Ever get bored of your layout?

Boredom is one of the reasons I prefer "add hock", PW, semi scale, and tinplate styling for my layouts. I'm impulsive and its easy to change things and finish quickly.

I,m getting bored just trying to plan my first layout. Way too many ideas out there. Don't know where to start. So many nice trains and no where to run them. I'm afraid to even start a layout. HELP! Do I just start building bench work without a plan and change things and add track as I go?

Getting bored = never satisfied. No one is ever 100% satisfied after all.

 

Hence why I always try to add something or change something with it. In fact, I take the whole thing apart once a month to vacuum the carpet, and let my mind decide how it should be next.

One of the reasons why I love carpet layouts so much is for the pure fact that I can pick everything up and change it completely.  I often find myself getting bored with a fixed track plan and frequently change it on a whim or with the seasons.

Ever get bored of your layout?

 

A simple no, I always have a project to work on and I also enjoy reading Railroad Books & Railfanning. On board is better. The Branch Manager at my Public Library is Model Railroader and is always finding videos & books. He has a state wide computer base to find us material.

 

Also check out this link below.

 

http://www.railroadsignals.us/michigan/

No, I made it interesting enough to satisfy what I am looking for enjoyment.

All the time.  Mine last a couple of years then I tear it down and build a new one.  I'm just starting the bench work for my latest.

Yes; I'm at that stage now. I haven't been downstairs in 3 months. I don't know what I want to do so I'm doing nothing. I'm debating on tearing the whole layout down & starting again but it' a huge layout. (53' x 35')

Do I just start building bench work without a plan and change things and add track as I go?

 

    Yes..... It's like watching everyone in the pool, You wait and wait, before you

 know it,  a lot of time has passed.. JUMP IN NOW !!!! 

Bored with it, oh, yeah. Now. My layout tends to become a parking lot for locos

and rolling stock, as that's where my deeper interests lie. Jammed up and unusable,

except for "Main One", which is now just an 072 test track, in reality. So, boring.

My fault.

 

====

 

BTW, a few posts, above: there's no "add hock"; it's "ad hoc", Latin, and means literally "for this" or "to this", and refers to a solution aimed at a specific problem or issue - hence used by English speakers (and others, I presume) to indicate an "on the fly" arrangement.

 

FWIW. 

 

 

Thank you for your support, I will jump in and hope I don't drown.    Thanks again for support.    Mike

Bored? No not really. I may lack time or ambition to do much more than run trains awhile every so often, but I'm not bored.

Me too. Between construction and operation, I can stay busy for the rest of my life.

I think I'm on my 6th. or 7th. year of building a 4x12 layout. I get bored with it all the time. I go months without running it. The boredom and lack of interest has paid off sometimes. I've refined the buildings I use on it, have found better scenery products than what I originally was going to use, and, possibly most important, sometimes after a bad day, I can go down to the basement and just look at it. A perfect little world where everyone is happy and the weather is always just right.

 

Alas, it's almost complete. I've been working for years now on a Labelle kit, because after a couple hours I get bored with it. Figure I've got another 10 years before I finish building a whole passenger car train. Oddly, it's what keeps me the hobby. I don't have to work on it all the time, and when I do, I have multiple options towards finishing it. I can wire in some Miller Engineering signs, or plant some grass, or build some trees, or work on a passenger car kit, or...

 

If I didn't get bored with it from time to time, I would have plopped down a bunch of pre-made buildings and pre-made trees, and would have had a generic layout. The boredom led me to finding new products, and having a better layout for it.

Never bored....just too indecisive about track plans.  I have built and ripped apart and rebuilt too many times to mention.  Never satisfied.  I get trains running but never reach the scenery stages because I change my mind and start over.  I have a new plan in my head now for fall construction so I need to "sign-off on it" and execute it.

 

Rick

Not really bored but want a change, this is my first layout and consist of 2 loops and 2 dogbones . I think a switching yard would be nice for a change, I have plenty of track and several 036 switches and a couple of 072 switches as well as a couple of 072 wyes.

Room may be a problem

 

Brent

Not bored, but not shy to make changes either; maybe, that's why I have not become bored with our hobby nor layout work since the layout's inception (and first interpretation) during the winter of 1994-95.

 

Here's an example. I re-interpreted this "Storage Facility" into an antiques dealer, having seen several such businesses during drives throughout Lancaster, PA while visiting during York, PA TCA Meets.

Fine-tuning and re-interpreting such vignettes helps keep the creative juices flowing and the adventure of having a model train layout satisfying.

FrankM.

Honestly......NO!  One can never be bored around tinplate.

I have a"carpet central" layout (actually my basement floor) by necessity, rather than choice.  But yes, you're right, it's easy to alter.  When I went to wider-radius curves, the change was pretty painless.

 

Nope. I always have several projects going on to keep me busy

Right now:

 

1. Fix up a Lionel 253 and passenger cars

2. Sorting parts

3. Install Lionel 97 Coal Loader and build a custom coaling facility for it (I have a neat plan for it!)

4. New work table (no more using the airport runway

The only thing boring is that it isn't further along. 

