year. Not bad compared to some I guess, meaning I’m a cheapskate and woud prefer to spend less than more.
I have a double main and two reverse loops laid and functioning but I still have a yard and engine facility to do as well as scenicing. Every week there would be a package on our front porch. My wife would ask what it was and I would tell her that it was just a little something for my train. That something might cost from$50 to $350.
Two week ago I made a decision not to buy any thing but scenicing supplies until I finish what I’ve started. To help keep this promise I don’t visit eBay or any of the on line retailers. It’s just too tempting.
I had to do the same with drinking some years ago. No beer wine or liquor in the house. Too tempting.
Bob
We closed down unnecesary spending this year. There are a few remaining loose orders still to be rounded up at the hobby shop. And probably still buy a bit of scenery or something several more times this year.
All of our focus is debt removal. Cash is good, more is better.
We expect our bank to fail, we already are shifting some funds to a second bank and getting ready to shift the utilities and such over so that if this does happen, our service wont be interrupted. Also, I usually write a paper check at the hobby shop. No more. We dont trust the bank so we have transitioned to cash only.
I have a order that will arrive sometime in april and that will be paid with cash instead of a paper check. After that, all future pre-orders paid up front with cash.
When you are well along in the layout construction, it is very easy to identify spending that is needful for it and identify wasteful spending and remove it. Sometimes you can simply pause the whole project and keep it in order and dust free until you get moving again.
And when we do, it’s all cash and carry.
HOWEVER… that said, the train room is constantly at risk of being cleaned out, repainted and converted to a more useful need at any time. I can have it to bare walls and carpet in 5 hours flat with two truckloads to the dump of the wood and foam with everything else boxed up.
I have identified bloated storage and removed it, freeing up additional space to store other items used by the household under the train table. It’s proved to be a winner with the Spouse.
The orignal question? Well let’s see… call it 1000 dollars a year average. Sometimes it is several months before I walk into a hobby shop so… it varies. But taking just about 1000 dollars out of train spending and moving it into debt reduction will probably position me in the near future not to worry any more about train spending or any other spending. The budget will be simple utilties, food and gas everything else pruned out.<
I must have spend a small fortune over the last forty years or so on differnt kinds of models in different scales, many of which I later on-sold - some profit, mostly losses. Now I stick, almost exclusively to model railway items, however, these can also include 1/87 boats and marine details as well.
OK, model railway related items - ooh, that’s not easy to quantify the costs and it would be very difficult to tot it all up now - too scary to if the truth was told. Most of my pre-retirement purchases were made with little regard to cost - just avaIability, but were confined to items that would be relevant to the Seaboard Air Line Railway and it’s operating environment in Gulf Coast Florida so my spending was confind to within those parameters which I suppose was helpful. Now having a small fixed income is also a controlling factor as to how much I can spend on my hobby.
Here’s an example: a few days ago there was listed on eBay a brass BL-2. I have a soft spot for these locomotives and I’ve owned several models of them before now. I think I paid about $35.00 each for them back in the day, but when rationalising my non-Seaboard models, they were sold. Then came along this BL-2 on eBay - a brass beauty, but not a model I could use unless I created a whole new story (BS) about the FEC operating way over the other side of Florida - some stretch, I guess. So I let this model pass - that’s pretty good self control, don’t you think?
When ever you start into a hobby that requires on-going financial contributions it’s the early years that gobble up most of your money. Remember also that often it’s the sum total of all the small cost items that can creep up on you rather than big ticket items that are relatively small in number - start simple & then add on later.
There are a lot of rich modelers out there, but not too many people can really afford to buy every bi
“On counsel’s advice, I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer, on the grounds I may incriminate myself.” [:-^]
Don Z.