I admit it. I am a messy modeler. I can’t find anything when I need it. I currently have SEVEN projects on the “workbench”. Did I mention that they were all mixed together? There is a pile of parts from the New River Mine, Interstate Fuel and Oil, State Line Farm Supply, a small building, a concrete loading dock, a wooden loading dock, and a cribbing wall. Talk about confusion. Then there are the tools. Spread out over the train room, garage, truck, and my bedroom, I have to search to find anything. So right now I am basically at a stand still. Project for the weekend: attack and destroy the mess without mercy.
Anyways, does anybody else have a horribly messy train room?
Don’t worry, you are not alone. When it comes to organization, I am a basket case. I am not exaggerating when I say I spend more time looking for my tools than I do using them. I can hide something from myself at the drop of a hat. I’ve made many vows to change my ways and keep my train room neat and well organized. Yeah, sure. Despite my best intentions, things just get out of control. I real envy those guys with neat work shops and every tool in the proper place and nothing laying around on the layout. I would love to be able to work in an environment like that but my mind just doesn’t operate like that. When I finish a task, or sometimes during a task, I’ll just lay whatever tool I was using down in the most convenient spot which is usually a place that it will tend to disappear from view and I will have no idea where it is the next time I need it, which might be two minutes after I set it down. After decades of trying to change, I have come to the conclusion that there is no hope for me. I will have to learn to live and work with the clutter.
I’m right there with you, jecorbett. The other day I walked right by my caulk gun no less than 6 times trying to remember where I laid it after I last used it. I looked over, under, inside and outside of everything in my train room…as I gave up, I laid my hand down to lean against my benchwork and guess what my hand landed on? Of course, the missing caulk gun!
My saving grace is fellow forum member Tom Bryant_MR; he comes over to kick my butt from time to time and helps me clear the clutter from the train room so I can work on and possibly complete something before starting a new project or task…without his help, I’d be lost.
Trust me when I say none of the following pictures were staged. They are all as the train room was when I first read this thread. I have posted pics of the good parts of my layout in other threads. What follows is the bad and the ugly.
First my workbench:
This is actually my auxiliary workbench that I made from an old countertop and two sawhorses. The regular workbench was too messy to work on.
Now a few layout pics:
Whew!!! Looks like the engineer got her stopped just in time.
These next two are of the section I am working on now:
No caption necessary.
This last one is where the future branchline will begin, if I ever complete the sections in the 3 previous photos.
As I’m getting older I’m getting more organised. Bad thing is it’s soooooo cold out I can’t work out in the layout building at night. I’m building kits and doing maintanance inside but that means running back and forth every time a need a tool or somthing.(that’s getting REAL old!) Then when it warms up I’ll have to move my indoor mess back outdoors.[V]
jecorbett-Your going to need some REAL long flat cars to move that florecent tube load. Great clouds! Did you use the white spray can method on those? I just got my back drops painted blue and I need to start practicing my cloud technique.
Yes, the same old simple swirling spray can has done all my clouds. If you look closely at the photos 3 & 4, you will also see the low hanging clouds that were part of the commercial backdrop which I cut and pasted onto my sky backdrop. This turned out to be a mistake. The photo clouds and the painted clouds did not blend well. There is just too much contrast. It would have been better to cut those clouds off the distant mountain tops and go with just the painted clouds. I’m afraid anything I do at this point will only make it worse so I’ll just live with it. It goes without saying that I should have tested this on a scrap piece before committing it to the permanent backdrop.
The most frequently heard comment in the garage where my under-construction railroad lives:
“If I was a (fill in tool, part or material of choice,) where would I hide?”
I am building hidden staging on one end of a 5’ by 12’ table. The other end is covered with a 4’ by 5’ chunk of 1.5" foam board (loose work surface) supporting various track templates, lengths of flex and so forth. The other table is (temporarily) covered by a sheet of Masonite that will become fascias, which in turn is covered with hand tools, power tools, boxes of assembly hardware, odd track parts, coils of wire…
All of the spare steel studs are racked on shelf brackets along the south wall (good) - not sorted by either length or size (not so good.)
Somehow, all of this will magically disappear as construction requires th use of those areas for roadbed, track and scenery. Yeah, sure…
You are not a very serious modeler, are you? All serious modelers have EIGHT projects on our workbench at any one time. You must begin something new immediately or the rules require that you exit the forum; there is no room for slackers here!!!.
Before you do that, however, please impart to us “serious” modelers the innermost secrets to your profound organizational skills.
No me. I am perfectly organized and if you don’t believe that you just ask my wife - if you can find her - she disappeared inside my train room a week ago and I haven’t seen here since - I can hear her yelling for help and I keep shouting directions on how to get out of there to no avail. If she has not materialized by the first of April I will be forced to call 9-1-1…
I’m quite disorganized also. Half of the time I spend looking for the tools to start or work on a project. I have a habit of using open gondolas and bulk-end flatcars to store loose change and other objects. I always promise myself to organize the tools and projects but I never do.
Well, I now have a shelf up above the workbench with coffee cups full of files, screwdrivers, and other tools. A Hobbytown USA just closed here in town and we scavenged most of the racks out of it for the club, but some were totally useless. I grabbed a Woodland Scenics rack that held the foam track bed and incline starters, which is perfect for larger things like my caliper box and kit boxes. Only thing is, it don’t fit! When I “rearrange” (read remove) a section of my benchwork that won’t hold any trains, I will stick it under there. So I started cleaning up, but I’m stuck because I can’t find the things to put them in their place!!!
I built myself a 2’ x 4’ work bench. I filled it up so I couldn’t see the surface. I had another small table so I sat it at the end of that workbench.
It’s now covered also.
I refuse to build another one. As soon as decently warm weather arrives I’m going to take everything OUT of the room, including under the benchwork and I’m going to put it back in an organized manner. I have a friend that has the neatest workbenches you’ve ever seen. Every tool in it’s rack, all parts in their correct trays.
Been there, done that. Trouble is it doesn’t stay organized for long. As soon as I start working with the tools, they end up all over the place again. One of the problems is I usually work right up until the time I have to go do something else so the tools don’t get put away when I’m done. They just lay on the benchwork or the workbench or the floor until they are needed again. By then I’ll have piled something else on top of them and won’t have any idea where they are. The other problem is have everything in its place. The trouble is, I have more things then places. I have all kinds of organizing drawers. Big drawers, little drawers, in between drawers. There’s always something that doesn’t seem to belong in a logical place and I don’t know where to put it.
