Those of us who are past their fifties may remember the Musical “The Fiddler on the Roof” of the 1960´s and 1970´s, in which the milkman Tevje ponders what he´d do if he were a rich man.
For a true-blooded model railroader, the answer would be building the dream layout!
In my younger days, I have always dreamed of building one of those basement-filling empires, with high mountains, big yards, sweeping curves and lots of activity - just like the ones we often see in MR. Now that I am getting older (but certainly not wiser), my dreams are getting smaller and more adapted to my abilities, skills and patience.
While helping a Swiss friend of mine to design his new layout, my own dream layout evolved as a by-product. Like his “layout in being”, my dream layout is based on those marvelous little red trains in Switzerland that roam the mountains. The Rhaetian Railway operates a network of narrow gauge in eastern Switzerland, which sees more passenger train operation than the entire US, making it a rewarding prototype to model. In addition, they run inter-modal trains, unit trains and the famous “mixed local”. Steep grades and tight curves are prototypical - the Bernina line has a maximum grade of 7 % and a minimum radius of less than 150 ft.! To make things worse, the line sports a series of spiral tunnels and even a spiral bridge - how toy-like can you get?
As I stated earlier, my dreams are a little more adapted - or should I say limited? The key limitation is space - I have to fit my dream into the space I have available. More serious limitations are skill and ability - I have given up on dreaming about something I just don´t have the dexterity to achieve. And, last but not least, funds - better not to think about it [sigh]
This is my dream:
Both stations fairly represent the prototype situation, al
as things look today, I won´t be able to build this one. My MRR budget is down to zero, actually I have to sell whatever I have to make ends meet.
After 50 years of being active in the hobby, I now have to seriously consider to give it up and turn into an armchair modeler. That´s frustrating, but it is equally frustrating to design layouts that will never be built.
Getting out of this hobby is like losing a dear old friend for me.
I have heard someone say, “the railroad modelling takes us out of the railway but you cant take the railroad modelling out of us.” You would already know this. [;)]
Best wishes for the future and I hope all your dream layouts come true.
For all of us, it comes down to issues of money, time, space and skill.
Even a rich man, who has no time or skill, has the money and can acquire the space to hire a professional to build the largest of railroad empires. But, where is the fun in that?
I have the space and the time, but I lack the skill to build a truly magnificent layout, and I would be extremely reluctant to spend the money necessary to do so.
In your case, even if your budget is down to zero, and even if you have to sell whatever you have to make ends meet, you still can dream. You can still draw imaginary layouts. You can view the efforts of your fellow modelers.
So, I don’t see you ever “getting out of this hobby”.
I am an avid lifelong golfer. I sometimes wonder as I get older, what if I can no longer play the game? Even then, I can still watch golf, I can still read about golf, I can still enjoy the game.
the Bernina Bahn is awesome, with very interesting freight operations too. Campocologno, on the Swiss Italian border where wood is trans loaded from trucks, is my favourite too.
You are in a difficult situation, without seeing better times in the near future. This winter-pic of Ospizio might be appropriate.
In the centre I would love to see a scene of the little trains through Le Prese, where trains went through the middle of the village; great street running indeed.
Gidday Ulrich, I don’t think I’d be wrong in saying that I’d not be the only one that would be saddened if you got out of the hobby. Though a relative newcomer, I enjoy your various posts, ie, the recent one about snow in the Swiss Alps, your, along with others, constructive criticism / observations regarding track plan queries, and marvelling at your “Japanese” modules.
Yeah I know how frustrating, (demoralising maybe a better word), it is when you’ve worked hard to achieve a goal and through no fault of your own, you are unable to reap the rewards.
I would like to think that you will to be able to see light at the end of your tunnel in the very near future.
When I drag raced when I was younger, and had knees that didn’t hurt and reflexes that weren’t measured with an hourglass, I dreamed of driving a top fueler… I had to scale my dreams back quite a bit, but I still had a lot of fun. So it went with building our model railroad empires, until I moved into an apartment with a full basement. Wooo hooooo!! [C):-)]
I can’t speak for you or anyone else but daydreaming/dreaming about model railroading has gotten me through some pretty tough times. It was something that has always kept me going, it didn’t matter that possibly it would never happen, just the possibility that it could.
You will always be a model railroader, you can never “leave” the hobby because it is ingrained in you, me, and everyone on this forum and in the hobby. There is nothing wrong with being an armchair modeler, I have a feeling that they may be a majority. It doesn’t cost to be active in the hobby, many things are found online anymore that can keep you busy for a long, long time. And maybe someday, things may change and you will be able to have your railroad, many of the model railroads we admire would not exist if they didn’t have a lot of help from fellow modelers.
