Confidence

[HereticUK]

On 13/08/2019 at 01:04, Dungrange said:

There sure is - that description sounds just like me.  I did have plans for a fairly contemporary fiddle yard to terminus layout, but I seemed to get bogged down in thinking about the operating potential (or lack of) and imagining a timetable and how I could justify some other stock and not actually making much progress with construction. 

I would say that this is my main problem at the moment. I have lots of ideas, but when I think about operational potential, I immediately lose all confidence that I would be creating something enjoyable. "Getting the layout right" seems to be the name of the game. I would be interested to know how people came up with their "perfect" layout.

[The Johnster]

Daydreaming, imagining different moves with different stock and how they can be accomplished.  This meant some basic requirements for my BLT; sidings that have to be shunted in both directions, and at least one accessed from the platform road not the loop.  Up to 3 trains can be on the scenic section at a given time, though of course only one can move at a time.  Care must be taken not to block trains in so you have to think a few moves ahead, and I'm not a brilliant chess player!  

 

This is to my mind part of the challenge of operating, and must be considered even before the layout is planned.  Some folks like to watch trains running through a scene, some like intricate detail, some like prototypical operating; you have to have what you want the layout to do firmly fixed in your mind even before you start thinking about the stock/period/operating method.  Getting this basic right will save money and frustration; a perfectly modelled through station where trains just come and go would never do for me as I like shunting, breaking them down and making them up, delivering to specific locations for specific purposes.  A good bit of the operating takes place in my head, as I take on the roles of Freight Control, Goods agent, driver, signalman, or shunter.  

 

I could achieve all this with a bare board with track laid on it, but need signals and it looks a lot better with basic scenery, ballast, and buildings.  These get constantly improved over time and the scene becomes increasingly believable, so as well as the satisfaction i get from operating there is more than enough actually modelling to keep me occupied.

[Guest JiLo]

As said above, start with what you enjoy the most, is it watching trains run by, is it shunting?   With your plans submitted, you have a station that will require loco's to run round, and a goods yard to shunt wagons.  Do you enjoy that?  Shunting freight and parcels is my forte, so I design my layouts to suit.  A huge part of the planning is in my head, what sort of scenarios do I want to create?  What types of wagons, what goods are they carrying, are they arriving loaded or empty?  Are all the wagons in the train being dropped off or only some, am I picking any wagons up

 

I dont just randomly shunt.  Each siding has a purpose, and each wagon has a destination.  My current layout is a BR layout, with a privately owned yard.  It has a dead-end arrival/departure 'transfer' line between BR & the private yard.  The are 4 sidings and a headshunt.  3 of the sidings and headshunt are operated by the private loco's only, so the train arrives in the transfer line, powered by a BR loco, and the private loco picks up the train and shunts it, or the BR loco shunts the wagons back into the entrance of the headshunt.  To complicate things, the 4th siding is also private, but is operated by BR loco's, and can only be accessed from the fiddle yard.

 

When a train arrives that has a wagon or 2 for the 4th siding, this has to be taken out of the way by the private loco to allow the BR loco to move off the transfer line, the private loco then pushes the wagon back on to the transfer and the BR loco couples back up, takes the wagon into the fiddle yard and shunts it into the 4th siding.  Sounds complicated, and will require some thinking as the headshunt and siding lengths are shorter than the transfer line.   To add more to the mix, only one of the other 3 private sidings will cater for more than one type of wagon, ie 2 sidings are for steel traffic only.

 

This could seem quite repetitive, so to keep the brain cell overheating, a simple card based system will be used to give the formation of trains, with a random card for a failed loco.

 

I build layouts for home use, but are designed for exhibition use as I love being out on the circuit, keeping your mind occupied for 6 hours a day is quite difficult, so designing operation into the layout is a big help.

 

Design your layout to make you want to to operate, to make you think whilst operating - if thats what you want

[HereticUK]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Daydreaming, imagining different moves with different stock and how they can be accomplished.  This meant some basic requirements for my BLT; sidings that have to be shunted in both directions, and at least one accessed from the platform road not the loop.  Up to 3 trains can be on the scenic section at a given time, though of course only one can move at a time.  Care must be taken not to block trains in so you have to think a few moves ahead, and I'm not a brilliant chess player!  

 

This is to my mind part of the challenge of operating, and must be considered even before the layout is planned.  Some folks like to watch trains running through a scene, some like intricate detail, some like prototypical operating; you have to have what you want the layout to do firmly fixed in your mind even before you start thinking about the stock/period/operating method.  Getting this basic right will save money and frustration; a perfectly modelled through station where trains just come and go would never do for me as I like shunting, breaking them down and making them up, delivering to specific locations for specific purposes.  A good bit of the operating takes place in my head, as I take on the roles of Freight Control, Goods agent, driver, signalman, or shunter.  

 

I could achieve all this with a bare board with track laid on it, but need signals and it looks a lot better with basic scenery, ballast, and buildings.  These get constantly improved over time and the scene becomes increasingly believable, so as well as the satisfaction i get from operating there is more than enough actually modelling to keep me occupied.

 

2 hours ago, JiLo said:

As said above, start with what you enjoy the most, is it watching trains run by, is it shunting?   With your plans submitted, you have a station that will require loco's to run round, and a goods yard to shunt wagons.  Do you enjoy that?  Shunting freight and parcels is my forte, so I design my layouts to suit.  A huge part of the planning is in my head, what sort of scenarios do I want to create?  What types of wagons, what goods are they carrying, are they arriving loaded or empty?  Are all the wagons in the train being dropped off or only some, am I picking any wagons up

 

...

