Would you rather work on design and building your layout or run trains? The response I always get is “Work on the layout!” How frequently have you involved your children or grandchildren in the design or building of a layout? Most of my life I had built the layout and then let my children run trains on it or even just watch!
A story:
In the early 1990s I wanted to give my new grandchildren the joy of playing with trains. I set up a large (primarily track) Christmas layout (December 1 to January 30) in the living/dining room. As they grew older they became less interested in playing on this layout, so I decided that I wanted a permanent layout for them ( now 6 & 8) Unfortunately, the only space was in the attic (13’ x 40') . The attic has an A-frame roof, so a 42” high table left only 30” on either side of the aisle! So I had to settle for a carpet layout where there were 5’ on either side (Picture 1).
I had a week free, but we were committed to caring of the two local grandchildren for the week. To be fair, I had to entertain them part of the week. Being desperate to get started, I figured I could let them watch me and carry things from the workshop to the attic.
As motivation, I explained what I was planning to do and how it would look. But they had their own ideas on what the layout should be! I started incorporating some of their ideas and implementing them. Suddenly they were all eager to help and wanted to paint the strips of plywood and screw the tubular track into them (would have given my kingdom for “fasTrack). They also wanted to lay the track, switches, and put buildings and accessories on other pieces of plywood. This worked because they could step on the plywood and sit on the floor and move through the layout.
This went alright for 2 days. But it became apparent that I could get nothing done myself while keeping the 2 of them coordinated, so I decided to have only one of them at a time. in the attic When the grandchildren from California or Michigan visited, a lot of their time was spent in the train room running trains and implementing some changes I had planed ahead for.
Over the subsequent months and years, trips with the local grandchildren to local train shops and viewing new catalogues added to their commitment and enthusiasm. As we added additional rolling stock, switches, buildings, and accessories, much of the layout had to be changed. This involved unscrewing the track plywood from the floorboards under the carpet, getting larger pieces of plywood for under cities and making bases for new accessories. By now they were old enough to do electrical work if I checked it. Ultimately we had three double crossovers (pic2), 29 Ross switches, whole cities(pic 3-4 and two mountains (Pictures 5-7). Their enthusiasm begin to wane as they became teenagers and disappeared by 15, except for sessions to make me feel good!
I sometimes wonder if I were not constrained to a floor layout and had not had the grandchildren for a week when I wanted to get started, would I now have a 42" table
layout? I suspect I would?? But I am very thankful now for the A frame and the grandchildren I had to entertain!!
Will they build layouts with their own children? It too early to say as they are not married yet.
