Playing with Your Layout

[Globibahn]

Apologies if this has already been discussed here. I'm quit einterested in how people use/play with/ operate their layouts.

Some of things that I'd love to hear.

1. Are you a binge user - do you leave it for days and then suddenly have an 8 hour marathon of train running?
2. How often do you change out the trains are sitting on the layout (or maybe you have space for a yard area)?
3. Do you have strict train compositions that you are unwilling to change/mix or do you change everything around all the time?
4. Is there a pattern to using your layout - e.g. do you run it for 30 mins at 8am every morning?
5. How does it work with friends family - are they barred or do you like showing the layout off and running all the trains when they visit?
6. Do you ever leave the layout running as a background activity, much like you may listen to radio sometimes?
7. Do you do anything else while trains are running - whisky or beer drinking ?
8. Have your playing habbits changed at all over the years?
9. Do you even even run your layout at home, or only at club nights/exhibitions?

For my part, I would say I'm quite a spontaneous user of my layout. One favoured time to run trains is at dawn with the all the layout lighting on, particularly with my bowl of cereal and listening to some music. I do mix train compostions sometimes, but those that follow my my main thread https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=42824.0 probably know that I have 'main' favoured train compositions.

Let me know your habbits!

[ntpntpntp]

I'm afraid I'm very much #9,  as in the layout only gets run "properly" at exhibitions and they're few and far between these days (before covid even). In between shows the layout lives crated up, maybe comes out once a year if I have time/space.

Most home activity is construction, with just a little running to test progress.  I seem to have built up quite a few items of stock which need to have a go round the layout next time I do set it up 

[Ditape]

I often fall into 6 have been known to 7 on occasion, I tend to run set trains, I change the stock in use as the mood takes me, maybe steam or early diesel or 60's/70's I some times have a rule 1 session I run what I am in the mood for.

[Newportnobby]

After all these years mine is still under construction although I can and do run trains. Stock is not stored on the layout so I really have to be in the mood to unbox stuff, play for an hour or so, and then box it all up again. If I need a quick fix/need to run a new purchase in I have an oval of Kato track and a Farish controller from a set I can get set up in minutes.
Drink wise - it depends on time of day. Music is a must.

[port perran]

I have about 12 trains set up in my fiddle yard all ready to go.
As it's a small layout, I can only run one at a time but maybe three  Or four times a week I'll have about an hour long running session utilising all the set trains in turn.
Probably every two weeks, I'll swap some locomotives and perhaps completely change 2 or 3 of the rakes of stock.

[swisstrains]

Hi Matt. I tend to have a 30mins to an hour running session every other day. I usually swap my locos over on a regular basis (probably once a fortnight) so as to give them all a run although some of the more specialist ones that serve a particular purpose (e.g. shunters) do tend to stay out longer. At the moment there are about 10 locos scattered around the layout and each one will be run several times during the next couple of weeks before being stored again and replaced with another. I have a selection of fixed formation passenger and freight trains in the hidden storage sidings at any one time and I usually select one of these to suit whatever loco is out on test. Like the locos these passenger and freight sets get swapped over from time to time with others that I have in store although some of the more popular ones do stay out permanently.

[Train Waiting]

Apologies if this has already been discussed here. I'm quite interested in how people use/play with/ operate their layouts.

Some of things that I'd love to hear.

1. Are you a binge user - do you leave it for days and then suddenly have an 8 hour marathon of train running?  No - I run it most days.

2. How often do you change out the trains are sitting on the layout (or maybe you have space for a yard area)?  There is a semi-scenic storage yard with capacity for five trains.

3. Do you have strict train compositions that you are unwilling to change/mix or do you change everything around all the time?  Tend to run one company for a week.  Say, Great Western one week and LNER the next and so on.  There will be two passenger and two or three goods trains appropriate to the company I'm running.

4. Is there a pattern to using your layout - e.g. do you run it for 30 mins at 8am every morning?  No, but I do tend to run it in the morning and evening rather than during the day.

5. How does it work with friends family - are they barred or do you like showing the layout off and running all the trains when they visit?  Visitors are very welcome to play trains if they wish.

6. Do you ever leave the layout running as a background activity, much like you may listen to radio sometimes?  Yes, I sometimes have trains running when I'm at the workbench.