I've been at it pretty hard for four years now. Not tired of it yet. If anything I probably spend too much time on it. The hobby has a lot of dimensions and they can all keep me busy. Running with command or conventional, switching or not switching, lighting, repair, adding details and scenery, layout planning and expansion, carpentry and so on. The forum is a big deal too. I can buy good stuff for cheap, meet people and share thoughts and ideas and aspire to the amazing work done by others like Frank M.'s antique scene above. Wow.

Thanks for that "Wow," Scott T Johnson. I appreciate every kind word.

FrankM.

I think it is a normal part of the hobby. Everything runs in cycles. When I get bored of running I look for new pieces to collect. Sometimes I watch videos. I resist doing anything drastic during the down periods like selling stuff.

I'm not really bored with my layout but I do like to change structures and other things around from time to time just to give it something of a fresh look.  Adding small details also keeps me interested. 

I have lots of stuff and ideas and am feeling the same, but I'm going to build it in modules so I can make it easy to change when I feel like I did not make a good choice. I'm sure I will learn as i go and see things I'd like to do, so a modular approach will enable me to just get started, and then change when I need to. 

Andrew,

 

All the time dude! when that happens, I just get a new house or 2 and I change around my Hobos or add new ones. I lost count at 35 though!

 

PS. Adding a train helps, entertains the Hobos!

Mike Maurice

I don't get bored with my present layout, but I do get burnt out and have to take breathers from time to time.

 

Art

My layout is almost finished.  It's only 11 x 9 so I'm getting burned out watching the trains run around the three different loops.  But now that I have Legacy I've been playing with the record feature... and running two trains on one loop without any blocks... that has re energized me! 

I'm with Art. 

 

Unfortunately, my 'breather' is approaching 2+ years...on the layout itself.  During that time I've been in a different area of the homestead building structure/car kits and doing some scratch-building, reconditioning some items for resale, etc., etc., etc..

 

When our first Golden, MacKenzie, was put down about 3 years ago, we decided to get TWO Goldens to fill the emptiness she left behind.  (See my avatar photo.)  What I had forgotten of MacKenzie's maturity and disinterest towards the layout in the basement, was abruptly awakened when Millie and Daisy invaded (read: discovered) the space.  Between the puppy chew-chew and poo-poo times two-two, I found an 'upstairs' way of keeping active on the layout...()...while giving the 4-legged kids the attention they craved.  I took a huge stack of rainy-day kits, articles, derelicts and went to the workshop...MY 'doghouse'.  My lovely wife equipped the shop with Sirius radio, the 130-total-pounds-of-loving-Goldens enjoy the cool concrete floor to sleep on, ......bottom line: I'm stuck!  Meanwhile, the empty spaces surrounding the basement layout have exhibited a strange vacuum-like phenomenon, acquiring stacks of boxes/cartons in familiar colors, making work on the layout difficult without a major cleaning/sell-off/disposal/...whatever...for which it's so much easier to just go back upstairs to the workshop, tune in the radio, pour a glass of nectar-of-the-gods, scratch the bellies of the furballs lying close by, and work on that never-ending stack of rainy-day stuff...even on sunny days!

 

(sigh)

 

Not bored. 

 

Maybe distracted?

 

Hmmm....  The more I think about the original posted posit, the more embarrassed

I'm getting! 

 

I hear Rafiki in the background...."It is time!"

 

KD

Not board more disappointed.

Since I add my backdrop and it went wrinkle city on me I don’t know it I should pull it down and start all over. It’s that paper type that you have to match up each side and frame. Which I did, but I guess I should have just mounted it one frame at a time.

In 80 years the DSMR never got bored- rebuilt, modified, changed, improved yes but never bored.


http://www.denveroscaleclub.org

Frank,
You should consider posting some or as much of your vignettes photos on the "Your Layout Vignettes" thread. You'll have all the kind words you can handle!

S

If you are bored, then you are NOT done!

I've never been fully satisfied with any layout I've built, but I've also never been bored (a situation easily corrected by just starting over in whole or in part).  

 

My current layout is waiting for me to muster-up the motivation to get working on it and make some major changes.  I run trains on the layout all the time, but haven't really felt much like doing any serious work on planned track changes and a whole lot of scenery since earlier this year, when I lost my furry companion.  I'll snap out of it at some point though, and once I get started on the upgrades, I imagine I'll once again have many sleepless but fun-filled nights.

mlewski,

You can lengthen the time to boredom or avoid it all together by spending the time as your are now in planning the layout.

 

Here is a nice read (attached)authored by an NMRA group from down under. Concise, but touches on many points that require deeper study. It may help focus your planning process.

I wouldn't say bored but always looking for ways to make the layout better.  My 4x8 layout is nice.  It was a good starter for me.  I have since added a few sidings and some buildings.  I don't sit there everyday watching the trains go around.  I look at it and see how I can make it better.  Right now I am in the q&a portion of expansion.  Till I have a plan I can use economically if will start.

Yep and I am in the middle of tearing it down and going to start a re-build this winter.  

If this video does not motivate you nothing will!

Pre-and Post war Lionel...a masterpiece video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hao-TsCw_o