Biggest layout mistake(s) ?

Not so much a mistake as a "design compromise" I am still willing to accept but curse at least once a week.  About 33% of my benchwork, about 100 sq ft, is a 39 inch deep shelf that runs under the downward sloping ceiling of my finished attic, where there is almost no headroom at the back of the "shelf."  I never stopped to think, adequately, about the fact that this means in a corner (downward sloped on both walls), this means the shelf is 55 inches deep diagonally at the corner with almost no headroom to work in even if I can crawl on the layout to get back there to work on things.  Ugh. It would have cost about what three Vision locos cost to knock out the roof and put a dormer there to get more headroom, etc.  Not a week goes buy I don't think about why I did not go ahead and do that first.  

Ballasted track.  Pain in rear to rearrange.

 

Pete

Not a mistake as such, but not being able to see into the future.  

 

When doing my scenery on this layout, and my previous one, I set the clearances of buildings, mountains, etc. based on the overhang of the largest locomotive I owned at the time.  So naturally, new, larger ones come out and manage to snag at a few or lots of locations.  The announced Big Boy increased the overhang so much that I decided not to order it when I found ten spots on the layout that would have to be rebuilt.

 

If only I could 1. foresee the future or 2. stop buying big, new locos

I am building my 3rd layout. One mistake was not having access holes to reach everything on the layout. I made such holes on the new layout.

 

Since the layout is conventional,I use one common return for the layout. This eliminates the use of almost half of the wiring.

 

http://www.jcstudiosinc.com/BlogShowThread?id=432

 

My new layout will be mostly all automated display type. The trains run themselves.  I avoided turnouts since my experiences with Atlas and Gargraves turnouts were not good. However I spoke to Steve from Ross at a York show and decided to try a pair for a passing siding. I tested them for a few hours and everything goes through them without incident. Here is a description of he Ross tinplate switches.

 

https://ogrforum.com/t...ss-tinplate-switches

 

Dale H

 

 

Building a single-track mainline instead of a double.  I have since ripped it out and replaced it with a double-track main.  It wasn't a complete lost because I changed the route as well.

Frank

I think we had the same issue. "spaghetti-bowl". I'm currently re building completely and alleviating the majority of switches and track I had on the old lay out. Entirely to much. I also have got  into the scenery, buildings and lighting . I'm down to a 100' of track lower main and a 80' upper with  some 5 sidings on the lower. This gives me a lot more open space to play with the other enjoyments of building a train layout. I'm still toy like but I look forward to fooling with small areas one at a time like I think Lee and others do.

Larry

Wished I would have used all the same color wiring.I spliced a lot of mine together in order to save a nickle.If I would have only spent a dime for all the same colored wiring life would been much easier.But hey,at least it works and my layout isn't all that big.

Not yet having a permanent layout up and running.

Mine is building too big at this station in life. 

 

Business is very time demanding and even with downsizing the initial plans two times it seems like basic completion will exceed my life time.

Supposedly, there's a list of 9 things NOT to do when designing/building a layout. As AGHRHowie and I say, we've done at least 11 of them.

 

• Track parallel to the layout edge (done that, but fixed one section)
• Predictable Track plan (done that)
• Too much track (done that, but often necessary in a club setting to support enough trains)
• Lack of access hatches (done that, but fixed it)
• Insufficient lead into the the yard (done that, but fixed it)
• Scenery making layout difficult to service (done that, but fixed it)
• Trying to do too much too soon (done that, will probably still continue to do that)
• Doing it over instead of doing it right the first time (guilty as charged)
• Unlabeled and/or disorganized wiring (fixing that -- sometimes fixing the "fixes" of others)

 

Despite the mistakes, though, it has been a lot of fun and a good learning experience.

 

So, why is this one a mistake?

 

Mine was not using thick enough plywood for an under the bed layout.  I thought I could get away with thinner since it was only an inch off of the ground, but still end up leaning on it to reach across and so the board is now bowed down in the middle and longer rolling stock shorts out.

