Hey, box up your engines and rolling stock put a plastic drop cloth over the layout and don't think about it. THE BUG WILL BITE YOU AGAIN
From time to time interest can wane in any hobby or pastime Everyone's suggestions on here are true and good. There is another thing anyone should strive for: Balance. I have many hobbies to occupy my time. Each one of them began in earnest with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. That always happens in any endeavor. Then when interest diminishes somewhat and perhaps another hobby comes along to rekindle the spirit, one may feel that they are burned out in the old. Not so. The human psyche cannot sustain that degree of interest and enthusiasm indefinitely and at the same level in any endeavor. To take a break and retreat briefly as advised here is a practical solution to this dilemma. But if you don't come back with the same degree of verve, don't despair--you are a creature of basic human nature. Keep in mind that your psyche needs some balance in that phase of your life. When the spirit moves you to play with trains, act on it; otherwise don't force it and do other things instead until the feeling returns. It will eventually, because you will get tired of the other hobbies, too--it's only natural for some folks. Make your life interesting by keeping all the balls juggling in the air, not just one.
One thing that adds interest is joining a small train club and running trains at different houses over the months. Part of the interest for me is the varied differences in issues that come up at the other layouts...solving them...hearing about them...and the pie and ice cream break during the meet.
As many stated our interests and focus change often. There are many possible causes and I would agree with the advice to take a brief step away from your layout. While away, consider possible layout design changes that might increase your interest later on.
Also, the next time your grandchildren visit ask each of them what they might like to see change with the layout. Some of their ideas might first seem far fetched, but also some might be insightful and give you and them renewed interest and purpose with the layout.
>>They are getting older and their tastes are changing. I'm wondering if mine are, too. Any other forum members facing this issue?<<
The way I see it, the O gauge market has become horribly repetitive and excessively costly with increased depreciation. Worse, the once mighty collector market has nearly disintegrated.
Lionel's BTO program of reinventing old stock with upgraded electronics and gimmicks at higher cost is doing nothing to help reverse the trend.
Simply put, No new tooling has big consequences..
It has created a overly expensive and boring situation for many at the higher levels of involvement.
Joe
I have a ton of Hobbies:
1) O Gauge Trains
2) Muscle Car Club
3) PC Games
4) Astronomy
5) Historical Miniatures Wargaming
6) Visiting Civil War Battlefields
7) Stock Market and Commodities
ALL of these will either get my juices flowing or burn me out on a regular basis.
The key is diversity, and never over indulging in any one area for too long a time.
Now as far as trains are concerned, you have a Christmas Layout...is it perm or temp?
Regardless, if you have never planned and built a O Gauge railroad built around a prototype, then I would suggest that.
Do you like a challenge?
Here, go to this website and plan a layout based on the NYC&HR of 1880-1908.
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beach/chapter13.html
This will keep you busy and excite for a long time as it did me!
TOTALLY DIFFERENT than what anyone else has for a layout.
Take particular note of the route between Old Grand Central and the Harlem River with a combination of tunnels, viaducts, elevated structures, bridges, surface, stations and yards.
Read all 27 issues of Scientific American 1880 in this link for ideas from subways to elevated to cuts to tunnels, almost every type of NY City railways:
I haven't lost interest, just came back from my 1rst train show at Clayton Arena in Clayton New York. Great time running trains. I always look forward to this time of year as I take the train board to 4 shows in northern and central New York. we go to Massena new York last weekend of the month. then on to Syracuse New York the first weekend in Nov. then Fulton New York the weekend after that.
I did help a friend sell off all of his O gauge stuff last weekend. he moved to a smaller house and didn't have the room. Took everything to the train show in Clayton and a dealer friend bought everything. My seller friend was happy and got more than he expected.
So on that hand we just lost another O gauge guy, but I think everything will even out.
I can empathize as I am going through the same "could care less" cycle. The door to the layout room has not been opened for weeks. I cannot give a logical answer for this. That being said, it is more likely than not my enthusiasm will regenerate itself as it has in the past. The only advantage to this is that everything seems new again when the desire returns. I don't fret about it or over-think it. There are other more pragmatic tasks where I don't have the option of taking a break.
