Model Railroad Blog

Defining Model Railroad Design Success

A pair of boxcars sit in front of A-1 Farmers Choice on the switchback segment of my Downtown Spur layout.

A successful model railroad design is one that provides a platform for several hours a week of relaxing hobby time…recreational time…..fun time.  It doesn’t really matter how those minutes or hours are spent.  If there is some degree of completion on a layout, module, or diorama and you find yourself working on it somewhat consistently, congratulations, you’ve come up with a successful plan.  A two hundred turnout, dog’s breakfast of a layout plan isn’t successful if it never gets so much as started, let alone built.

More than half of the people I know never reach the point of having even a basic operational test track tacked down, often after decades of design noodling.  I could (but won’t) write an entire book on what I suspect the underlying psychology for this is.  However, if I take a look at that pool of bystanders, and separate out the smaller subset of those that truly want to be engaged, I keep coming back to one central cause for the logjam.  It’s overreaching with the design.  There is a disconnect. On one hand there is what they “think” is the absolute bare minimum scope they need in order to motivate them to build something/anything. On the other side of balance is their actual level of time/energy/focus level. The problem is the two don’t match. In other words, “I need X to be happy but I only have .5x in the tank”.

The secret to design success isn’t finding a way to squeeze more in but rather understanding how to be satisfied with less.  Less doesn’t mean less sophisticated and it doesn’t mean “settling”.  A starting point of that process is having the self-awareness to truly understand what aspects of the hobby you enjoy most.

As an example let’s look at a typical modeler.  They likely enjoy structure building, rolling stock tuning/weathering, and running trains by themselves in half hour bursts. They have other obligations and interests such as family, home maintenance, jobs, etc. Matching those real world time/energy constraints with typical modeling interests and get at least some railroad up and going is very attainable… if you have a good design. If you can come up with that plan, then you have the foundation for those several hours of relaxation and satisfying hobby time. It doesn’t take many turnouts or that much square footage either.

Shown above is an example.  The prototype is the switchback at the end of Miami’s Downtown Spur.  It’s only half a mile long and doesn’t have a single siding. Even so there are four industries along the route plus three additional locations that are used for team track loading.  That gives you seven places to spot cars.  There is a runaround siding just before the switchback that allows for the required moves needed to switch the lead.  You could have the bench work down in one or two weekends.  Throw down three or four Peco turnouts and you have everything you need.  At that point you could spend years of hobby time building the structures and rolling stock.  Solo operating sessions would easily run over a half hour, but probably more. If you wanted to further simplify things, you could eliminate Trujillo and Sons (top of plan), narrow the bench work and just treat the siding as staging.  As basic as this is, I’d guess it would take the average hobbyist five years or so to “finish”. Five years of fun, of satisfying leisure time, isn’t “settling”. So, do you want to spend the next five years building models and running some trains as you sip your favorite drink and listen to music, or do you want to spend it on ebay, forums, and social media? None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow so some food for thought.

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The “Finished Layout” Landmine

The mid-morning sun washes over Florida Bottling on The Downtown Spur layout.

A landmine is something you didn’t see coming (but could have), step on, and then suffer the consequences.  To that extent it’s not the same as being subjected to some totally random negative event.  If you know you’re entering a mine field, you can be careful where you step.

Finishing a layout falls into that landmine category.  Despite what we might think, for many of us, declaring a layout “done” is not a good thing.  In fact it can go pretty far beyond being not a good thing.  The depth of the problem is made worse by the fact that it is so subtle, the way it sneaks up from behind, and then blindsides us.  Wow, didn’t expect this.

Hobbies are not a frivolous pastime and nobody should frame them that way.  They are a deeply meaningful aspect of our lives.  They give us creative expression, purpose, the satisfaction of assembly, and deep friendships and social connections.  I could go on and on. The vast majority of us are builders.  We lose sight of that as we get caught up in research, collaboration, emailing friends, solving problems, developing skills, building stuff, and just the overall process.  Somewhere along the line though we ever so slowly drift towards making the mistake of thinking there is a race to the finish line.  To get the layout “done”. 

Fine.  What if you’re unlucky enough to hit that mark? Congratulations, you can now say you checked another damn box off of your life list. Then what?  Seriously, what then?  You need to think about it.  If you don’t have another idea in mind for the next railroad you’re cruising for trouble.  I’ve seen it happen to myself and time and time and time over with my friends.  The sense of malaise and depression and just feeling lost when something that was so meaningful is “done”.  It’s not a small thing.   Like many of you, I don’t have any other themes that are calling to me that would create the same level of passion as what I’m doing now.  This is it.  Everybody is different but here are some ways I’ve dealt with it.

First, recognize the depth of the problem.

Second, take your foot off of the gas.  Getting a layout launched and establishing momentum is vital to its success but, once you’ve hit cruising altitude, working like a demon is essentially speeding up how quickly you won’t have a job.  I still put in as many modeling hours as ever but now work at a much more leisurely pace.  It was a hard habit to establish, but I’ve learned to put my emphasis on savoring the process not checking another thing off of a goals list.

