Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Justinmiller171]

But first, what was wrong with the layout you were already building? You were already out of the armchair, or at least I thought you were. What happened to the layout on the hollow core doors? :?

Galen

Well, I realized it was gonna take me quite awhile to just get trains running, Plus it didn't have anything I was very interested in besides for operation.

I will be building the Tymesaver on one of the HCDs I have set up, but that leaves me with two left, Any Ideas?

[ocalicreek]

Well, I realized it was gonna take me quite awhile to just get trains running, Plus it didn't have anything I was very interested in besides for operation.

Well then why did you build it in the first place?

If you think laying down some track on a door is going to take a while to get trains running, then have I got news for you about hand-laying track. It won't take long IF, and only IF, and this is a monster big IF, you plan ahead, work in stages and do a little every day. Be brutally honest with yourself before you start such a project - how likely is this ever to happen?

Is there a little smily pulling his hair out? 'cause I could sure use one of those about now.

Sorry to be so negative, dude, it's just hard to fathom changing your mind so many times. It can't be any fun and that's what model railroading is supposed to be. If you're enjoying yourself, then more power to you.

Galen

[Justinmiller171]

If you think laying down some track on a door is going to take a while to get trains running, then have I got news for you about hand-laying track. It won't take long IF, and only IF, and this is a monster big IF, you plan ahead, work in stages and do a little every day. Be brutally honest with yourself before you start such a project - how likely is this ever to happen?

I am going to use sectional track for the layout now, I was thinking IF I ever get around to it, I could replace the sectional track with hand-laid after I finished the layout.

Sorry to be so negative, dude, it's just hard to fathom changing your mind so many times. It can't be any fun and that's what model railroading is supposed to be. If you're enjoying yourself, then more power to you.

Trust me, I am not enjoying myself changing my mind alot , that's why I thought of building a timesaver, that way I could just run trains without having to build a very good layout.

I'm sorry I keep changing my mind so much, it's not that I don't appreciate your advice, it's just that I get overconfident in my abilities when I have a layout idea, I look at a track-plan (Or another layout) and think to my self "I can do something like that!" but whenever I actually think about it most things are way beyond my ability. I need an Idiot-proof layout to build and hopefully a timesaver will be just that.

[chuffchuff]

Justin,

Never think that something is beyond you capabilities,we all have to start somewhere and as they say practice makes perfect!.
Perhaps you need to sit down and think through what you want from your model railroad, i speake from experience.
I`ts taken me nearly fifteen years of building layouts ,and each time i get to the point of running trains something else catches my eye and i start all over again.
But after leaving things alone for awhile i now know what i want,and now i`ve started to build my new layout and i`m much happier.
Also fourums like this are great places for advise, tips and such, but only you know what you really want and what will make you happy.
So don`t give up so easily, you`ve come up with some good idea`s and layout plans!.

Brian, UK.

[P5se Camelback]

... Trust me, I am not enjoying myself changing my mind alot , that's why I thought of building a timesaver, that way I could just run trains without having to build a very good layout. I'm sorry I keep changing my mind so much, it's not that I don't appreciate your advice, it's just that I get overconfident in my abilities when I have a layout idea, I look at a track-plan (Or another layout) and think to my self "I can do something like that!" but whenever I actually think about it most things are way beyond my ability. I need an Idiot-proof layout to build and hopefully a timesaver will be just that.

Somewhere on this great forum, I posted a piece about trackwork.

In that post I meant what I said ... and in a nut shell, that was ...

Time spent carefully laying track is time well-spent. I don't remember the exact words that I used, but the sentiment is there!

If you've decided to use "snap-track" ... sectional track ... because you think it will go down quicker and you will get to running trains quicker, you will be a disappointed young man! If you don't take the same amount of time to insure your trackwork is sound, including dealing with many more track joints (opportunities for derailments,) you will be plagued with trains that stutter along and derail constantly and your small quickly-built layout will become a major source of frustration!

Why do I say that? Because I was sixteen once! I built my first "not-temporarily-laid-out-on-the-carpet" layout on a 4x8 sheet of green painted 1/4" plywood sitting on saw horses, using used brass-railed sectional track, put down quickly to get to see trains running. It was the source of constant frustration. It seemed that no matter what I did, I was still faced with constant derailments. I finally gave up and abandoned the hobby of model railroading until after I had finished high school, done four years in the Army and four years in college (art school.)

At that point, older, wiser, willing to listen to the advice of others who had more experience, I resumed my interest in the hobby by hand-laying a 34” section of Code 70 track as part of a series of Model Railroad Clinics that I put on as the manager of a brand new hobby shop as a tool to build business. I had never done it before. I read several articles in Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman, laid a three inch test piece at home and then did the whole thing in front of a group of a dozen or so kids and adults.

