[Lee Willis]

 

[mike kennedy]

Great idea...Lee, usually your posts end with a "got such and such" question. And my layout is mostly open countryside...I'll take some pics and post them I hope later today.

 

[Spence]

First of all I always enjoy Lou;s column. It's the first thing I read when CTT arrives.
As far as your complete redo I totally understand. About a year and a half ago I ripped everything up including track after thinking about it for a year and I've never looked back. A lot of work for sure especially finding spots to store eveything while I rebuilt. I took all the plywood up and turned it over to start anew.
I'm curious if your going to sell a lot of unused buildings or just store them away.
Anyway I look forward to photos of your rebuild.

 

[Lee Willis]

Great idea...Lee, usually your posts end with a "got such and such" question. And my layout is mostly open countryside...I'll take some pics and post them I hope later today.

Cool. I will look forward to it. Maybe it will get some ideas. I get so many by looking at other layouts here.

 

[Lehigh74]

Well I’m shattered. I wonder where Veranda and the rest of the Tippedton clan will live. And I’ll miss the Union Monitor.

One suggestion. Although you are re-doing the entire layout, I would do it in sections.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

Wow, talk about a rebirth! You're starting from almost scratch, maybe I can get my layout running before yours is finished after all!

I really look forward to seeing what you come up with!

 

[Fire21]

The amazing thing about open countryside is that eventually someone settles in, like you mentioned a couple farmhouses. Then a few more move in, and then someone builds a store...and another one and another one. Soon you have a small rural community. Before you know it, there's a town! The town grows, more businesses open...and then it's a city!

After awhile, the layout looks like it did before you restarted!!

:laugh:

 

[Lee Willis]

The amazing thing about open countryside is that eventually someone settles in, like you mentioned a couple farmhouses. Then a few more move in, and then someone builds a store...and another one and another one. Soon you have a small rural community. Before you know it, there's a town! The town grows, more businesses open...and then it's a city!

After awhile, the layout looks like it did before you restarted!!

:laugh:

I'm looking forward to that!!! Ought to be fun.

 

[Chugman]

Great idea, Lee. Even though you have said that you love to watch the trains roll, I would encourage you to consider another idea. If you haven't tried true operating sessions, you really should. I thought that I had it all figured out but after I was invited to a couple 2-rail operating sessions, I was hooked big time. I thought that I had experienced it all, but after this one operating session, it hit me...this was the most fun I have ever had with a model railroad.

The two railroads were very different in a sense. They both had very long single-track mainlines with lots of passing sidings. One was built more around a concept where local crews switched factories in their small towns or industrial areas and then a regional freight would come by and pickup strings of cars that had been picked up locally and drop cars destined for local sidings. I thought it was fun doing the local switching, but the regional way freight was a total blast. I got to see the whole layout and interact with all the crews. It was in four separate rooms in the basement.

The other layout is enormous! It takes 30 to 40 people to run it. As close to running a real railroad as you can get. Fast clocks, dispatcher in a separate room, make up your trains a car at a time, modeled after real towns in NE Iowa and NW Illinois. We would run for two hours, have lunch and then run another two hours and when it was done you wanted more. This layout is in a 4,000 ft basement built just for it (no house over this part of the basement) and is on 3 levels with hidden storage yards and etc.

Some of my friends were nay-sayers until they tried it and now they are also hooked. It may not be for everyone, but I think it is the ultimate.

Art

 

[lou1985]

I feel like I've never gotten to the "done" stage with layout. Every year over the late fall-winter I always redo or add something. I've always wanted a turntable. Problem is I needed at least a 30" long one to turn my 2-10-4 Santa Fe 5011 class Texas. The cost of a premade one was way out of my budget (I'm not paying $1500 for a turntable, that's more than I've paid for any of my locomotives) so for this year's project I built one from scratch. I'm currently working on an engine house to store 4 locomotives and finish up the area. I do one project at a time over the winter on the layout to kinda change it once a year. Next year I'll probably rip up the industrial area and redo it. I always find something to do. It keeps the layout fresh. Last year I redid the downtown area. As of now the only thing that still looks the same from 10 years ago when I built the layout is the industrial area. Time for a change.

 

[towdog]

I recently watched your MTF forum presentation from a few years ago and was aghast when I learned how much engineering went into your track plan to ensure that speeds would remain constant on all lines. I think you mentioned that you spent something like a year doing all of the calculations. So because of all of this, I am glad you are not ripping up track to throw away all of that effort! I'm sure your somewhat constrained space doesn't let itself to vast track redesigns anyway.

This situation seems to happen with many talented modelers. Most of us never have the talent or ambition to fully get our layouts to their final state. But for those who do, once they get it all done, they get bored and start getting the itch to redo it. So much of the fun of a layout is the process of building it. Once it's done, you begin to realize that the journey was more fun than the destination.

I look forward to watching the progress. How exciting it must be for you!

 

[seayakbill]

Well the Lone Ranger & Tonto will be happy riding through the countryside looking for desperados.

Bill

 

[Jeff T]

This is going to be fun to watch!!

Have fun Lee!!

 

[seayakbill]

Well the tear down and rebuild will keep you busy throughthe winter months.

Bill

 

[Traindiesel]

Good luck and enjoy your rebuild, Lee! A few times I rebuilt my layouts before they were half done, just to change it up. As long as you're able to have trains running it'll still be fun. Staying motivated is essential for any hobby.

 

[Trucker Sam]

Lee, Sorry for being the new guy but. What is a 77 Sunset Strip. I know it was a show from the early ‘60’s, but I was probably 5 when it was on.
Sam