What have you learned to do/not to do on your layout?

Build your layout for YOUR pleasure. Not for the other guy’s pleasure. If you build your layout to please others, YOU will never be happy with it.

I’m still building my layout, but so far…

–Look out for those S-curves! They may not be apparent on the plan but they jump out screaming at you during operation.

–When building a shelf layout, make sure no structures are in between a hand-operated switch and the front fascia.

–Solder track BEFORE painting the sides of the rails.

–Metal wheels and metal couplers. Just like when I was in high school, METAL RULES! (guitar riff)

–While the best-laid track plans of mice and men will of course go awry immediately, it’s still a good idea to have a plan in mind, even if only so you can go back to it after you’ve made the umpteenth concession to reality or plywood.

–Have a big yard. Your lovely rolling stock will be visible and thus be used, rather than mouldering away in drawers. Also, because you use it, you’ll know exactly which cars aren’t in tip-top shape and have more incentive to fix them than the ones in the drawers.

Got that right as it gives new definition to “Table Top Lap Dancing” ( Not a pretty sight!)

As to things I have learned
-Accessibility is critical, as Rex will attest

-Super Elevated Curves are nice to look at but have to be done in moderation and with slight elevation

-Don’t be happy with sub standard track work. If it doesn’t look good or if it’s bumpy, fix it

-Avoid using recycled turnouts that you picked up at the LHS. Chances are there’s a reason why someone is selling them off.

-Keep the track clean and store your gear away when sanding or creating dust clouds

-More means: More headaches, More Frustration, More Money, More Questions
Less is good, honest

-Don’t rush as this will lead to doubling your down time. That 20 minute job will
turn into several hours of intense labour and result in an additional 5 years off your life.
Ask your Doctor

-Soldering irons are very hot and will move mountains. Well actually you’ll move the mountain and any other scenery that gets in your way when diving for the nearest sink in an attempt to relieve the pain.

Run all of your engines over a piece of track before ballasting or be prepared to rip up the track, realign and redo what you’ve done before. That or sell off the engine causing the grief.

Finally: Don’t talk about MR’ng or your latest MR purchase in front of relatives. This will only lead to criticism and could result in their testifying at your competency hearing as they attempt to have you committed

Regards
Fergie

Things I’ve learned over the years

The track is the foundation of your railroad.

  • Do not skimp on track. Buy the best you can get and install it carefully.
  • Avoid turnouts with stamped point rails, as they are difficult to keep in gauge.
  • Prefer the larger frog numbers as the cars will look more realistic on larger radius curves (diverging routes).
  • Learn how to wire powered frogs so that there are no dead spots in the middle of your turnouts. Your 4-wheel engines will thank you for it.
  • Lay your track by sight to insure against kinks. If you can tell where the joint is in the rail when viewing from afar, your train will remind you every time it passes that point.
  • Use templates to lay curves. It is faster, easier, and more accurate than using the arc-rod method, and you can quickly change radius if you need to.
  • Once the track is laid – RUN THE TRAINS. Before you put down any scenery, ballast, paint, anything – RUN THE TRAINS. Locate problems such as insufficient power, kinks, misaligned rail, etc., BEFORE you invest more time in the layout.
  • Keep structures, especially fragile ones, from the normal access route of your arm to manual ground throws or other things you need to reach for.
  • Install plenty of track feeders. Don’t rely on rail joiners to carry power to the next section of rail. Rail joiners are for alignment ONLY, not to carry power.
  • Set up a color coded system for wiring and stick to it. Avoid using colored wire that is normally used to carry electrical current (red, white, black, green).
  • Do not attach the wrong color wire to a bus or extend a wire with the wrong color because you are out of the correct color. It may save you time now but will frustrate you (or a member of your crew) in the future.
  • Wire your railroad in several blocks / power districts. You can always jumper them into one if you want to, but if you want signaling, occupancy detection, and/or unaffected operatio
  1. Never build benchwork with hammer and nails…the first swing of the hammer ends up hitting the thumb and the rest of the benchwork goes up in extreme pain…the drill. glue, and screw method works much better and is a lot less painful…
  2. Never put in a tunnel and run the train full throttle to check the clearance…it’s a real good way to pay overtime to the MOW workers and send lots of equipment to the repair yard…
  3. Never solder a complete set of turnouts, crossovers, and flex track together before checking to see if it will fit on the layout…I wish i had a dime for all the wasted rail joiners I went through…I’d be rich!
  4. Don’t get all hot and sweaty, take off your T-shirt, and reach over the layout across the rails before remembering to shut off the power pack…I swear!..It lit me up like a christmas tree!
  5. Don’t hold the new year’s eve party in the train room…alcohol turns most sane people into a bunch of Gomez Addams that want to play “Let’s cra***he trains into each other”…or…wow!..did you see what that bottle rocket did to that 40’ boxcar?
  6. and finally…don’t get into this hobby ever again…I’d be retired now if I saved the money I’ve spent over the years on model railroads…Chuck[:D]

