I’m curious about what you all think is the best and/or worst feature of your own layout. It could be some aspect of scenery, your scenery as a whole, your operations, your rolling stock and motive power, your bechwork, control panels, wiring, DC or DCC control setup, whatever.
No debates about “this is better then that” or anything, just an honest appraisal of your onw layout, thats all.
I just was curious about what you think the best and/or worst features on your layout are.
If you want to throw some pics in your post, go for it.
On my old layout, which was a 2 level affair, the trackwork on the second level really suffered because there was no way to expand it. I’m correcting that with a new single level design.
I suppose I ought to share mine since I asked the question, huh?
The worst feature of my layout is that it’s in pieces right now as I’ll be moving soon. The house is already sold and we’re just waiting for the new one to be finished being built so we can move in.
The best feature is that I finally learned my lesson a couple of years ago and I quit buying the cheap N scale steam loco’s that make you pull your hair out by the roots trying to get them to run right. I started saving up and buying good quality loco’s. Now I don’t have as many, but they work right EVERY TIME! Worth every penny I paid if you ask me.
Having always been limited to small layouts, my biggest dislike of them has been being limited to very short train lengths. Just once in a while, I’d like to run a 20 car train.
The best feature is how great it looks in my mind’s eye. Second best is watching a kit (or kit-bashed) locomotive I have tuned and detailed nicely running smoothly over my hand-laid turnouts.
I like my subway system. I think it’s pretty unique, particularly because I intentionally designed it for viewing from the on-board video camera, so all the tunnels are scenicked and I’m just finishing up the second station.
Overall, I wish I had more sidings for industries. I think as I fini***he main construction phase, the operations may not be busy enough. I suppose I could say I’m not happy with the small size of the layout, but there’s nothing more I can do about that, and it’s not really like it’s a “mistake” I could remedy by building another layout.
There are lot of things I like about the plan for the Bunter Ridge. The worst is that what is now in place is about to be dismantled. Like you, Philip, a move is on the horizon.
Worst feature of my layout: Wish I had more car storage. This will cure with an extension someday.
The best feature of my layout: Its done to the extent that I’m just down to enjoying doing the little details on it, and I can work on those for years. I wouldn’t say it would be ever done. I can operate trains and have had no problems with the trackwork or electrical.
Really glad that I didn’t go off the “deep end” and build some huge layout that I have seen so many modelers do, great bench work but forever working on track and never get to the scenery. One of those was my first layout plan!
Now see, in N scale that would be quite generous! [:D] That’s close to the radius I’m planning for my new layout’s mainline. I’m going with 21.25 & 20.
The part of our layout I like best is the mountains. I had some old styrofoam logs (2’ x 1’ x 4’) left over from when I was building floating docks, and it was much easier to cut them into a coherent ridgeline that the places I had to stack 2" pieces.
The worst part is staging, or better yet, the lack there-of.
In addition to numerous undesignated locos and rolling stock, we have 5 steam trains, 6 diesel trains, an MOW train, and 2 military trains, a total of 14. On the layout, we have room to park 5 trains without fouling the mainline, and whatever I’m running right now is usually not what I want to be running. I spend a lot of time moving stock on and off of the layout, and even more time devising ingenious storage solutions around the house for whichever trains aren’t currently on the layout.
Latest victory: my kids use the guest bathroom when they’re over for weekends, but they never take showers here. Their mom helped them acquire a phobia of iron tinged water, and we have a well. That’s three feet by seven feet by eight vertical feet of storage space, which is currently about half full, of stacked and labelled tupperware tubs, hiding behind the shower curtain.
Today, I’m going in to pick the kids up, and during the trip I’ll also pick up a piece of 3/4" plywood, 24" x 48", a piano hinge, two turnouts and enough flextrack to lay FOUR new staging spurs. We’ll go from having to do three, five train swapouts to run everything, down to only five trains that rotate in and out as needed.
Best feature–I seem to have been very lucky in my purchases of motive power. Only a couple of lemons in the group, and with tinkering, they’ve turned out okay.
Another good feature is that I’ve been able to use 34" minimum radius to handle my big steamers and kept the grades to a maximum of 2.4% (only in one spot, most grades are 2% or less), so that my big steamers can handle 20+ car length trains.
My worst feature is the lack of a good yard on what is a pretty good medium-sized HO layout (23x23). The railroad was designed for mainline running, but I’m pretty limited in the fact that I only have one medium-sized yard, and that is used mostly to change out motive power. Hopefully I’ll be able to put in a good-sized yard on the empty side of the garage (if I can negotiate, of course!).
Things that need work: Scenery. But that ALWAYS needs work, LOL!
Most hated attribute: Plastic wheels on my rolloing stock. I’m too broke to afford to put metal wheelsets on all my freight cars [or decoders in all my locos] so I’ll be stuck with a high-maintenance DC layout for awhile…[sigh]
I think the best feature was switching over to DCC. It is great to have so many trains running at one time. I also wish i had more room for the layout.
My layout’s worst feature? Definitely the scenery. It just, well, sucks. I’ve been at the ‘bare plywood’ stage for the past 10 years! I just don’t have the time to work on it much. My buildings sit on the bare tabletop and all roads were drawn in with a pencil. Oh, and there’s no backdrop either.
