Having a “quick launch” during the early stages of layout construction goes a long way towards maintaining enthusiasm and morale. I had the bench work for The Downtown Spur completed in a few weeks. The foam base took several days. For the track, I spent a few days lightly gluing down some temporary Atlas code 83. I plopped down a few mockups and within a month I had my concept in front of me. At that point, I throttled back and spent the next 15 years working at a leisurely pace.
Pacing, how quickly (or slowly) things progress on our layouts, plays a more important role than you might think with respect to our hobby satisfaction.
At one extreme, and probably the most common, is where critical mass is never achieved and the project stagnates. Years are spent trying to find the perfect design. Then, bench work drags on and on. Very little track gets laid. Eventually, a person loses interest and becomes demoralized.
You don’t hear as much about the other extreme, working too quickly. If you whip through a project and declare it “mission accomplished” in record time you may run into a situation where the quality of the finished models isn’t as good as it could be (i.e. sloppy work). You’ve essentially worked yourself out of a job. This particularly relates to small and mid-sized layouts. You blast through like a marathon sprinter, pat yourself on the back for reaching the finish line, and then what? Seriously, what are you going to do now, just look at it? Speaking for myself, and what I’ve noticed with my friends, is that interest quickly fades once a layout is stick-a-fork-in-it “done”.
The sweet spot, the middle ground, is somewhere in the middle. Think of it as an aircraft on its journey. They go full thrust to get off the ground and then throttle back and “cruise”. Once you get twenty or thirty percent or so of the scenery and structures done, it’s time to slow down and savor the assembly process for the remainder of the “trip”. Take your time. Do your best work.
During the early stages, you want to get your bench work down relatively quickly. Don’t rush but take don’t take forever either. Same for the plywood sub-roadbed. Next, get at least enough track and wiring finished to do some back-and-forth running and switching. Whip up some mockups if you want to get a sense of how things will look. Mockups can be very effective at taking the “get ‘er done” pressure off. At that point, it’s time to take your foot off of the gas. The satisfaction from this hobby is the process itself. Take your time. Strive for high-quality and neatly executed work. It doesn’t need to be OCD, one square inch at a time, flawless but don’t rush and sloppily slap things together either. Enjoy the ride.