IronBeltKen
Lazy Daydreamer
That's one of my favorite lines from the original Wizard Of Oz movie, uttered by the Cowardly Lion when he was preparing to lead the Scarecrow and the Tin-Man on a suicidal charge into the Wicked Witch's castle to rescue Dorothy.
I was having similar draconian thoughts about my layout this afternoon. It's never going to be a candidate for GMR - even worse, I can't even invite friends over to operate on it because of all the clutter. I'd originally planned, as a summer project, to declutter the garage and put in some extra lights. Didn't happen; I got sidetracked into "decoderizing" and weathering all my locos instead. Now summer's over and my trainroom is still a junkyard.
For awhile I figured I'd go ahead and install that separate staging yard that I've been planning to add. I installed some of the cross beams this afternoon for the new benchwork; but then I kept banging my head from having to duck below them all the time and realized, "This will NEVER work...!" At this point I started having ideas that I should simply rip everything out and start over, and build a layout with no duckunders. [ I believe I tried that already - wouldn't fit because of the large minimum radii required. ]
And, that is what I need to be talked out of doing!
Why? A couple of reasons: (1) It took me 5 years from the time I moved into this house to the time I was able to run trains on the current layout - I don't want all that effort to go to waste; (2) Money is scarce, I can't order large amounts of new track or other materials. And this is a long-term condition since I'm paying for all my kids' educations; (3) at least now, I have a place to run trains - if I tear it apart I'll lose that, and most likely, lose overall interest in the hobby as well.
I figure it'll be about another 10 years before I'll have the money and/or time to do another layout, this one will have to do for the time being. Funny thing is, when I originally planned it, I was really excited about it - it wasn't until I got involved in these forums and started reading books about the "correct" way to build a layout that I started noticing all its defects.
Could it possibly be a whopping case of the End-Of-Summer Blues? Perhaps the best thing for me to do is take two Advil and call you in the morning. Pardon my rant...
I was having similar draconian thoughts about my layout this afternoon. It's never going to be a candidate for GMR - even worse, I can't even invite friends over to operate on it because of all the clutter. I'd originally planned, as a summer project, to declutter the garage and put in some extra lights. Didn't happen; I got sidetracked into "decoderizing" and weathering all my locos instead. Now summer's over and my trainroom is still a junkyard.
For awhile I figured I'd go ahead and install that separate staging yard that I've been planning to add. I installed some of the cross beams this afternoon for the new benchwork; but then I kept banging my head from having to duck below them all the time and realized, "This will NEVER work...!" At this point I started having ideas that I should simply rip everything out and start over, and build a layout with no duckunders. [ I believe I tried that already - wouldn't fit because of the large minimum radii required. ]
And, that is what I need to be talked out of doing!
Why? A couple of reasons: (1) It took me 5 years from the time I moved into this house to the time I was able to run trains on the current layout - I don't want all that effort to go to waste; (2) Money is scarce, I can't order large amounts of new track or other materials. And this is a long-term condition since I'm paying for all my kids' educations; (3) at least now, I have a place to run trains - if I tear it apart I'll lose that, and most likely, lose overall interest in the hobby as well.
I figure it'll be about another 10 years before I'll have the money and/or time to do another layout, this one will have to do for the time being. Funny thing is, when I originally planned it, I was really excited about it - it wasn't until I got involved in these forums and started reading books about the "correct" way to build a layout that I started noticing all its defects.
Could it possibly be a whopping case of the End-Of-Summer Blues? Perhaps the best thing for me to do is take two Advil and call you in the morning. Pardon my rant...