Not asking you to reveal your entries, but is there anyone sending in an entry for the layout planning contest? The winner will be published, I assume, but what about some of the others?
Maybe if we all join together and request MR to place all entries in some sort of accessible Trainboard file or site, perhaps they’ll do so.
As far as my entry…do you think an oval with one spur will get very far??? 
Hello “HEdward,” Rule 7 on page 69 of the September “Model Railroader” reads: “‘Model Railroader’ reserves the right to purchase any non-winning entries at our standard rates.” We’re hoping to get more than three entries worth publishing, and we’ll be prepared to buy any good article prospects beyond the three winners for future publication. So long, Andy
Thanks Andy. Nice to see this forum is read at least once in a while by its owners.(don’t ask and I won’t tell)
Perhaps I should rephrase my question. Are there any forum members participating in the contest? If so, and if your entry doesn’t win big or small(get published under rule 7) would you post it here anyway?
Hi Andy,
Just read the rules on Page 69. What are your “standard rates”?
You got some masochists working there? The guy who put that door where it is I mean. I think if it was real life I would move the door before starting to design. You just like to set a challenge? Not a masochist. OK[:D]
As a less-frequently-than-once-in-a-blue-moon published model train author, I would say that Model Railroader’s financial “standard rates” are pretty decent. Their speed “standard rates” seem to take forever. But of course I am impatient. And I am looking at things from my own point-of-view, rather than trying to keep a magazine going month after month, and keep it both satisfying to readers’ expectations and also going beyond their expectations.
(By the way, isn’t the September issue a fantastic wonderful assortment of ideas and inspirations?!?!)
I wouldn’t blame the Model Railroader people for the door specification. “There is a prototype for it.” My present 1994-2006 train room (exact same size!) has a door in that exact position. My 1993-1994 last train room (about same size) in my previous residence had two doors, each in that same orientation (only in mirror reverse of each other). My 1988-1993 apartment had a smaller train room, with door in same position. My 1982-1988 apartment had a train room about same size as contest specification, with door in same position. This space for shoehorning a model railroad design is even more ubiquituous (commonly seen to the point of exhaustion) than the common same plastic building kits you see over and over on so mnay different layouts.
It is not that the contest was designed for masochists. It is that fate (for many model railroaders looking for a pike location) is a sadist!
(Insert non-smiling “smilie” [banghead]
I plan to enter the contest and will be happy to post my plan or plans, I just have to make one first.
The basic room looks like a mirror image of my home office, except for the lack of closet doors.
I’d love to enter the contest, but it’s in a head-on time conflict with designing and early construction on my rather larger new layout. Complicating the issue is the fact that I don’t limit myself to the frog angles of commercially available switches. I doubt that a gandy dancer’s dream with a bunch of custom-designed puzzle switches would impress the judges - I could build it, but who else would be able to?
Sorry to say, I’ll be giving this one a bye.
Chuck