I kept my main layout, but took a break and built a few small ones that allowed me to explore other themes.  Specifically, the LAJ and Brooklyn Terminal layouts.

Renovate the layout.  This was surprising to me. I guess you don’t know what you don’t know. The Downtown Spur was getting on in years and was starting to show signs of age.  I’ve been surprised how uplifting it is has been to go back and fix, repair, or even replace elements that were wearing out.  I thought it would be a boring slog and it’s been quite the opposite.

Go back and rebuild or replace elements.  If you’ve been at this a while, your skills are higher than they  were ten years ago.  There are areas (scenery, track areas, structures) where I realized I can do a better job now and have gone back and replaced them.  As with the restoration I’ve been surprised how fun and uplifting this has been.  In other words I’m taking a second pass over the entire layout and raising it to higher standards.

Just because an expression is corny, trite, and overused doesn’t mean it isn’t true….the hobby is meant to be a journey, something to be experienced, not a destination, something to finish and mark off your list.

Miami Taxi Meter January 8

This is the image I had in mind when I started the Miami Taxi Meter project. Shot with a Canon Rebel T5 and run through Helicon Focus. Additional editing with Adobe Elements and Paint Shop Pro X.

I know some of my readers use Helicon Focus also. It’s fairly common when rendering your stack of photos with the program to get some artifacts here and there best described as “fuzzy weird halos”. There’s a lot of chatter on the net that this is a result of not taking enough images at various focal lengths and “missing” one of the focal planes. The conventional wisdom being that if more shots had been taken, the halos wouldn’t have appeared.

I really don’t think this is the case. Rather I believe the cause is the program algorithm in general. A deep dive into their help section admits as much. The good news is that the touch up is fairly simple once you understand how to do it. Save all of your base photos (the stack shot at various focal lengths) in a separate folder and don’t delete them. Render the stack as always. If you get a halo, go back and search through your original photos. One of them will have the problem area in perfect focus. Just use your selection tool and outline the “good area” from your original photo and copy/paste it into your rendered image. Quick, simple, problem solved.

Miami Taxi Meter Jan. 1

Miami Taxi Meter (or whatever the name of the business actually is) isn’t just one building but a small complex of non-descript, low lying masonry structures. Over the past week I finished the masonry storage building above. I’ve uploaded the photo wallpaper of this model into the how to section on…well…photo wallpaper for others to use. It’s vital to include a large percentage of these “nothing burger” structures on the layout or else it would look like a total circus.

Here’s how everything looks together in place so far. Still lots to do. The Crown Vic cabs are from Busch. Next up is the fencing.

Where Does the Time Go?

In the above video clip, The Downtown Spur job works Miami Iron and Metal.

Let’s take a pause in our day (pun intended) and talk about switching operations. Looking at a crew’s shift, where does the bulk of the time go? Moving cars? Nope? Travel time? A little but not that much. Where then?

Last week Tolga Erbora produced an excellent video of operations on The Downtown Spur. At this point in history the spur has five active industries. Four of them are “very” active. One of the great things about the clip is that on the day it as made ALL five of the industries were worked and the sequence was fully documented from end to end. It doesn’t get much better than that.

After watching it, I reached out to Tolga to fill in some blanks. How long did it take to work the whole job? Answer: Four hours! They pulled onto the spur at 6am and went back onto the CSX main at 10 am. What is the speed limit on the line? Answer: 10 mph. Of the five industries, three of the moves were basic “swapping loads for empties”. The other two just involved picking up an empty. Simple.

You’ll notice in the video that they aren’t “crawling” down the line. I did some speed testing on my layout. Actually, 10mph is faster than you’d think. The spur is 3 1/2 miles long. At 10mph that’s only 20 minutes of travel time down and 20 back. The moves are simple, travel time isn’t that much. How on earth did this take four hours?

The answer is in the pun at the beginning of the blog…… pauses in the action. Walking, waiting, throwing gates and switches, …..more walking and more waiting. The tip off is subtle but there if you look for it. Go to the 6:20 mark of the video. Look carefully. See the crew member struggling with the gate? Keep watching. Notice the time spent for the crew to walk back to the locomotive. They aren’t sprinting nor are they dawdling. Notice how much time is spent as the engineer waits for his crew to come back to the engine, a sequence that is repeated over and over.

What are some takeaways to apply to our op. sessions? Gimmicks and tricks get hokey in a hurry. Try as we might, many aspects of real railroading just aren’t practical to replicate in model form. Forcing a model railroad crew (or yourself) to spend inordinate amounts of contrived time waiting on an imaginary crew to walk from A to B isn’t practical. (On a related note, at many points in the sequence the loco. isn’t crawling so you wouldn’t want to be going down your entire line at a 3mph walking speed. At times in the sequence yes, but not always.) For me the main point is the overarching theme of assuming a measured, relaxed pace when switching our layouts. The atmosphere isn’t that of a Starbucks barista on a frantic weekday morning, filling orders at a frenzied pace. It’s a middle ground. Not a contrived turtle pace, not run and gun, but one of just relaxing, knowing you have plenty of time, and enjoying your layout. (The gaps in the video where the loco. isn’t moving give some guidance as to what this looks like). In other words going about your work leisurely.