Picking Up Where You Left Off…“Now, where was I”

KC

Don't know how you pick up where you left off - I'm struggling with getting the thing started. Hope you had a good grow season.

Paul

I usually leave a note for myself otherwise I'm downstairs staring at the layout.

Don't have this problem, as it is train "growing season" all year. 

Yeah even if you are working on your trains everyday the best way to stop the daydreaming is work on the first thing you think needs work, then it all comes back.

“ Now, where was I”..? Doesn't matter to me. I have so many irons in the fire I can go anywhere on the layout and start where I left off.........Paul

I keep a notebook:

date

what I did 

where I stopped 

what the next step is

I also use it as a running York list and write down layout visitors

I keep my TMCC codes in it, too

I'm pretty OCD......But then look at what I do for a living!  

Peter

I go through this every morning! I look at the layout and if I don't see anything I want to do I come over here and read the OGR forum. Usually after a few threads and posts I figure out something to work on. The forum sometimes motivates me to do a certain thing or get going on something I have been putting off. Right now I have a big mess to clean up over there, and I am out of palaces to put things, that's why I'm over here.

Sometimes I get fed up with derailments and shorts - just walk away and clear your mind.

I guarantee you will be back soon if you like your trains as the rest of us do.

I get wound up when I try to do to many things at one time beyond multi-tasking at the train table. Simplify your operations and sometimes you will actually get more accomplished.

TRAINS SHOULD BE A FUN HOBBY - MAKE IT THAT.

Pick up after you left off for a few months? What about a few hours???

I should keep notes, but knowing me, I'd forget where I put them.

I am glad you  would bring this topic up because I know wear to start every time. Then when I go out to the layout I stop. I look at the layout. Then I Turn around and I go back and sit down wear I am right now and I read.  This is the problem I have almost every day. Or I am out trying to get some good shots of the real Trains.

How about putting down a tool right in front of you, turning around to get something else and when you turn back around to get the tool it has vanished. Don't know who keeps hiding these things on me, but I sure wish they would stop it! Maybe it's Gremlins again, better go get the microwave ready...

LOL! Your right about that, cannot tell you how many needle-nose pliers I have lost.

I just buy another 3 pack at arbor freight when I get the chance... I know somewhere in the space and time continuum there is pile of pliers taller than my house just sitting there....

I never really stop working on the layout.  I'm in the train room most days. Maybe 15 a year max I'm not, so I just remember.   

Jumping back into a forgotten hobby almost always followed a re-discovery during a clean up, or re-organization of some kind. (The trains got set up yearly as I was growing up, but "full-time" pikes have come and gone repeatedly)

So clean, lube, organize, and/or if you can, run um. while waiting till your boiler reheats.