Dream big, start small and plan for the future

First of all thanks for the plug.

I agree with everything you wrote and I am printing it out for future reference and use.

We all have to plan what we are going to build but the real railroads probably never intended to build what they have today. They might have had intentions of a vast continental empire but they all started out with plans to run from poiont A to point B and they built a small section at a time. So this is obviously something all of us should keep in mind. A small section is much easire to build and run on than a much larger one for all sorts of reasons including laying perfect or as close to perfect track and learning about all sorts of new things you may or may not have been exposed to before. Even if you don it before, each new layout segment presents you with new opportunitoes and problems to deal with.

So Dream big. We all do it. But we can't build big initially. But you can and should make provision for future expansion. This gives you the best of all possible worlds because it allows the dream to evolve and become reality over time.

Irv

Agreed!

I agree completely.. building a small starter layout has been tremendously helpful to me.

My take on the "start small" strategy is to build something that I don't plan to reuse outside of salvage for parts and structures. My reasoning goes to my own psychology. By not being committed long term to this representing my work, its easier for me to accept I may produce less then stellar results.. learn.. and move on. I don't get bogged down worrying about doing it perfect so am more likely to forge ahead and actually accomplish something. However, thats my personal monkey, I think building something that can be directly incorporated into a larger effort later is probably good advice for most people.

Chris

Excellent Slogan

I completley agree with the slogan - You could Almost put it on the MRH cover

But I disagree with number two.  Road name and era really are topics the enter the field much later in the game - and becomes solidified only after one knows what they like to see.  As evident by the rubbery-era craze [back/forward dating, the "vague" time periods, the changing of the guard] this Number two is truely never Set in Stone for even the most serious Model Railroad Hobbyist.

Number two, In my mind, must be this:

2.  Start with what you like.  The trains, the engines, the consists, and from there, work backwards to the places you like to be and where those sorties happened, and then model that, Whatever that may be.  It may be Union Pacific Coal; it may be Chicago meat pacing; it may be something as simple as an imaginary route connecting Ore from point A to point B because the place you like most doesn't have those trains coming through the area - not to say it wasn't feasible for it to have happened, but it just Didn't.

Regardless, if the raiload is going to please you, then it needs to be what you like to see.  And for that, you don't need to know eras or roadnames until much later - I know, you're trying to save us from that "nonconforming Junk" we all rush out and buy in the early stages, but I don't think it is really possible to cut that phase out of the equation. Its Just going to happen, and that first layout or the first couple will be Anywhere - Any time Layouts. 

Dream Big, Start Small and Plan for the Future.  It doesn't get better then that!

Excellent slogan

I agree with you to a point. Most people get started in this hobby because they buy a trainset. They run it for a while and maybe buy some more cars and track and then a powerpack and another diesel or sateamer or two. At some point they may hear about all of the things that we have seen discused here such as prototype model railroading and they find they really don't know all that much about the subject. They may buy a magazine or a book thattalks about a particular prototype railroad or someone's model railroad empire. At that point, they will probably start dreaming and that's when the slogan comes into play.

Irv

I personally started dreaming

I personally started dreaming the second I hit the first Magazine and found the America's Hobby Center Ad in RMC, 1987.  I had barely had my trainset for a week.

And dream Big I did - I dreamed about Big Boys and DD-40s.  I started small though - my dad would only let me get 6 Model Power cars, they were very cheap.  I still have them, and they were great cars to expand my empire back then.  The plans for the future, back then, were nothing short of "more" and "what can I afford?"  If I coudl afford it, I got it.

If you have been in the hobby long enough [i'm only 27, see?] I do think there comes a point where one loses sight of that initial starting point that is the hobby.  I realize we are trying to get a larger numebr of people involved and excited about trains then previousl methodology produced, but then I consider that model railroads truely aren't for everyone.  Its a very niche hobby that for some strange reason, all of us enjoy - but not everyone else will.  No matter what we do, we can't change who people are.  As such, I contend that the Slogan works all the way back to the earliest days of the hobby - to that very first train set.

Even when people discover prototype modeling, it runs the same way - they start by dreaming about a Contienintal railraod from one ocean to the other and over time it whittles down to a simple shortline that ran 20 miles out in the middle of the desert.

The nice part about a truely good slogan is that it can be applied to any occurance of phenomon, at any point of development, and to any degree.  It's like a Scientific Law!! 

Like I said, Your slogan is

Like I said, Your slogan is Good - Scientific LAW Good!!!!!!  Univerally applicable, and now I even see you can enter this slogan at any point in the cycle - at phase one, two OR three!  And perhaps its possible to change up the order too!!  And I think everyone could make it to fit their own place in time, if they take the time to think about it - no matter how far along they are!

I personally think we start heading down the prototype path as we hit the third patch.  When we dream big, REALLY big, we see a world with EVERY railroad in it. That's BIG!  And even when we started small, we were planning big, but in reality, we realized we could only afford the Model Power rolling stock.  And so we planned for the future - maybe someday, we'd have that Big Boy, but for now, we made new plans in the short term future.  In my case, that was serving the town that was inside and outside of the loop of track floating on the piece of 3x6 plexiglass we had under the couch.  The track segments were held together by the little rubber pads that Tyco had in their Turbo Train sets, a Super Dumpster Diving Find of my father's adventourous nature.  Somewhere late in the process, I then discovered what switches are, and this new discovery completely changed my world.

There was one other reality that set in early: no matter how big my layout plans were, I had NO space growing up to even build a shelf layout.  There were too many toys, too many car models [I built them for over ten years] and other stuff in the way.  So a layout was out of the picture; there was no starting small, in a sense.  And in that, came the planning for the future - I could A) [dream the impossible dream of getting a really big place] orb) [conform my big dreams to a more realistic space].  And here is where planning for the future really starts hitting hard.   We realize we really can only do so much - or that certain stuff, like Big Boys, will not look good on 18" curves.  We then start whittling our dreams down to what we CAN have - the smaller locomotives.  and as we make these plans, we start discovering the differences between each prototype.

As the plans become a reality, one small step at a time, our dreams expand, and in the process we discover that our plan for the future looks bleak or boring so we change it all over again.  Sometimes little detials, soemtimes little areas on the layout, sometimes the entire layout theme or even, gasp, layout scale!

Natually, this opens the door to a Whole New Big Dream all over again!

When we first discover prototype modeling, we want to model the WHOLE prototype!   The reality of our small steps soon show us, however,  that our dreams might be too ambitions, so we plan something a little more realistic.  Phase three whittles it down into something manageable.  OR we start by planning to JUST model the three miles by our house.  Somewhere the big dream bites into the whole thing, and ten years later we wind up looking at an empire that covers half the Western Coast!  We certainly started small, and we DID plan for the future, but we never imagined it would get so big in even our wildest dreams!

Ben

P.S.  You have my complete permission to use as much or as little of this as you wish for future editorial purposes.  I have a feeling it would make a good comlum some day...and it might have once long ago, I just need to go through the stack of old MR!!