7. Do you do anything else while trains are running - whisky or beer drinking ?  Coffee, tea, wine or fine, foaming ale according to the time of day.  Almost never listen to music and never listen to the radio when trains are running.

8. Have your playing habits changed at all over the years?  Not really - that's what I did with my Tri-ang Hornby layout when I was 12... apart from the drinks!

9. Do you even even run your layout at home, or only at club nights/exhibitions?  Only runs at home.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes.

John

[PGN]

Well, Neraland 2 is both my test track and (when I get the scenics complete) destined to be my exhibition layout to showcase the possibilities for pre-grouping modelling in N.

When on the exhibition circuit the idea will be to run a set sequence of pre-grouping railway companies, running all the trains from one company, then all the trains from the next, aiming to have a minimum of four trains from each ... one passenger and one goods in each of the "up" and "down" directions. If I can get more, so much the better.

The trains will be set formations, and will "live" in stock storage boxes ... not their original manufacturers' boxes ... one train per storage box. Even if it's just a single railmotor, it will have its own box. It's the only way I can think of to preserve my sanity. (Current train count is pushing up towards 50 ... but when all outstanding projects are complete (ha ha! As if ... ) it will be over 100. Whether I can cycle through all of them in an exhibition operating session remains to be seen ...

The exhibition sequence will be pretty standardised. Up train 1 does a complete circuit, running through the station without stopping first time out, then comes to a stand at the station. Down train 1 does the same. Up train 1 moves out, and Up train 2 does the same. Down train 1 moves out, and Down train 2 does the same. And so on and so on. At the beginning and end of each railway company, there will be overlap with the trains of the next railway company. The movements may be predictable ... but the trains most certainly are not!

Running it at home, at the moment I mostly use the four fiddle roads to hold the next four trains scheduled for completion. Models are taken away to be worked on, then returned to their train when ready ... and when all models in the train are completed it goes into its box which is then labelled and catalogued.

Every so often I clear the decks of trains, and then have an LBSC session, say, or an S&DJR session, where I'll unbox all of my trains from that company and run them all for a couple of cycles of the exhibition sequence, before boxing them up again.

At other times I will clear one road through the fiddle yard, so that a locomotive I am working on can be set to run uninterrupted circuits, with or without its train.

On club nights (Thursdays) I normally take four trains, often from the same company, and set two of them running round the club test track for a few circuits before switching them over to the other trains and back again. This  way all of my trains get a reasonable amount of running time, and the other club members quite enjoy seeing them, and speculating on what I've brought along this week!

[railsquid]

1. Are you a binge user - do you leave it for days and then suddenly have an 8 hour marathon of train running?

No, Would love to have the opportunity of 8, or even 4, uninterrupted layout hours...

2. How often do you change out the trains are sitting on the layout (or maybe you have space for a yard area)?

Whenever new ones arrive, or I am working on particular stock, or I feel in the mood for particular trains.

3. Do you have strict train compositions that you are unwilling to change/mix or do you change everything around all the time?

I have a *lot* of Japanese EMUs which really need to be in proper set formation (if nothing else so the pantographs are in the right place), so am vigilant when setting those up. Otherwise whatever looks reasonably plausible.

4. Is there a pattern to using your layout - e.g. do you run it for 30 mins at 8am every morning?

it's still work-in-progress, I mess around with it when I have some free time usually late in the evening. It's located in my home office where I spend my working day which sounds more tempting than it is, but sometimes I find running trains for a little bit a nice therapeutic distraction.

5. How does it work with friends family - are they barred or do you like showing the layout off and running all the trains when they visit?

Still work-in-progreess and and a bit of an equipment dump so not really in a state to show off, though the Squidlet (aged 5) does come and take a peek every now and again.

6. Do you ever leave the layout running as a background activity, much like you may listen to radio sometimes?

Only when napping

7. Do you do anything else while trains are running - whisky or beer drinking ?

napping

8. Have your playing habbits changed at all over the years?

probably not

9. Do you even even run your layout at home, or only at club nights/exhibitions?

it's a purely home layout

[Globibahn]

I'm afraid I'm very much #9,  as in the layout only gets run "properly" at exhibitions and they're few and far between these days (before covid even). In between shows the layout lives crated up, maybe comes out once a year if I have time/space.