 

Designed and built a layout when I was 35. Never thought about how to maintain it when I reached my 60s. Crawling under the layout with arthritis is painful.

manual switches in hard to reach places.

 

Laying track before grasspaper.

Finally, the layout I have now is very satisfying.  One teeny-weeny item I overlooked though.  It is built in what was the garage and I didn't notice that the floor slopes ever so slightly to the front. This means that my (conventionally-controlled) trains all speed up and slow down a little bit at certain points.  I don't have any intentional grades -  I found I didn't like them on previous layouts.

The mistake of a big layout Scenes get started and completed 3 years later from back and forth with other scenes.

 

Cesar

Starting too big for me too. Took me 3 years just to get running. Scenery is going way too slow. I should have just flopped two 4x8 sheets down and probably would have had a lot more fun at this point.

I am single and my layout is in my living room. I was a machinist and drew scale track plans, a blueprint so to speak, for my O layout with a HO layout adjacent to it. There both open grid with separate roadbed. The O is running, I then quit the hobby for years. Now been back for a few years and decided to expand the O where HO was planned. Makes for a much bigger layout, I will be able to run pretty long trains and look good, run several diesels together, even run two trains on the same track.

Fortunately not designing it that way from the beginning may have been a blessing as I like my addition track plan I'm working on and its not compromised by not having been designed that way from the beginning.

I have a lot of Ho but its all pretty old now and not that valuable. I can make a HO layout in a spare bedroom but as slow as I work in retirement I'm not sure I'll ever get to it.

do not understand why you need a layout.

AG.

Rather than list all the mistakes..all of them brought me back to that old axiom..keep it simple, stupid.

To build a branch, designing it with a commercial program, that had a 6" drop, I grossly underestimated how long it takes to drop 6" with a 2% grade (25 FEET!).

If built as designed, it would have needed Pittsburgh cable cars or trains would

have gone over like downhill skiers, or needed a rack rail to climb back up.  Putting in that long, required grade gobbled real estate and destroyed the original plan.

6% grade because that's all that would fit.  It had to go.  Coupler failures, trashed traction tires, etc.  I may build a multi level layout in the future but the levels will be separate.  If I want a train that is running on the lower level to run on a different one I'll pick it up and move it myself.  

 

The other "gotcha" are overhangs on curves.  I had some serious damage to a loco shell because it was clipping the Christmas tree stand.  If you rolled the equipment by hand it had no problem.  When you ran the train at moderate speed the rocking and rolling brought the equipment close enough scrape as it passed by.  Always leave at least a 1/2" cushion.  Not all cars have the same characteristics.

Paralleling the straight edges of benchwork makes the layout appear smaller. Even with less track, it plays tricks on the mind, especially if you can get the track back from the edge and put more scenery between the track and the layout edge. By the way, it doesn't matter as much on the side against the back wall.

Though it's been 12 years in the past, it's difficult to forget the consequence of using steel wool to clean the track.

On my friend's layout, which I've worked on, two things come to mind.

 

First is that when  we set up the Maines bench work we didn't bother to level each section.  as a result we have the little "hills" at various joints in the layout.

 

second was not painting the homasote before laying track.

 

These problems I blame on our being so eager to get trains running that we took short cuts, and so didn't consider the ramifications of our actions.

 

Stuart

Lots of good stuff here that should be required reading for anyone -- like me -- that is new to the hobby. My do-over would be wiring. It's a rat's nest under the table. An organized rat's nest but a rat's nest nonetheless.

In my rush to get a layout built, I experienced many of the problems you all have had. I wish that I would have finished the walls, ceiling, and installed a backdrop first. A real pain to do it now. This is not my last layout, I hope, so I kept notes of all the things I would do differently next time, many pages. It is a learning process and I appreciate the experience that we share on the forum.

 

Bob

I could have made a big mistake if the MTH animated firehouse I got on eBay had WORKED. My layout is a small 5x8, yet my first building was going to be the firehouse. Thank heavens it conked-out after 5 cycles. It was far too big for that size layout...so now I have a city/urban setting designed to make the most of this space.