Why did I do it that way? Because I believed I could do it … I had self confidence. When it was completed, I used it as a display track inside one of the store’s glass cases to showcase a new piece of brass or some newly released model.

I still have it … thirty-six years later ...




There’s no reason that you can’t do any of the things that you see any of the rest of us do on this forum. Don’t expect to do is as well as we do right away -- we’ve been doing it for a while! But you can do it! And the more you do it, the better you will become at it, whatever it is. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.

… think to my self "I can do something like that!" but whenever I actually think about it most things are way beyond my ability. I need an Idiot-proof layout to build and hopefully a timesaver will be just that.

You can do it, but you will never know what your ability level is if you continue to have a defeatist attitude and just think about whether or not you have the ability to do things without actually doing anything! You must leave that behind! You must also commit to a “plan” (no matter what it is, at this point) and BUILD it! You will never progress until you get some experience building a layout. In doing so, you will experience successes, and they will make you feel good. You will also experience failures. Do not let these depress you; rather treat them as learning experiences! Before you just tear it out in anger and frustration, study what happened … WHY that did not turn out to be all that successful? Analyze it. Determine what needs to happen to fix to what is giving you trouble.

Track gauge, evenness, proper gapping … all of these things are critical to good reliable track. Take your time, be careful, check and double check your track. Then run trains on it for a couple days or a couple of weeks (even better) to identify any potential problems. Fix any problems you identify. Run more test trains.

Only when you are totally certain that your track is “bullet-proof” should you even think in passing of ballasting or adding any scenery! That stuff just gets in the way when you need to fix problem trackage.

I write all of this because I truly want to see you succeed. Your flitting around from one idea to another … mountains, industrial, around in circles, laid out in a straight line, around the wall of your room … reading all of this frustrates the “Ache Ee double Hockey Sticks” out of me (and probably several other’s on this forum as well!)

So settle down, focus, and begin building.

… AND TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS!

EDIT: Added "possession time" to photo descriptor

[chuffchuff]

Justin,

Bil has hit the nail on the head, wise words indeed.
Brian.

[ocalicreek]

...that's why I thought of building a timesaver, that way I could just run trains without having to build a very good layout.

It has to be good enough to avoid derailments and power loss. Table thumping, train nudging and consistent rerailing are not fun, at least not to me.

And track cleaning - which is why I decided against my 4x6 'display' layout, because it was too hard to keep clean. I was trying to make steel-railed Bachmann EZ track work and discovered that no amount of oil on the rails nor polish nor sanding & buffing would make it stay clean and not gum up with black crud.

If you've got a well-functioning sectional track layout, why would you go back and relay by hand?

Real basic question: Roundy roundy, or back and forth :?: Answer that one first. If you 'just wanna run trains' then find a way to go around and around. Want switching? Add it on. And if space is still a challenge, go N scale before you're heavily invested in any other scale.

Galen

[rrinker]

I will say this in defense of NOT handlayong - I use flex track and Atlas turnouts, and my trackwork is equally bulletproof, with larger steam locos flying through forward and reverse at warp speed and never derailing. I also seem to never have to clean my track - it's all nickle silver, and I run only metal wheels in all my rollign stock. The ony time I have anythign to clean off is after painting the rails - no matter how careful I try to be or how small a brush I use, I always get little spots ont he railhead here and there, and that definitely has to be clenaed off. But with regualr running, my track stays pretty clean with no extra attention. No stutters, no lights blinking, no table thumping. After finishing my main tonight I ran a train around at sane speed for a couple of laps, then cranked it wide open, way too fast for prototypical speeds - and it made it with no derailments. Have to try reverse yet - if I can BACK a train around at warp speeed then I will consider it done.

--Randy

[Justinmiller171]

You can do it, but you will never know what your ability level is if you continue to have a defeatist attitude and just think about whether or not you have the ability to do things without actually doing anything! You must leave that behind! You must also commit to a “plan” (no matter what it is, at this point) and BUILD it! You will never progress until you get some experience building a layout. In doing so, you will experience successes, and they will make you feel good. You will also experience failures. Do not let these depress you; rather treat them as learning experiences! Before you just tear it out in anger and frustration, study what happened … WHY that did not turn out to be all that successful? Analyze it. Determine what needs to happen to fix to what is giving you trouble.

I guess I will just continue on with my HCD plan, At worst it will be an operational layout that will be fun to switch and give me some experience in Model Railroading.

