03-20-2014, 09:00 AM
I was drawn back into this whole question by an issue that came up on another forum. Doesn't the question of "how much" apply beyond just cash money? The effort we put into things is another part of this -- there are times when I can spend a small amount of cash on scratchbuilding supplies, but spend many hours, plus the time I've spent building up experience, to get the same thing I could have purchased RTR. But it goes beyond that, too. I look at other forums (not too often on this one) where guys post things like "who makes HO signals?", when a little effort searching the Walthers site could bring up an answer probably better than half a dozen random responses to the post. Some people don't want to spend either effort or money.
The next question -- how much money can we justify -- actually has a simple answer: as much as we can afford. I get this from a remark in the Gazette a long time ago from a guy who'd switched from HOn3 to On3. People asked him if it was a lot more expensive. He said no, because no matter what scale you work in, you spend as much as you can afford. At first I thought this sounded extravagant, but after a little thought, I realized he meant that if you budgeted realistically, you had x to spend on the hobby, and you spent it. You could buy three Hon3 locos or one On3 loco, and there you had it.
So then I thought a little more, and I thought about John Allen and his impact on the hobby. The idea that someone would (at first) build a layout in a couple rooms of his house, and then move to a house where he excavated his basement to build a truly spectacular, world-famous layout had a very 1950s feel to it, a sense of American prosperity and unlimited aspiration. It's worth pointing out that Allen wasn't married, was probably not suited to marriage or a family, and in fact budgeted so carefully that he was a tightwad. (He apparently died with plenty of money in the bank.) Frankly, I like that side of the hobby. Why can't we aspire? It reminds me of a friend of my wife, whose daughter got to her late teens and suddenly realized "wait a moment -- I want to wear good clothes, eat in good restaurants, travel, have a nice house. I guess that means I need to get a good education and have a good job." Can we really disapprove of someone who thinks that way?
Then someone pointed me to Lance Mindheim's blog. Just in his posts this year, he tells people they should plan a layout with fewer than 15 switches, have no grades, ideally be on just a shelf, be something you can operate in 45 minutes. He points to a guy who's building a layout set in Cuba (of all places) as a good example of how to do things. (Except the Cuba layout isn't even a layout, it's a diorama but might be a layout one day. We get back to the question of effort here.)
Tell it to John Allen.
The next question -- how much money can we justify -- actually has a simple answer: as much as we can afford. I get this from a remark in the Gazette a long time ago from a guy who'd switched from HOn3 to On3. People asked him if it was a lot more expensive. He said no, because no matter what scale you work in, you spend as much as you can afford. At first I thought this sounded extravagant, but after a little thought, I realized he meant that if you budgeted realistically, you had x to spend on the hobby, and you spent it. You could buy three Hon3 locos or one On3 loco, and there you had it.
So then I thought a little more, and I thought about John Allen and his impact on the hobby. The idea that someone would (at first) build a layout in a couple rooms of his house, and then move to a house where he excavated his basement to build a truly spectacular, world-famous layout had a very 1950s feel to it, a sense of American prosperity and unlimited aspiration. It's worth pointing out that Allen wasn't married, was probably not suited to marriage or a family, and in fact budgeted so carefully that he was a tightwad. (He apparently died with plenty of money in the bank.) Frankly, I like that side of the hobby. Why can't we aspire? It reminds me of a friend of my wife, whose daughter got to her late teens and suddenly realized "wait a moment -- I want to wear good clothes, eat in good restaurants, travel, have a nice house. I guess that means I need to get a good education and have a good job." Can we really disapprove of someone who thinks that way?
Then someone pointed me to Lance Mindheim's blog. Just in his posts this year, he tells people they should plan a layout with fewer than 15 switches, have no grades, ideally be on just a shelf, be something you can operate in 45 minutes. He points to a guy who's building a layout set in Cuba (of all places) as a good example of how to do things. (Except the Cuba layout isn't even a layout, it's a diorama but might be a layout one day. We get back to the question of effort here.)
Tell it to John Allen.