Have you 'invented' any games to play on your layout?

Yes.....and thanks to MTH PS2 speed control........a game was "invented".  About 15+ years ago when my son was young (he's 23 now), my wife got him a counting game called "Count the Pigs" It came with little red bowls and about 60 little pink pigs......it was boring and he mastered it in minutes.  

We invented a new game......using command control, we slowed down the trains to about 5 scale miles per hour....We ran a long train of 6464-sized boxcars. We placed pigs on top of cars and pigs in open doors.  We each had a PostWar missile firing car (#6544).

You get the idea.......1 point to shoot a pig off the roof. 2 points if you hit a pig in a boxcar door. 3 points if you hit the pig in the boxcar door and it went out the other size.......Still a counting game, but a lot more fun!

Peter

I have my version of Hogarts School on my layout.  Maybe I should have a Quidditch Pitch.

How long will the trains run before something messes up.... it's fun until we have a "winner".

Putnam Division posted:

... We invented a new game......using command control, we slowed down the trains to about 5 scale miles per hour....We ran a long train of 6464-sized boxcars. We placed pigs on top of cars and pigs in open doors.  We each had a PostWar missile firing car (#6544) ...

Peter

Shoot the pigs off a moving train, that's funny. I can think of some politically incorrect variations on the theme for added variety ...

No games just try to emulate regular operations is tough enough.

But I like the target practice game!

Realistic operation is a game all to itself. The people who do it, in my experience, almost always seem to make operations more and more complex over time (and they always seem to demand more and more paperwork), to the point where it doesn't seem like fun anymore. I don't do op sessions on some layouts as it's more complex than my job. That, to me, ain't fun.

That said, it's challenging to have different issues thrown at you. For example, when I do an op session on my layout, any Army boxcars or tank cars (I only have 2 of each) have to have one car between them and the loco or caboose (or passenger car on mixed trains), as they represent explosives or gasoline being moved.

Not a game so much as a schedule.  Using cruise control I can have a single freight train "out on the main" (a single track with passing sidings and return loops) running at constant speed.  I can then bring out each of 3 passenger trains from the stub end terminal fitting into the slots vacated by the freight.  An alternative is operating a commuting session where each of the 3 passenger trains leave the 3 track terminal, visit the three track through station on each of the three tracks before returning to the stub terminal.  Tried my hand at freight switching, I like this better.

My layout is based on a BBC programme called Ivor the engine that originally aired in 1958 and was later remade and expanded in colour in the 1970s. There are about 40 episodes in all (many of which can be viewed online). I've written a number of cards containing plot synopses or episode events that I can randomly select and then 'act out.' They generally call for Ivor to go somewhere, pick something up and bring it elsewhere.

Yep!!   I take my post war locos, and my tubular track and see how fast I can go before the force outweighs the magnetraction, and the loco tips over.   Sometimes I put o-scale cows next to the curves and go cow tipping in this manner.

Most cows tipped by a falling loco wins.

The inner loop of my layout has 2 pair of switches that allows the train to run in a oval, reverse direction or run a figure 8. A great test of eye/hand coordination is to set the throttle on the train at a decent clip and then try to switch from oval to 8 and back again without wrecking the train. Oh, and one pair of switches is remotely controlled, the other manual!   Mmmuuuhahahahahaha

I have got a bunch! Here is my favorite:

1) Dummy Push: Take a dummy, and push it up until a certain point. Then release, and whoever gets it farther wins. You can also play it with a train car truck. 

Look Ma... No hands.

No 0-5-0's allowed.  If you want/need a car, get a switcher and dig it out.  

When you are done... Park train cars in yards/sidings and put the engines away in the roundhouse engine yard.

Have Fun! 

Ron

.

Really. Games? Some version (always simplified, of course - they have to be) of actual RR operations is all the "game" one should need for model trains. It's what they really do, and is more interesting than anything else you can do with them.

Operations need not be complex to emulate, in principle, what an actual railroad does; the layout need not be large, either. 

Games? 

Most of us play, "I wonder how long I can run trains before something breaks".

As a kid it was "How fast can I run my train before it derails"

Now as a Senior its "If I have to crawl under the layout, will I be able to get up afterwards"

totrainyard posted:

Most of us play, "I wonder how long I can run trains before something breaks".

Or for the guys who live for op sessions on their layouts, they play a version of that, which hinges on not ticking everyone off because something broke and you spent most/all the op session trying to fix it while the guys stand around wondering why they wasted the day not even running trains...

I've been there many times on other layouts. I always feel bad for the guy who's layout it happens at...

Other play the game of, "How long until someone else breaks something of mine out of sheer stupidity." This is very common for module groups!

I only have a Christmas time layout (11'x14') with multiple trains, multiple levels, and both DCS trains and conventional.

I design a new track plan every year caring zero about reality.  I design it so that it is FUN to run, both by me and visitors.  For kids especially though.  One component is that at least 2 of the 5 tracks have reversing loops and multiple paths and switches.  Some years I will connect the 2 DCS sets of trackage for more challenging options.

One "game" that I like to play with kids, once they are old enough to get the idea, is to pick a track, say for train 'A', and say to them "OK, make train 'A' go a certain direction on that track" forcing them to use switches and reverse loops to pull it off.  They like the challenge and after 10 years of playing that game, they still want to do it.

- walt

I like the game explained above concerning shooting pigs on and in box cars.  Call me "The Baconator". Very creative; apologies to our porcine friends.