[Tom]

As a teenager, I was pretty against N Scale and had dismissed it as "toys", rather than serious railroad modeling.

A friend of mine had a large N Scale garage layout of Donner Pass on the SP, and ran a 40+ car train of Micro Trains flatcars up a 3% grade helix IN REVERSE at FULL THROTTLE. WITH midtrain helpers no less. Not ONE derailment or stutter.

SOLD! Though I'll always be an HO scale modeler, that changed my opinion on N scale.

The point is, don't build ANYTHING just for the sake of building SOMETHING is about the best advice I feel I can give. If your heart is not really into the layout you're building, you'll just abandon it. Been there, done that, and have seen it too many times too. Don't build until you have decided upon what you want. Changes as you go along are fine, heck, I NEVER follow a track plan to the letter. But if you are building "just to get something built" you're throwing away money and will wind up bored, frustrated and disappointed in the end.

And bullet proof track work is a MUST. If you are constantly having problems with your track, from the get go you're also VERY likely to abandon it as well. So... Pick a theme, design, era and railroad, make sure you use GOOD track (don't cheat yourself or your railroad by cheaping out and using junk) wait if you need to to get decent track, get it running VERY reliably, then go from there. Era's, locations, etc. can be changed later, no problem, but once you get the wood and foam cut, benchwork built and track laid, you're off to the races and there's usually no turning back.

Just a little friendly advice from a long time modeler who's started several layouts but only finished a few.

[Steamtrains]

My previous layout was "pretty good", but had a few problem spots where derailments ocurred, loss of power, etc, etc... This was enough to put me off from "finishing" it.
On my current layout the #1 priority was "bullet-proof" trackwork. If it doesn't work right, it gets pulled up and re-done. Thankfully there's been very little of that. Where trackwork is concerned "good enough" is not good enough....

[P5se Camelback]

Amen, Tom and Gus!

You both said what I wanted to say ... but with an economy of words! I tend to get verbose and lose people before I make my point!

Thanks for backing me up!

[Steamtrains]

Our pleasure.....

[Justinmiller171]

The point is, don't build ANYTHING just for the sake of building SOMETHING is about the best advice I feel I can give. If your heart is not really into the layout you're building, you'll just abandon it. Been there, done that, and have seen it too many times too. Don't build until you have decided upon what you want. Changes as you go along are fine, heck, I NEVER follow a track plan to the letter. But if you are building "just to get something built" you're throwing away money and will wind up bored, frustrated and disappointed in the end.

My heart is in this layout, My only problem with it was that I thought is was beyond my ability, but I have decided I will never gain any skill if I don't build anything.

I already have the track in place so once the weather clears up I will put down a coat of paint over those bright white doors, Then I will solder the track together, Then do the wiring, Then once it runs reliably I will add the backdrop, mock-up some structures, then do scenery.

this layout will probably only last for a couple of years so I am not very concerned with how it looks, it is primarily just for practice.

[P5se Camelback]

Justin ...
Your head is ALMOST in the right place now. BUT ...

so I am not very concerned with how it looks, it is primarily just for practice.

is not quite what I would call an attitude of "seeking to learn." The answer to the question, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" is ...
... "Practice, practice, practice!"

That means ... you do your best to make it be as good as you possibly can. Then you look at it ... you critique what you've done. You identify that which you believe you could have done better. Then ...

... you tear that part out and do it again ... better than you did the last time.

I'm 66 years old ... an "Old Guy" to you (I'm told I don't look that old.) But I can remember like it was yesterday when my grandfather, the guy that dropped out of school in eighth grade to work so the family would have enough money to live, and went on to become a machinist in a hosiery mill told me one day when, at age fourteen, I had the "good enough" attitude, "You always do the best that you know how to do! And should you ever have the opportunity to do it again ... do it better than you did the first time."

That's the system that will help you learn in this hobby. None of us on this forum were as good at this as we are now when we were sixteen. You cannot measure your work by holding it up to the work of people with 30 years experience. But maybe you might use what some of us older guys have done as a skill development objective ... a goal to be achieved.

When I joined this forum a year ago, I had not done any model railroading for twenty years. But I entered the Summer Structure Challenge more as a challenge to myself, an exercise to push myself to do the best I could do ... and then I got caught up in the "competition" and pushed myself to do better. I had a great deal of fun, I learned a few new things (mostly by watching the work of others on this fine forum) and I did better than I had ever done in the past. Now I will have to go back and upgrade some of the structures I had done years ago!

That's what you have to do ... to push yourself to do the best that you can do ... to please yourself!