Hello to all of you out there in model railroad land…I am just looking for some input here. How do you guys with medium to larger layouts keep from getting burnt out? Maybe not burnt out per say but how do you keep it exciting enough to where you dont feel overwhelmed everytime you go to your layout? Me personally am begenning to feel like i am making zero progress. My layout is in N scale and roughly 12’ x 20’ around the room with a penninsula. I began with a rough track plan that seems to not be working out as planned but regardless i feel like i am getting no where. Do you guys jump around to different locations on your layouts or do you stick to one location until its complete? I personally just keep going to my layout with a plan in mind to work on one certain task only to get overwhelmed by looking at all the stuff i need to do and then after 20 or 30 minutes walking away without acompolishing anything at all and feeling like its hopeless. How do you guys do it? Maybe i am overthinking the process or maybe im OCD…either way i am wasting more time looking at what needs to be done as opposed to actually getting anything actually finished. I have been out of work due to this virus for the last 6 months as many of you are probably also. Instead of actually getting anything done on my layout i have wasted time by looking but never acting. Now i find that i should be returning to work around the 16th of this month. My plan when i first learned of my furlough was to at least have my track work complete so that i could run trains while working on various projects. Instead i have roughly the outer main line laid and only half the way wired for DCC. Maybe im overwhelmed??? I know it is much more enjoyable when you have someone to share the hobby with at least to me personally but its just me. I just need a plan or some insight as to how you guys keep the excitement alive while still making progress. Actually as far back as i can remember i have had this same problem…I begin a layout with tons o
I am the last person who should be preaching on this subject since I have had long periods of paralysis/burnout since starting my layout. For a long time I blamed my wavering on the decision to stay with DC/cab control or go with DCC. I held back on certain complex portions because I dreaded all the wiring that was going to go with it.
Then I had paralysis/burnout as I came to realize that some of my fondest hopes for really great scenes were not going to work in HO. But I had too much invested in time/money but also model railroading experience in HO to just toss it all and go to N scale as perhaps an objective observer would say I should have done.
True, having had that mid-build delay did enable me to rethink certain parts of the track plan before laying the track. That was good. The plan is not sacred text.
But maybe the worst decision was to feel I needed to be much nearer completion before even thinking about running trains. Everyone I have talked to with a large layout agrees that it is important, even at a fairly early stage of track laying, to begin running some trains. We don’t do all this work just to build benchwork and lay track and wire the layout. The ultimate point is to run trains.
One other purely psychological thing I did helped a little in remotivating me when I hit a dead spot. I was looking at plywood, endless feet of plywood and pine. Remembering an old old article in MR titled something like “double your layout for a dollar” I painted all the upward facing plywood a deep rich brown, an earth color. Once the layout is done nobody will see that brown. But it did give me a sense, a feel, of what the FINAL goal will be. I also (contrary to some expert advice) did some ballasting of track and scenery along the track at an early stage, again not just to give me something fresh to do but to give that glimpse of the final prize.
So …
I always jump around. Which is probably why I have not been making much progress - I’m not yet to a point whare I can jump around, I’m stuck on the basic benchwork. Almost have the first section done, and then I cna start skipping around a bit and do what I feel like doing at any given time instead of the same old, same old.
–Randy
Dave, thank you sir for the words of encouragement, they do help. I went out and took some pictures of what i had done so far as opposed to what i had not…unfortunately the NOT outweighed the done lol…But i will keep on chugging and see what happens. My biggest dilema is: Am i really happy with the design of the main line or should or could i redesign it in some way to better serve the space i have avaliable…here are a few pictures. As you can see i have plenty of projects but not sure what to do first…Thanks again!
Hi Trainzman. First may I say ‘my way is not the best’. Far from it. Other layouts ‘blow my mind’.
My layout is in a room 11ft by 8ft. The first plan was a terminus station with local and long distance diesel trains running. That worked really well. It was based in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland.
I had a collection of small steam locomotives, so I built Leeds Sovereign Street. I now had steam and diesel on the same layout. The problem was having two layouts set in different areas with different timescales, on the same track layout.
I decided to think what I really wanted and came up with a new plan with one track layout set firmly in Leeds with two timescales to run steam or diesel. Trains run from A to B each with a purpose. I then added Clarence Dock as sn extension to give more variety to running trains.
That is me. I made many mistakes and spent more money than I care to mention.
I have read countless stories of people building layouts only to scrap them before they even finish them. (I know they say a layout is never finished, but.)
The UK layouts that are successful all have a common thread to be so.
They have a reason for the railroad to be there in the first place.
The traffic carried is typical to the area modeled
Every train being run have to have a starting point and destination.
Most important. The trains running are all set in the same timeframe.
Only have stock running that is typical to the timeframe and area modeled.
Get that right and a layout will last a long time, believe me.
Now I am not saying if you are building a layout set on the east coast in a timeframe of 1990s you cannot run a west coast train of 1930s. Off course you ca
Thanks Randy, i find myself hopping around all the time but im still getting nothing finished lol…
Trainzman, I’m also new to the hobby. I have felt like you several times.
I’ll echo what others have said. Even if it’s temporary, try to set up a loop of track, get it wired, and run a train.
I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to finally turn it on and run a locomotive back and forth.