Build a new layout with a track plan and buildings based on your favorite scenes of railroads.
Trade up to new locomotives, passenger cars, and freight cars.
Purchase new figures and building.
Andrew
happens to most of us.
try what prrjim suggested.
My interest went down once my small layout was build (right down to the detailed building and passenger car interiors). My grandkids no longer ask to see the trains. My modular group is no longer active.
However, other new and old hobbies/interests still abound: Archery, guns, collecting 3-D photography, "collectables" in general, reading 2-3 books a week (often on the beach), and travel (including river cruises in Europe) keep me as busy as I want to be. My daughter asked if I could help take care of the grandkids in MA during York week, and I said "yes" with no regrets (although missing the Allentown train show breakfast would have been another matter).
That being said, I still look forward to putting up my 2 Christmas layouts.
As the Aussies say, NO WORRIES MATE !
during the spring/summer I play with my '69 road runner and the wife's '72 Karmann Ghia. Fall/Winter is train time, although I've picked up more trains the last few months that I usually do in the summer. By the end of Fall I'm usually ready to park the cars for a while and head downstairs, and the start of Spring I'm ready to get them back out. This works out well as I don't tire of either hobby that way. As far as the new catalogs, there is more than enough old trains around for mew to even bother with the new foreign made stuff.
That's why I bring the trains out once a year during the holidays and put them away the week after new Years. It makes it a nice treat to fool around with them for a couple of weeks and then they go away until next year. The layout changes from year to year as well keeping the novelty alive. I always seem to run them during Christmas and by the time I am ready to pack them up I haven't run them for a week or two.
The boat is still bobbing on her mooring awaiting a few good, warm, autumn sails. Only after she's hauled will I allow my mind to wander into train-land. Having said that, I really want a LionChief Plus Camelback!
Jon 
Originally Posted by MrMuffin'sTrains:
Put fliers in your neighbors' mailboxes ...
Uh oh, a postal inspector accompanied by an FBI S.W.A.T. team is going to show up at his house if he does that. By law, a mailbox is intended only for receipt of postage-paid U.S. Mail.
What, me worry?
What you are experiencing is quite normal, no matter what hobby you are into. It's always best to take a break, do something else for awhile and come back to it when you feel like it. It happens to me and a break from trains is refreshing.
Steve, Lady and Tex
Precisely why I prefer a more toy train type layout where I can tear up the track and redo the layout along with operating accessories and buildings. When it gets old, its time for a change. Better yet if the table arrangement can also be changed. Isn't boredome a part of the reason we keep buying new items as well?
Originally Posted by falconservice:
You need to change everything around on an annual basis. If it has been the same thing for 10 years, it will not be exciting.
Andrew
I can completely understand your feelings. Although I am a Senior Model Railroader, at one time I had a very Comprehensive Line up of Post War and MPC Lionel Trains. All Conventional, ran, what I thought at the time Just Super. Along came a job loss, working for a company 23 years, followed by a Divorce, Had to sell the trains in 1988. This was a nice collection, nice layout, all Gone. I was out of the hobby for 7 or so years.
Then, after re-marrying, my new wife said let's build a house with a basement, for a new layout. This is when I was introduced to TMCC, and Command. The Scale look was starting to spread Everywhere, TMCC-DCS, Wow. I said, forget my past losses and bought Both Century a Club 1 and 2, all that was available. (It's Contagious)
Today, i have all Legacy, have a layout to constantly work on, and a Re-Newed Interest In all
the New Vision Line, JLC Line, and by starting new in 1999, all my curves are 072 and up to 0120, so we can run almost everything made in command. Command made the difference for our family. Now, it's I-Pad Time.....
Yes, I have 6 sons, 12 Grandchildren, all like to look at the trains, NONE want to collect toy trains....I have a large circle of friends that enjoy sharing the hobby. Thats what it's
all about, Friends, Fun, Running Trains....
My Layout was featured on OGR VIDEO 10...
"Leapin Larry's Looney Lines RR....Come visit when in Tennessee..
By the way, The New Lionel Catalog is Loaded with Neat Accessories, WOW.