In addition to all the fine suggestions already,
Keep solvents off of the foam scenery…kinda like the China Syndrome when the bottle tips over![:0]

Love 4 and 5 I wish I was there for both of them though not my way of getting into the festive season.

CAT OWNERS

Try this to keep Kitty Kong and Catzilla off the layout.

Next time your at the market pick up a small vile of ground cayenne pepper, sprinkle a little bit of it in the areas where Catzilla likes to attack, sleep, scratch, leave little log piles that are not made of wood, etc. Cats are very sensitive to smell and even a small amount of Cayenne will be enought to dissuade Kitty Kong from using your layout as a sleeping pad. Putting a little of it around the perimiter also helps keep the fuzzhead off, eventually the little fur-for-brains will associate the smell of the pepper with your layout and will never want to jump onto it again. Try it, it really works and doesnt hurt the little fur balls.

After the last relatively large layout was built and I realized with my short arms I had trouble reaching things and knocking other things over, this time around, the new layout was built in modular fashion, 2 to 2 1/2 Ft wide X 3 to 5 ft long modules connected together and 4ft high. Just the right height for me to reach things without destroying something else. PS; I don’t have a cat ,and the dog stays on the floor where she belongs!

Mark C,

Agree totally with your observations about color coding wires!! Tony Koester (I think it was him) did a column once about color coding wire - or more accurately not color coding wire (something along the lines of “for turnout frogs I use green, because, well, frogs are green . . . .when I ran out of blue wire I used brown, well, because both colors start with “b””). I never laughed so hard - even when I realized I was laughing at myself!!

I cant wait to try the peper thing with my cat

And make a diagram of YOUR wiring circuits,also the last thing you want to hear when you get home from work is your wife saying"Honey, I dusted your layout today and I put all them little loose things in that shoe box you had." aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggg!

Remember the maxim: If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you have the time to do it over?

I just did the pepper thing with my cats.

Cacole: While I might not have written that maxim, I think it is based on me!!

PennsyHoosier: Did it work? Was it fun to watch the reaction?

I just scored huge points with the misses when I told her about the pepper thing and not hurting cats. We have just moved and I’ve been schemeing the big picture in our new basement and have to share it with 3 cats. I’ve gotten a little ways with the allergy bit but I don’t want to push it too far or I might be out.

What I learned is not to assume you’ll always be in the same house even if you love it.

after years of planning my DMIR line I finnally had completed a partial helix under the stairs to make a transition from the top of the oredock and proctor hill. Underneatheath the transition I decided to build some staging tracks and build in a spot for my TV to watch train video’s. Because of the complexity of the operation I attached Everything to the walls. I sure hope the new owners will enjoy the money and time I spent starting their layout, I didn’t have the heart to tear it out.

Fortunately by nothing but sure dumb luck my 9 foot oredock came out of the basement with out cutting it in half. I had to carefully remove the base of it from my benchwork with a putty knife but it survived the move.

  1. Do not install complicated trackwork in inaccessable locactions… No matter how much you bomb proof it, the first time it fails your back will go out before you can fix it. I tore out a double slip in order to learn this.
  2. Include adequate aisleways. The extra railroad you can squeeze in is not worth years of crab-walking sideways down narrow aisleways. I rebuilt a pennsula in order to learn this.
  3. Do not think you must have the latest and greatest. A friend of mine who had a perfectly good model railroad (actually a superior one) got into DCC and was so frustrated by the problems he left the hobby altogether.

dont make a 1.6 smile dbl track mile high mountain layout and find you have no room for the city skyscrapers you love to see damn

K-

I learned never to make the layout deeper than you can reach over. My current plan has a few 3 plus feet areas that I thought I could deal with, not the case. If I could do it over, the max width would be 24"! I copied a plan from MR, it looked good on paper, but not in operation.

Never try to catch a Exacto knife when its rolling off your workbench.