 

Design your layout to make you want to to operate, to make you think whilst operating - if that's what you want

 

I agree that I need to think about what it is that I will enjoy the most. I think that I would mostly enjoy the shunting and breaking-up aspect of operation more than simply watching trains go by (although sometimes this is nice too). I think that the end-goal will be one day to make a layout where I can get the best of both worlds.

[The Johnster]

The best of both worlds in your case sounds like a layout with through trains that pass without stopping coupled with a marshalling/sorting yard that accepts trains from other destinations, breaks them up for distribution to local branches, goods yards, and private sidings, and collects from same to assemble trains for despatch, to destinations or bigger sorting yards.  If some of these private sidings and small goods yards are included on the layout, so much the better.

 

But it's a big ask for room in 4mm, and a fairly major lump in 2mm; 7mm is a whole nother ball game.  You'll probably have to start a bit smaller than that, but if you keep those principles in mind, you should be ok.  The plan you've shown can be adapted for this, with the foundry siding and goods yard, and the pickup freight having to be shunted to deliver and collect all the traffic while having already collected some en route and having some for delivery on the return journey that just get in the way to make things more interesting.

[HereticUK]

Thank you for the words of advice! Yeah for 7mm scale it's gonna be one hell of an ordeal. The plan I currently have is to be only a single station in this whole exercise to design a complete railway line with multiple stations. The real line that I am basing this whole thing on has far too many stations to copy in reality, but I can at least copy the most important/interesting.

[Sir TophamHatt]

It's not just layouts either.

 

I had a plan for a lovely old vintage loco; new lights, new motor, chipped, thought it would run very nicely.  Does it hell!  It's as jerky as it was before.  Doesn't help that I didn't replace the traction tyre wheels I guess.

 

Done another older loco.

It doesn't like low speed and it a little noisy but at least it runs okay!

 

Have been scouring eBay to find cheap "spares or repairs" locos to build my confidence.  Upgraded a 156 (really well too!), which I would have kept if the chassis hadn't snapped near the motor bogie.

[Dungrange]

On 14/08/2019 at 07:26, HereticUK said:

I would say that this is my main problem at the moment. I have lots of ideas, but when I think about operational potential, I immediately lose all confidence that I would be creating something enjoyable. "Getting the layout right" seems to be the name of the game. I would be interested to know how people came up with their "perfect" layout.

 

I don't think there is such a thing as a "perfect" layout and what some like, others don't.  I suppose that one benefit of being a member of a model railway club (if there is one nearby) is the opportunity to dabble in different scales or gauges should one so choose.  I'm only really interested in 00, but if I wanted, there is nothing to stop me buying an 0 gauge locomotive to run on the club layout.  There is also the opportunity to adopt different types of operation: we have a continuous run layout and a few end-to-end layouts.   Depending on the layout that we have erected, I can run trains at speed (on the continuous run layout) or shunt the goods yard on another layout.  That helps to provide a bit of variety - it's like having several layouts to choose from.

 

As for a home layout, I've read many times about the need to avoid being too ambitious, which is probably good advice.  In theory, that means that you are more likely to finish the layout.  In my case, designing a small layout, meant a small terminus that was undergoing some engineering works.  This would give me the excuse to have some locomotive hauled trains and engineering wagons breaking up what would otherwise just be shuttling a few DMUs back and forth.  However, I found I wasn't making much progress and whilst I could say "I don't have the time", the reality is that I was just wasting what free time I do have on RMWeb!!  The truth is, I wasn't sufficiently motivated to actually 'get on with it'.  I have a lot of stock that I knew I would never be able to operate on such a layout and in my case it was the chance offer of a continuous run layout that prompted me to reconsider my plans for an end-to-end terminus.   The layout that our club was offered, but I thought of acquiring because the club wasn't too keen, was too big for the space I have available (and it also turned out to be P4 rather than 00).  However, I felt 'disappointed' that it wasn't to be and that made me realise that to some extent I'd like to sit back and watch trains go by - long trainloads of containers and other bulk freight.  I then heard on here that Mick Bryan was selling his New Bryford layout and watched several videos of the layout on Youtube.  I thought of buying it, but again, it was slightly too big for the space that I have available, but I realised that whilst I'm not keen on tight 'train set' radii, it is possible to hide the tightest curves and so I am currently building baseboards for my own interpretation of Mick's layout.  My layout will be slightly smaller (though I'm only taking about 6 - 9"), but I'll still try and incorporate the half station and adjacent rail distribution warehouse, which should allow me to run pretty much what I want.  Whether it will be 'perfect', I have no idea, but I am more motivated to 'get on with it'.

 

Some modellers seem to build excellent little cameo or micro-layouts, but these are not really for me - I wan't to see a train running at speed.

 

Anyway, I hope you find whatever plan gives you the motivation to make a start.

[HereticUK]

It's been more than a few months since I made an entry into this "diary" of sorts; a place for my thoughts on modelling in general. Some progress has been made in regards to what I am buying and when. My partner gave me the gift of permission to spend some money on a couple of purchases, one of which is a DCC controller and the other is a locomotive. However, I think that I will be putting off the locomotive purchase for now and instead concentrating on expanding the available stock and track.

 

For now, while I am still dreaming planning, I can use the track like an old-style "train set" and mix it up every "play session". This way I will be able to experiment with various layouts and plans on the fly.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2020 by HereticUK
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