 

I think the worse mistake that many people make is trying to cram as much track as possible into a small layout. Just switching trains around can get "old" real fast. Even though my layout is small, my scenics kept me busy for 2 years.

I think you are right, Scott. This thread is quickly becoming a helpful resource, exactly in the spirit of this forum, a place to share experiences for the good of others, IMHO.

 

Maybe, OGR should collect all the experiences that eventually get posted here and place them into a kind-of "primer," perhaps entitled: Dont's, for the Beginner and the Experienced Layout Builder, or something to that effect. Each entry is a very interesting and revealing read, and the selflessness of it all gves me the feeling I have just walked into a very friendly "Ourgang" clubhouse.

FrankM.

Exactly.  Don't ballast that track until you're a kazillion percent certain that it is arranged satisfactorily.

 

Pete

Not using a silencer under my Fastrack. Not corrected now but will be in my new layout.

Mistakes:

 

• Switches.  Don't use them, waste of money and space.  Ahhh, the wasted space is but to soon to be reclaimed (and removed)
• Minimum radius of 0-31.  I have 2 loops.  Inner loop is O-31.  Should have used all 0-42.  With the space reclimation noted above, I may spend the extra $70 and replace the curves so I have two O-42  loops.
• Substructure.  I built a number of 4x8 'tables'  and placed together to get the 6x14 layout.  Sbstructure fir strips are twisted and thus do not create the smoothest laying pieces of plywood.  Does make for some 'natural' undulations along the track bed.  Next time:  Mainnes.

 

Thanks.

Nothing teaches like experience whether it's our own or the shared experience of others especially when it saves us from a major blunder! This is not a "turn key" hobby. If it were I would have lost interest pretty quickly. Reading these posts it's comforting to know that even the "lords of 3 rail" -- the guys with the awesome 200 ft2+ layouts, precision remote operation and fantastic scenery -- have occasionally taken a wrong turn on their way to the promised land.

Worst Mistake:  getting back into trains!  Fix: getting  back into trains!

Since I work so slow, I have been able to correct a lot of my errors before they become mistakes to hard to correct. The one really bad mistake was the use of cork roadbed atop my Celotex Soundboard. Didn't need it and it is a pain to blend scenery up to track level. After some 11 years, bit the bullet and removed it all (it had been glued down).

Ballasted track and small, 054 curves and switches.  I could have gone 072 minimum and probably much larger if I had only taken the time to think it thru.

 

My recommendation is to NOT BALLAST anything for a year.  Run your layout and see if you like it before proceeding.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if they had a ballast that you could lay/press down in between the ties, kinda like putty but looks like rocks?

 

(I'm going to write a book...HOW TO BUILD YOUR BEST LAYOUT FIRST) 

Had a fancy spiral planned-doesn't work-  A 4% Grade is TOO STEEP!

Buying too much stuff for the layout before I started construction - buildings, accessories, switches, etc. etc. On the one hand, there were some specific things I knew I was going to want and I bought them well in advance when I saw them at a good price at a train show or wherever. The postwar-repro coal ramp and loader, the ice house, and a few other items fit in this category. On the other hand, a lot of the stuff I bought isn't going to fit on the layout, was part of an earlier concept, or is just plain cheesy looking. I regret buying virtually everything that was Lionel-MPC, mostly accessories like signals, stations, etc. When I finally got the layout going, I quickly realized how crummy all that stuff was and what I am actually using now is either nice scale-type stuff, new, well-made postwar repro, or pure tinplate. I've managed to unload most of the excess at train shows and online, but I still have too much left. I should have been much more careful and discriminating in what I bought in advance. 

With that thought in mind, my plan is to use two-sided carpet tape on the slopes of the Woodland Scenics foam roadbed to hold the ballast and loose between the rails.  This way if there is a problem I just pull up the tape and fix the issue.

 

This of course will be after a prolonged period of running trains to assure I have good track work first!