I also realize I’m doing this as a retirement project, without the goal of finishing the layout. The building and the creating is the hobby itself for me, and I don’t worry about how far along I am.
Without this, I would be sitting in my chair watching TV everyday. I know some of my retired friends who do just that.
Thank you Dave, that is certainly something to consider and it makes sense also…
John, thank you also sir…I think i will focus on getting my feeder wires attached and maybe running a loco or 2…
If you can stand any more advice, I guess I would say that at this point, forget about wiring the entire track. Wire just a couple sections and see if the locomotive will run. It took me months to completely wire my whole track, and I would have been discouraged long before I finished if I hadn’t run something.
Well said John. Running something spurs ypou on to the next section.
David
Looks like you got most of your track layed, now you can run some trains. Thats what I did and then did the foam scenery a bit at a time. Then I did plaster cloth, a bit at a time (had to run trains after each sectuon to make sure everything still workd, right). Now I am zip texturing the main layout area, a bit at a time. Next I will do a bit of scenery here and there as I finish my main yard (which is still in foam stage). I even have the main yard isolated from the main layout and us DC on that for testing (shorts show as a red light in stead of a circit that tries to reset till I turn it off and this might damage something, also my clearance engine is DC only).
Even if it isn’t part of the grand plan make sure you complete a part of the layout so that you can run trains in the manner that pleases you while you pass through those deer in the headlights periods of time.
If you are a point to point or switching hobbyist this is easier than if you need a continuous loop. Most of us continuous loop hobbyists are looking for the longest main line we can fit but if it is feasible to build a shorter loop and get running it’s worth doing.
You may be surprised by how easily your first loop can be fitted into the grand plan. Even if it can’t, changing the loop by deleting the temporary connecting track when you are ready to drive the last spike way over there is a lot less work than you might think.
Wiring a main bus for DCC should be fairly easy, just connecting the feeders in separated power districts can be tedious but you may find you don’t need to complete that bit just to run a couple of locomotives. Just hook up the one power pack and leave adding additional boosters until later.
The one other thing that might help is to concentrate on really finishing just one area as inspiration and incentive to get to “the end”. On your layout as built so far you could finish the bridge approaches or that hillside.
For my new layout I plan on completing the yard and engine servicing area first. That’s because completing “the loop” would involve basically completing everything except scenery. I also have access to the first layout we built which is ready for scenery and fully operational. We run trains while we pretend to be dreaming up scenery work.
I would suggest taking small bites. I’m building a fairly large basement-sized around the walls layout, but I started with an L-shaped section about 6’ by 15’ that I could use as a switching layout. I could do a lot of the scenery, add buildings, etc., and feel like I had a "working model railroad in a minimum amount of time.
In the same vein, I try to do a little something every day. Today I’m going to weather a diesel locomotive shell, should take about 20 minutes. But it’s making progress. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Also, I like to do flat top construction and use Kato Unitrack. That way, I can test out track plans, run trains, and find out what works and what doesn’t. Once I’m sure, I can raise it on Woodland Scenics risers and do the scenery. I often find changing something a little can make a big difference.
Some good advice. My only attempt at a medium sized railroad ended when I graduated college and moved from the house. But something that always kept me going to the layout room (our attic) was the fact that I started at a yard and built mainline to a siding. The fact that i never built past the siding is moot because I had so much fun switching in the yard, making up a train, and then running to the siding.
Once you get something running, you can set goals on what to do next. Build an area you can switch. Find folks to help; you would be amazed how much can get done if two or three folks work on the layout. Especially if there are areas that are not a specialty or a favorite for you; probably is right up someone else’s alley.
Excellent point!!
I will say two things:
First, when I have a large project to do, I try to break it down into smaller bits. For example, if I have 100 feeder wires to install, I will set a goal of getting just a dozen or so done today. Once I get those dozen wires installed I can either install a few more if I’m still in the mood, or do something else, or just quit for the day. The point is that I has set an achievable goal and I met it. It won’t belong before you realize that you have a whole bunch of feeder wires installed and the end is in sight. I do the same thing when I am on a long drive. I forget about the fact that I have 600 miles to go and simply concentrate on getting the first 100 miles done, and then the second 100…and before I know it I’m almost there.
The second point is actually in the form of a couple of questions: Who said you have to meet some sort of schedule? Who said you have to make progress every day? So what if you took the day off?
Cheers!!
Dave
I like the way you did this. Is this benchwork lower than all the rest?
This is a great series of questions about how to build a new layout, particularly a larger one, without suffering burnout. Here is what I did.
Back in February, 2018, I tore down my then current layout and started work on my new one, a 25’ x 42’ P-shaped layout. This new layout is now nearly complete, landscaping and ballasting included, after demolishing my prior 13 year old layout. But prior to starting construction on my new layout, I spent over a year designing the new layout on paper.
I did not build my new layout by jumping from one project to another. Rather, my plan was to build the entire framework first, then lay the double mainline track around the entire perimeter, then wire the double mainline, then run trains.
I had to cross rivers with bridges, but for starters, I just used temporary plywood sheets to cross the openings intended eventually for river crossings. Once I was satisfied with the trackwork, I built the yards and sidings, then wired the yards and sidings while running trains on the mainlines.
When all t
BigDaddy, thank you sir. Yes, it is actually 5" lower than the rest sir.