The Model Railroad That Saved My Life (1999-2002)

Back in March of 1999 I started work on this (my first) N scale layout. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going with it, but at the time I had just quit smoking cigarettes (after 25 years) and desperately needed a way to channel all of that nervous energy. I needed something to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied, and the multi-faceted activity of building a model railroad filled the bill nicely.

Apart from simply providing a pleasant (and desperately needed) diversion, I also viewed constructing this layout as a learning experience and a gateway to future layouts. Consequently, I didn't make any real effort to model a specific time, place or railroad. My only real goal was to learn as much about railroads (model and real) as I could, and get all of my mistakes out of the way. And I certainly wasn't going to let anything as mundane as "reality" interfere with my enjoyment, so logic was often left on the wayside when it came to adding stuff "just 'cuz".

Now the layout is gone, but then so are the cigarettes. And although I've found other enthusiasms with which to keep busy, model railroading has always been in my blood and I have no doubt that one day I'll dive back in and tackle another layout.

Anyway, here are a few shots I took shortly before dismantling the whole thing:

When I decided to build this model railroad I had a lot of definite ideas in my mind about features that I wanted to include. Most of these notions were holdovers from the model railroading days of my youth when lack of funds, tools and talent prevented me from fulfilling very many of the model railroad daydreams that I'd fomented while poring over old Model Railroader magazines at the public library.

Among other things, I wanted:

- A turntable and roundhouse

- Lots of mountains, tunnels and bridges

- Water

- Wall to wall turnouts and sidings for endless operating enjoyment

- A giant switch yard

- The ability to continuously run multiple trains

- The ability to automate the entire operation with a computer

- As many remote control turnouts and accessories as I could get my hands on

Now that I've finished my railroad and managed to include just about everything on my list and try my hand at just about every aspect of model railroading (with the exception of insanities like handlaid track), I've discovered that some of what I wanted to include worked out and some didn't. For my next layout I have some very firm ideas about what I'm going to change:

- To hell with turntables. They're a pain in the neck to keep clean and operating. And anyway, they don't fit in very well with the more modern era that I eventually plan to model (yah, I know turntables are still used, but not very much and lesser still with roundhouses).

- To hell with mountains, tunnels and sharp curves. I read early on that one should use tunnels to hide sharp curves. Wow, great advice considering 90% of derailments occur on curves (and thus, inside tunnels). Hey, I live in Minnesota and plan to model it, and there ain't no mountains here and precious few tunnels, so why bother shoehorning them into my layout? In my next layout I may have one tunnel just for variety, but it's going to be very small and very easy to access. And I am definitely going to avoid anything like the two narrow-radius, 180 degree curves I employed. Guess where all the derailing happened? Next layout, nothing tighter than 19"-radius, 90 degree curves!

- To hell with wall to wall turnouts and sidings and "operation" in general. I guess I'm fairly typical insofar as I got most of my enjoyment out of building my model railroad and once it was finished found the idea of operating it fairly unmoving. I can't deny it, I like to put trains together in a big yard and then watch them go 'round'n'round. Dropping cars off and picking them up from little sidings just doesn't do much for me. To make matters worse, all of those dead-end sidings are a gigantic pain in the ass to keep clean. And we all know how miserable life can be when trying to perform delicate switching operations on dirty track. And don't get me started on that special brand of operations insanity where we all breathlessly run around pretending we're railroad clerks, filling out waybills and train orders and switch lists and god knows what other crap. No offense and god love ya if you get into that stuff, but you couldn't pay me enough to perform those menial tasks in real life, why the hell would I want to do them for a hobby?? Anyway, my next layout is going to basically consist of one huge yard and then at least 3 or 4 main loops that I can run trains around on. There will be a major industry ot two, but there will be no dead-end sidings - I want to be able to repeatedly run a cleaning car train over every square inch of track and kiss all of those Bright Boy track cleaning erasers goodbye!

- To hell with remote control turnouts. I wound up with about 100 Atlas remote control turnouts on my old layout, and I'd say about a third of them didn't work worth a damn. And it's just so much fun to have one of your switch machines flake out and melt its way through several layers of foam base! Next time around I am going stick to ground throws (hell, they look 1000% better, anyway), and only use remote controls when they are needed. Y'know, like for the turnouts that you can't actually reach with your hand?

- To hell with remote control accessories. I kidded myself that I would use these things as part of general operations, but I didn't and I never will. They just became a lot of expensive joojaws and white elephants taking up space on the layout.

I am still interested in the notion of remote control automation via computer, and I've written enough DCC-interface software to know that from the computer side of things it would be pretty simple. However, until they come up with something better than magnematic couplers for N scale it's unlikely that I will ever achieve this goal. Uncoupling with magnematics is still more art than science and trying to automate that kind of operation would be very near impossible. Who knows? Maybe someday someone will come out with DCC couplers. Then I can revisit the whole idea of automation.

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