Actually,he said it much better than I could. Although I just recently joined,I have read this forum for a couple of years now.There are a few people whose posts I always read,whether the thread pertains to my modeling interests,or not. You are one of those people.Your posts are insightful,entertaining,and always respectful of other’s viewpoints. That’s a rare combination, and this forum would be the poorer for your leaving it. I thank you for the contributions you have made,and I hope you will continue to be a big part of this forum.
A few years ago my little boy got me to haul out my old train stuff from when I was a kid. That caused me to get bit by the MRR bug once again. He has some medical issues and at about the same time was suddenly and unexpectedly put on life support for six weeks in intensive care at Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. The stress of this brought on a heart attack for my mother and she ended up at another Hospital in the cardiac Intensive care unit on and off life support for two months until she was strong enough for a quintuple bypass. Both came home well and things worked out well in the end. Through that two months I was told I could lose either or both of them.
One day on the way home from the hospital I stopped at a MRR shop and bought three boxes of Shinohara flex track and a Atlas 33000 B/A tank car that was on sale. I set the piece of flex track up on the fireplace mantel and put the tank car on it. Every night I would come home from the hospital and push that tank car back and forth with my finger dreaming of better times to come.
Better times did come and I have my “train set” up and running.
Dreams are what make us who we are and dreams get us through the tough times in our lives. The person who has no dreams is the one in a really tough spot.
My quote from days past is from 17th century English author Andre Marvell, “Had we but world enough, and time.”
“World,” as I recall from English class of decades long gone, referred to worldly goods and wealth. So, it’s what we are discussing. My “world” became constrained before I even started building in the 24x24 foot train room, as the room came out too nice, and was taken over as the “family room.” So, I started smaller and discovered my other limit, time.
I would love to fill that room with trains, but in all honesty, I can’t build a layout that fast. Now nearing retirement age, I will have more time, but I’m not sure I want to spend 8 hours a day modeling. It is a hobby, after all, not a job.
And then, there’s those nightmares that come with retirement, “downsizing” and “relocating.” I’m happy here, but do we need this big house, and do we want to live in cold New England once our old bodies won’t let us ski anymore? I don’t think about this much, and I don’t want to.
This hobby is as expensive or cheap as you want to make it. When I first started I had no money to waste so I learned to take a cheap engine and make it crawl. One was a MDC shay that, at that time, were cheap as so many had problems putting them together and you couldn’t look for help on the Internet then. I had one crawl at a tie a minute. Even today you can by trains for cheap and fix them and no, I didn’t start with the skills but learned as I went along. As far as your personal situation, look at what you have (meaning skills) and exploit them. My buddy was good at fixing trains so he started a business doing that, even hobby shops started using him as sometimes they could not send something back for repair etc. Sell on e-bay for a percentage, run errands (there is one guy at least who is a profesional line waiter, he waits in lines for tickets etc, for others). Can you weather models, know a few people that have turned that into a buisness.
That is a nice little dream. Seems like $10,000 spread out over the 10 years or so it will take to build it isn’t bad at all. I think the 5 year estimate is low.
My dream is more in the $10,000,000 category. But my bigger problem is even if I built it who would help operate and maintain it.
My home layout is 52’ x 20’. I calculated my benchwork (plywood, dimensional lumber, cork,) Atlas code 83/100 flextrack, turnouts, 75 structures, 15 Athearn, Proto 2000, Atlas engines with decorders, Digitrax DCC, 180 pieces of rolling stock from kits with Kadees and metal wheel sets, plus scenery materials built over the last 20 years has cost me approximately $13/15k.
Granted costs have gone up but if you spread out your purchases, the costs over your five year build plan it won’t be that bad.
Los Angeles & San Pedro Railway circa 1870, or maybe the later Terminal RR with the LA&SL extension with the Pasadena & Altadena RR Branch…all in finescale O of course, all in a dedicated Barndominium.
Now if I could only get that pesky Powerball to cooperate I’d…
I figure that if I am going to conduct an exercise in fantasy I should do it in epic scale: so with that in mind I have a J-shaped extension to a residence that encompasses a workshop, a hobby den, and an L-shaped train room. This latter measures 708" along the short leg; 910" along the long one and scales to 3737.5 square feet of available train space.
Most of the layouts I have designed for this space have been freelanced and usually measure out to somewhere between 1046 and 1436 linear feet of double track mainline…if you are wondering that scales to between 31 and 43 N-Scale miles. Most recently, however, I have indulged in shoehorning published designs into a considerably condensed space measuring 436" X 468". This space.–.1417 square feet.–. is still impractical for a “lone wolf” N-Scale operation. I am a strong fan of Ian Rice designs and my most recent (completed) effort involved his Model Railroad Planning, 2006’s Gulfport, Yarde, and Industry layout. Currently his Iowa Central layout (Model Railroad Planning, 2001) is getting the redesign treatment.
I am not a strong fan of multi-level layouts nevertheless I gave some consideration to doing that with this latter design…I had troubles trying to fit TWO 1%
