Designing My HO-Scale Room Layout

[P5se Camelback]

Personally, I like the one that Stein reposted of your earlier design. Run some trains on that and see if it doesn't offer interesting opportunities.

Now ... (he says with a stern voice and serious look on his face) ... all this time Galen and Stein and several others of us have been trying to gently nudge you in a positive direction. The time has come for me to speak my frustration-wracked mind ...

Lance Mindheim is a talented young man. He has done some very interesting and innovative things on his shelf layouts. His model work is very convincing. He has learned how to use a video camera to put together some very interesting model railroad videos.

BUT ... he is NOT a GOD to be worshipped!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at what he's done, sure, then look at what John Armstrong and John Allen and Bruce Chubb and Allan McClelland and Tony Koester, not to mention our own Gary S. and Faraway and Stein Jr and Steve and other "Linear Modelers" have done! Study what you see, learn from what you see, and then, by God, do your own thing!!! We will be here to help you find your way, that’s what forums like this are for, and this one is the best at that, hands down! [This place is like working on a college Masters program in Model Railroading for free, with the best possible grad students teaching you!]

Stop copying others! You quite obviously have decent gray matter inside that cranium … USE IT for more than a hat rack!! Your track plans have had some real insight … some very good options. (There have also been some things that needed improvement, and there has always been one of us here to volunteer our insight to critique and help improve your plans.

So … roll with it!

But PLEASE … let Lance Mindheim write his articles and run his business … and you … you Justin do YOUR thing … NOT his!

O.K.! I’ve said my piece. I apologize if it seems harsh. (I didn’t rise to the level of corporate design management that I did by keeping my opinions to myself!) I’ll go sit in the corner for a month if that is the consensus … or if I have totally crossed the line, I’ll just bow out and go back to doing my own thing by myself, as I have done for the decades prior to discovering this wonderful forum full of very talented model railroaders. It was really great fun while it lasted.

But I have been getting frustrated reading all this good advice that’s being meted out to a bright young man like you, with a mind full of wonder and an apparent passion for railroad history, who doesn’t seem to be reading the words that we have been typing, the comprehension and understanding that we have been trying to pass on to you in nicest and most gentle terms. (When I was 16 I didn’t know another model railroader and it was still another 10 or 12 years before I met one, and within a month I moved for a new job!) It often seems as though what we are saying is flying right on by … not sinking in at all! (That’s why in my last post I kept saying, “Now, go back and read what Stein wrote again.” I meant it!!)

I have tried to contribute in a positive way to this thread, as I believe that with proper tutelage, the young people of today will continue our great hobby through tomorrow and pass it on to their offspring.

But I have done all I can, said all I can say.

Goodnight.

I’ll watch my email for my banishment notice on grounds of unnecessary harshness.

Edit: Corrected a couple of typos … bad form in a rant! .