Most home activity is construction, with just a little running to test progress.  I seem to have built up quite a few items of stock which need to have a go round the layout next time I do set it up 

You need a permenant exhibition space Nick!

[Globibahn]

It's fascinating to hear how you all operate differently, really interesting!

[The Q]

The N Gauge layout really is for exhibitions. So if I ever get it finished at home it will only be set up to sort the running bugs out.

The Em gauge layout, will mostly run when we have visitors or I'm modelling. It's the modelling that's my interest not the running, so it will be run while i'm making something..

[Chris Morris]

I would say N gauge is for decent length trains running through nice scenery. O (which I don't have) is for admiring locos but too big for most of us to run decent trains, G scale is for garden (which I have) and 00 is a sort of compromise - the locos and stock have more presence than N but you obviously need twice the length and twice the width to run decent length trains but you get more scope to run reasonable trains than in 0. We are all different and get different things out of our hobby which is great and part of the interest of a forum.

I like to see somewhere near correct scale length trains running through nice scenery. My last layout was very much built with exhibitions in mind but my current project is designed for what I want at home but with the ability to go to exhibitions. I have no intention of taking it to many exhibitions although its always nice to have a chat about the layout with exhibition visitors. I guess the thing I really like is trying to make a model of a real place. Through my adult life I have built/started 7 layouts based on a real place (with varying degrees of success) and only three based on entirely fictitious locations. Two of the layouts based on a real place were abandoned well before completion due to the impossibility of what I was trying to do but nevertheless were great learning curves. Once built I do like watching a string of trains that are correct for the place and era go by - a bit like trainspotting from a bygone time. That's my thing but I wouldn't for one second think its the only way to do it. Some folk just collect, some build lovely stock and can't be bothered about scenery, some just like to see trains run and don't care about whether it is anywhere near prototypical. All of these are perfectly valid things to do as part of our hobby. If it feels good do it as they used to say when I was a lad.

My new project will have a 12 road storage siding facility. I will have the stock to run it in four different time zones. Three are quite specific and all are set in summer. These zones are 1959, 1963, 1968 and the less specific one is sometime in the 1980s. I've decided to let myself have a little more wiggle room for the last era, probably because I want to run early 1980s but also want to have a chocolate and cream 142. I am quite fussy about things like that on my N gauge layouts but will run anything with anything out in the garden, that's double standards for you. Along with the pleasure of watching trains go by I have to admit that I get a great sense of achievement in that I have done all the work myself. I know its not perfect by any means but I made it and that's a good feeling. I think this applies to a lot of us and it should because completing any layout is a worthy achievement.

I run my layout when I am in the mood or when grandchildren are around. My 4 year old grandson is quite adept at running both my garden railway and my N gauge. Out in the garden he can now handle remote control points as well as remote control trains and get them to go where he wants. Indoors he does like to run my full length HST flat out for long periods - it seems to have coped so far but I got hold of a spare set of gears when I saw some for sale just in case! At least he now has got the concept of bringing it to a nice gentle stop at the platform when he has stopped racing it. I also run it if friends come round which of course isn't happening at the moment.

[PGN]

00 is a sort of compromise - the locos and stock have more presence than N but you obviously need twice the length and twice the width to run decent length trains

That's what I used to think, Chris ... but these days I'm not so sure.

An 0-6-0 with 5 or 6 wagons and a brake van looks fine in OO, but the train just seems too short in N. Ditto a 4-4-0 with 3 bogies on. So whilst what you have said seems right in principle, I think that in practice you may be able to get away with something less than twice the length and twice the width in OO.

So I'm increasingly coming to the view that in the railway room (I'm not talking about extensive exhibition layouts here) ... N is for main line layouts and OO is for branch line layouts.

[Newportnobby]

So I'm increasingly coming to the view that in the railway room ... N is for main line layouts and OO is for branch line layouts.

My smaller layout is 3 boards. I. Fiddle yard. 2. Scenic stretch. 3. Branch line terminus/small goods yard. That takes up approx 9ft in my lounge. There's no way I could fit in 18ft or so for 00
Some sage many moons ago told me no train should take up more than 1/3rd of a scenic section on a layout (unless it's a heavy goods train) and I don't think they were far off.