Connecting with Model Railroading

For the last several months my blog posts have become much fewer and far between.  Summer brings with it a lot of time commitments that leave the railroad a tad forlorn: vacations, family visits, and of course yard work.

I've been "back into" model railroading now for about 5 years and blogging for over 3 of those.  It's taken me quite some time to figure out what model railroading means to me, but I believe I'm getting closer.

There seem to be three types of model railroaders: the operator, the artist, and the collector.  I've written about these 3 before.

For years I had fancied myself as "the artist".  I spent hours studying the photographs of layouts built by the likes of Malcolm Furlow or Dave Frary.  I knew I liked to run trains, but I imagined building a huge layout of amazing scenery for them to run through.

That never panned out.  Sound familiar?

It wasn't until 6 months ago when on a whim I bought Lance Mindheim's book about building a shelf layout did I discover something:  In terms of model railroading, I'm not an artist, I'm an operator.

I've been reflecting on how I didn't realize this for the better part of half a decade.  My best guess is that when I would ask myself questions about what I wanted out of model railroading, I would always answer future tense.  However, what I should have done, was answer based on the past.  Here's an example.

Wrong way to ask a question:
Which would I rather spend my time doing, building beautiful craftsman kits -OR- filling out waybills, handling car cards, and doing train movements (either solo or with a few friends).

Right way to ask that question:
Which have I spent more time doing in the past: actually building kits or just running trains?

You see, I had spent a lot of time thinking about building kits, reading articles about pro tips for assembling craftsman kits, watching DVDs about scratch building, and even collecting various scratch building supplies.  However, the amount of time I actually spent building craftsman kits was relatively low.  Here lies the reality in it: A layout that focuses around large amount of scratch built locomotives, rolling stock, structures, and scenery is probably not a good idea for me.  But I was asking the wrong questions so I never saw it.

In retrospect (always 20/20), this should have been obvious to me.  After all, I did write the blog post, "The Trains Have To Run" a year or so ago in which I very adamantly put forth the idea that model railroading without working trains is a waste.  That should have been a clue for me.  For the artist, working trains are really secondary to the creation of the layout (or diorama, or model, etc.).

Other clues I should have picked up on: 1.) building a diorama seemed to me like a waste because the trains didn't go anywhere.  2.) building a garden railroad seemed like a waste because the trains just went back and forth.  What I was fundamentally feeling not not recognizing was my interest in model railroading was in operating trains.

There seems to be a fair amount of lament on model railroading forums about the shift in model railroading from kit building to RTR.  Tony Koester made a comment in one of his prototype books by pointing out that we're just modeling a higher level.  Instead of modeling the individual model, we're modeling a part of the system, and a compromise to that is that we'd never have enough time or resources to build every model.  RTR lets us focus on the higher level goal.

So what happens if you've been a die-hard narrow gauge fan for 5 years, focused on scratch building and obscure models, and you suddenly realize you're an operator at heart and running the trains are what draws you to model railroading?  Good question.

I've been playing with my little shelf layout lately.  It's 12 ft. long by 15" wide.  It has a single turnout and 5 car spots, 3 to warehouse doors and 2 to unloading tanks.  In my mind the siding represents some kind of food manufacturer who primarily receives freight traffic in and empties out.

One thing I like about this "layout" is the length of which the sidings are.  I feel there's enough track to reasonably represent the prototype.  I've been spending time with mapping software and flickr looking at actual industrial sidings and it seems like the majority of them are long enough for at least 3 cars, usually 5-6 cars, so I'm glad I've captured that aspect.

Lance Mindheim, in his how to operate a shelf layout book, points out an important thing: it's not the number of turnouts that indicate operation, but the number of unique car spots.  My siding has 4 of those.

However, for as fun as 1 siding is, now that I understand my bent towards operation, I think I'd like to expand the layout with another siding or two.  This is actually a new idea for me, as I've typically gone the route of "start over" whenever I wanted to change something.  Now, it's "embrace and extend" which seems fun.

As a result of all this though, I will likely be switching the focus of my blog from obscure narrow gauge to modern standard gauge which is a whole new world (at least for me).