Every once in a while the same feeling comes over me and I just let it alone. I know from 70 years of experience that it will come back after several months. Maybe what you might get interested is modifying your layout rather than running trains. Look at some of the forum topics such as layout vignettes which might give you inspiration.
Al
My interest never flags. What it does is change orientation or goals. I do a lot of building and kitbashing so there is always an ongoing project to go to when interest in a different one flags. For a while i was working the scale passenger train passion until I just got tired of fiddling and fussing. Now it's a 10-car circus train that has the juices flowing. Just buying models by themselves isn't rewarding.
The MTH/Lionel?WeaverAtlas/whatever catalogs don't do much for me at all(oh-except for Lionel's promised PRR GLa hoppers).
On children's flagging interest: has happened to me with both my children and grandchildren. It's partly growing up, partly little real train action for inspiration, partly the attraction of passive electronic entertainment.
This is an old thread but I found it when I was searching for another thing. I left my trains alone for several months except for a once a month look see in the basement. Then one day I thought about unfinished business on my trains and layout. First I decided to tackle my 4 chuff modification on 3 locos. That spurred me to modify a stub yard to make it more operational and train worthy. Now I am tackling other modifications I have been considering for a long time. I have been in that proverbial holding pattern like others. The bug does come back. And when it does, it's fun!
Originally Posted by prrjim:
I found I felt this way a couple of times when I built early layouts. I had this grand plan with everything automatic and 2 trains running and etc etc.
But once it was built, it got boring.
Many years ago I got interested in "operation" and came up with some ideas myself and then I got invited to friends HO layout that was big and was operated with a purspose. I found I was having much more fun and looking forward to each operating session (they are all different) and thinking of ways to incorporate more into my layout.
Look into one of the car card systems or switchlist systems for sending cars to industries and consider building a layout that has a bunch of places to ship and recieve cars. Actually you not need many.
When I first started I about 15 cars and 5-6 industries. One industry was an interchange with the C&O from my shortline. My operation was to take a loco from the engine house (it was a 2 stall not a roundhouse) and a caboose and run to the interchange on the other end of the layout. There I would pick up the cars on the interchange and assemble the train with the loco and caboose at proper ends. Each car on the interchange had a little tag on the roof routing it to an industry on the layout. I would then run around the layout and switch the 5 or so industries on the layout. Each car at an industry had the same tag, only it was turned over routing the car to the interchange, or in rare cases another industry. I ran point to point even though the layout could be continous. When I got to the last industry, I had a run around track in the "town". I would rearrange the train for the run back to the interchange. There I had to run around again and shove the cars onto the interchange track. This usually took me about an hour to do. It was fun.
I made different tags for box, gon, tank etc so they to appropriate places and I made more than I could use at one time. I kept them in a small box with separators on my workbench. After the train wsa done, I would flip the tags on the cars and pull all the ones on the interchange cars. I would then put new ones on the interchange cars. I tried to pick the new tags randomly. Voila, I had a new run ready to go. And if the tags had variation, it was guaranteed that the run would be different than the last since the cars and tags would be different creating different destinations.
Eventually I added a second small interchange track for the PRR too.
Every run would point out problems to fix on the la yout that gave me a worklist too.
Just a suggestion about adding something different to your running, but it might mean a new track plan.
Operation is what does it for me. Switching, pretty much, as I have room for just....4X8. With careful equipment selection (Lionel NW2 diecast switchers, MTH modern tank cars, MTH 2 bay hoppers, MTH PS2 covered hoppers and Lionel CA4 Crummies) and mountains/tunnels hiding the 036 curve at each end I am able to catch a whiff of the Railroading I witnessed as a kid. That is what it’s all about chez gazer.
I don't have anywhere near the interest I used to have. I've actually been thinking of selling most of my O gauge and getting back into HO. I still have a lot of it (way more than I have in O), and it's good-quality- all I can afford in O gauge is MPC/LTI-era "junk". So I've been seriously considering tearing down the O gauge layout, selling the trains for what I can get, and going back to HO full-time. I think the O-gauge bug has just about run it's course for me.
