Not time spent on your railroad hobby- building models etc but time spent on operating your trains
I guess it depends on my mood. I might run a train 5 minutes, and sometimes 1 hour. I mostly spend my time switching. The 5 minute times, are mainly a few laps to keep the train going (working order).
The layout has ongoing operation, so when one local or main line freight is finished its work, another is ready to run. My home office is also in the train room so a five minute break form the computer would be included with time being form thirty minutes to an hour a day.
Days I work I run them before and after I go to work, so 5 days a week about 3 hours a day. On my days off, between 3 to 6 hours a day. So we are looking at 18 to 21 hours. When I first got started in the hobby, 40 hours plus a week. One of the reason I wore out so much stuff.
By the way Bob, love the pictures of your engines. I wish the site had something like that for us new people to know what a engine looks like! I know with my posting number you would not think of me being new. Only engines I know what they look like are the ones I have.
Cuda Ken
About the only time I have to operate my layout anymore is on weekends since I get home late during the week, and by the time I get dinner and dishes done, it’s too late to do anything but think about going to bed and going to work the next day. On weekends, I’ll often have trains running when I’m in the basement doing laundry, and if I’m down there waiting on the wash or dryer, I’ll be doing more operating than just letting trains run around. And if I don’t have any other major things going on over the weekend (started last weekend on spring cleaning), I’ll be down there either working/planning or operating.
Kevin
About an hour a week. Once the layout is near completion and I can begin car card operations it will be much more.
Well,gee whiz…When I have a ISL I operate every day for 1-2 hours some times more…I suspect when(maybe that should be if since I am moving a snail’s pace) I get my N Scale layout up and running I may operate 3 hours a day…Oddily I perfer late night or early morning.
You see for me my biggest enjoyment in the hobby is operation…[tup]
Sadly not much
My layout is all but complete save for a few minor building upgrades
I had planed on having regular small 3-4 people operating sessions
But my bout with Laryngenal Cancer left me speechless so it’s much harder to comunicate with people
I can’t just call them up and say come on over
When I have an open house I have someone do the talking for me
so I mostly operate alone maybe once or twice a week for and hour or so
Wow! Some of you guys really dig running trains.
I’ve been in the hobby a total of about 16 years, and I’ve yet to be really captivated by running my layout. I imagine that mine see about 8 hours per year of actual running time. Whereas I spend about 15 hours per week building the layout. My father was similar with his R/C planes - years building one project, then it would fly once or twice and he’d set it aside and build something else. I wonder if it’s genetic.
My nephew (ex-wife’s nephew) loved running trains, so he would give them a good workout when he came to visit. Since the divorce he doesn’t come around anymore, so the trains are much more idle.
My lady friend Lois thinks that model railroading is a lot like pipe-smoking or playing the Bagpipe–in that you spend far more time fiddling with the equipment than you ever do USING it. Now mind you, she thinks my hobby is fascinating, but when you come right down to it, I think that she’s right.
I spend more time working ON the layout than I do running it. I’d say on a good week, I can get about 2-3 hours of running time in, then I peer at a portion of it and think, “Oh, I could have done THAT better–” and trains get parked, and scenery gets re-done or wiring gets re-wired or track gets tweaked.
To use another analogy, as a professional musician, I will often spend up to 5 or 6 hours PRACTICING per day for a PERFORMANCE that when done, will probably only last about an hour. So my hobby and my profession have a lot in common.
But they’re both intensely rewarding.
Tom [:D]
Tom,
I think she really understands this hobby. I mean really.
About ten hours in a typical month.
Now between the NMRA National and Train Festival this summer, I’m guessing that I’ll log about 40 hours in July between the two layouts.
My layout’s been covered up with plastic for the last 2-3 months due to weather, dirt, dust. and working on my business equipment. It looks more like a work bench than a layout right now.[:(] Just been building structures and kits as of late.
When it is cleaned up I run them all the time. 10-20 hours a week. If I’m in the building working on a kit, the trains are running in the back ground.
If I stop running the layout I would work on it! Have 36 trees ready to plaint, rather run the trains.
Cuda Ken
I resemble that, in a perverse way. Go into the garage, ready to attack the next item on the PERT chart with great gusto. Check the timetable, find that (fillintheblank) is supposed to be ready for its scheduled run to Elsewhere.[8D]
Check the clearence card and the car cards - all in order. Pull out of Mikasa, set the mainline switches and run to the end of track - which is still well short of Elsewhere.[:-^]
With the train at virtual Elsewhere, file the clearance card and spend a few moments dealing with waybill changes. By then it’s time for the train which previously ran to the other end of track well short of Somewhere to return to staging at Mikasa. Get the clearance card…[^]
Notice that my legs are beginning to resent standing up, so I bring the last moving train to a stop, deal with the paperwork, shut down and head for the house. About two hours…[:O]
As I lock the garage access door, I realize that the PERT chart item still remains to be done…[banghead]
So, about five times a week I run trains - and maybe some construction gets done as well. If I would start the construction first…[(-D]
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - when I pry my hand off the throttle)
I thought I retired last year from the church I was serving, but I find myself working part time as an associate at another church. That said, my office is in my home, so except for hospital calls, other visits and a meeting or two, I try to have an operating session with the “boys” once a month. The rest of the time, I keep an on-going session going by myself. I start a cycle one evening, begin running the schedule for 24 hours, but only run an hour or two. The next evening I have free, I continue the 24 hour cycle, and continue this until I fnish a day. That usually takes me 3 weeks, give or take a day.
DCC has made operations easier and I have become quite adept at handling two procabs or cab04p’s at the same time as needed.
Bob
I have really enjoyed the imaging side of the hobby. With my so-so layout, the challenge now is figuring out how to eke out the best my layout has to offer for WPF. I do run trains about an hour a week, sometimes more, but mostly I move stuff around, stand outside the layout looking in and thinking, feeling guilty that I haven’t built a darned thing, not even a tree, in months. I actually ran trains for about an hour just yesterday and enjoyed the session.
I cleaned up some space today by removing cars and engines that are in the way because they aren’t getting much use these days. I try to keep only three or four on the layout, so the rest are in staging, in the roundhouse, tucked in my short mine tunnel, or in the case of three engines, back in their boxes (I have 15 engines, probably 6 too many as it stands).
-Crandell
As much as possible, fun is fun.
Ernie
Not enough! Maybe 2 - 3 hours a month. The rest of the time I’m working on the layout or doing something else.
There are several months I just work on a portion of my N scale layout, and albeit it is reasonably small (just 9 by 4 ft) it will probably never been finished. I am learning by doing and as soon as I complete a section I am unhappy with it, tear it down and start redoing it. I have managed to have an operable main line of just 20 ft so far yet and a small yard of 6 tracks. Since I use straight DC only 2 trains could operate within the 3 blocks. I however enjoy looking after long slow trains crossing the sierra grinding up the 4 - 5% grades which necessitates double heading even for short trains - so once I start running such a train I let it run for half an hour. But this only happens once or twice a month and I hope that this will be more frequent after my retirement next year.