My friend and fellow W. Cornwall dweller Port Perran, recently mentioned he had lost his Mo Jo.
This probably happens to a number of us periodically. Personally I go through spells of lost interest, and then come back fully charged with enthusiasm.

If I push myself when I am not really inspired and up to it, I invariably turn out a mediocre job. So, loss of Mo Jo for a while may be no bad thing.

I'll be the first to go along with that. 

I lost my mojo when my VERY best friend Cyril  passed away suddenly and I never hardly went down to my railway for a few years ,Then through my daughters boss I found another very good friend Reg and I started to get my interest back in the railway he was a senior signalman untill he retired and we used to have some very interesting chats while running the layout .But then Reg became one of the first victims of Covid and so I just couldnt face going down the shed on my own again .
I joined the Berkshire Area N Gauge group and what a great group they are Hailstone and
Snowwolflair of this Parish are both members of the club and now  very good friends . Darrwest LU6and Crewearply40,are not members of the club but all of them have shaken me up and managed to wake my Mojo up so much that I have made a new Module for the Railway Club which was well received by all the members .
So now once the winter is over I will be down the shed on a regular basis ,
So loosing two friends and my Mojo has now been overcome and I am nearly back to my normal self
  Before I finish waffling on CAN I WISH YOU ALL A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROSPEROUS
NEW YEAR WITH LOTS OF LOVELY RAILWAY GOODIES COMING YOUR WAY .
Regards to you all
Bob Tdbury

Hope you find your Mojo soon Martin.  Remember you help fellow modellers in many ways. I'm sure I was looking at some of your railway photos on another site just a few days ago and found them inspirational.

I tend to work with bursts of enthusiasm, mixed with periods where I do nothing on a project. I tend to just go with the flow now rather than forcing things.

I find it helps to have plenty of side projects; usually I feel like working on at least one of them.

I agree with Paul, it's best to just go with the flow and do whatever you can whenever you can. Having different things to do on your layout can make it easier to find something you can at least start. I usually do something quite simple, which then usually gets me going again. It's frustrating when you can't be bothered though.....

Dave

My Mojo is well and truly back.
It went missing about 6 weeks or so ago but wasn't absent for too long.
I'm now busy making piles of logs for our club layout and buildings for my Camelbridge layout at home 

ive been involved with n gauge for over 50 years now, built but never finished several layouts.  Too many house moves--and periods without a job. Things hit rock bottom in the early 90's--and i had to sell up to raise money to put food on the table.

I was without any model items for many years--just buying magazines to keep up with the hobby. I joined this forum in 2011. Then i finally bit the bullet and bought a ready to run layout in 2018--but no stock--and set about making up for lost time.

i decided to sell on that layout a year ago--and began a new one this january. Its getting there. Also--ive been able to acquire several more locos on my wish list recently.

Quote from: port perran on December 04, 2022, 12:09:08 PM
My Mojo is well and truly back.
It went missing about 6 weeks or so ago but wasn't absent for too long.
I'm now busy making piles of logs for our club layout and buildings for my Camelbridge layout at home 

My guess is that you found it either at the back of the fridge or in the recycling bin 

I'm in a mojo slump at the moment. We had a water leak last winter in the garage above my layout due to a frozen pipe which caused a fair bit of damage. The damage (shown after the damaged drywall was removed and everything had been dried out) has since been repaired. But no trains have run since I'm afraid and I haven't yet plucked up the courage to fully assess the damage yet. Hopefully I will find some time over the holidays...

Sympathies. The same has happened to my layout. 

I'm in a similar situation having done nothing with Tintern for around two years. There just seem to be so many other things to occupy my time and at the present we are preparing for my younger sons wedding at Christmas. Once this is sorted out I'll get back into the loft and start again. I think one of the problems is that one or two little "to do" tasks on the railway escalate into the enormity of constructing a whole layout and you get bogged down by the complexity of it all.

I have to admit that as far as my own layout goes progress had slowed, it just didn't have enough operationally for me and as it is quite a small layout relatively speaking I was a bit stuck.

Then inspiration hit me. I decided to convert what had been a long siding into a loop with one point off-scene. This allows four trains in the scenic section at once should I wish and means to "hold" a goods train so another train can pass. This now means I have more scope to alternate trains and up to four complete trains in the scenic section at once.

Trackwork is now done apart from a small section of ballasting, scenic parts now on order to construct a tunnel which will be the scenic break.

Roy

Quote from: Chetcombe on December 07, 2022, 05:20:36 AM
I'm in a mojo slump at the moment. We had a water leak last winter in the garage above my layout due to a frozen pipe which caused a fair bit of damage. The damage (shown after the damaged drywall was removed and everything had been dried out) has since been repaired. But no trains have run since I'm afraid and I haven't yet plucked up the courage to fully assess the damage yet. Hopefully I will find some time over the holidays...

I'm lucky. I had a leak when the felt on my shed roof failed, during a period of very heavy rainfall, in a location that is not normally visible to me. However, my shed is lined with insulation and boarded over, so the water mainly ran down within the roof and into the wall, with only staining of the roof lining visible and no real damage to the layout.

The shed roof is now clad with box-section steel roofing, so should remain waterproof for many years.

I have the same feeling. Spent over 20 years building the layout and collecting locos and stock. When I was working I spent almost every spare minute in the man cave looking forward to all that forthcoming free time. Now I'm retired I find little enthusiasm to go and "play trains". Obviously the construction phase was my mojo. Current thinking is divided between do I rip it all up and start again and can I really bear to destroy 20 years work?