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Getting Real Column - 4
possible into the space. Plans called for adding a second deck
around the remainder of the layout, but it was never built.
By mid-summer 2009 I’d built the benchwork, including a helix,
and laid and wired the vast majority of the track. The result
was a layout with a mainline length slightly more than five
scale miles. By February 2010 I was ready to put the layout
through an early test “open house” session. This was the first
time I’d had more than three or four people in the layout room
at one time actually running the trains. I relayed the story of
that “Sea Trial” session, as we called it, in the May/June 2010
issue of MRH .
Mechanically, “SNE 4.0” operated fine, with only a few small,
easily corrected glitches. But during that test session and on
several occasions over the next few months when more than a
couple of people were in the layout room at once, more seri-
ous issues with the design reared their ugly head, and I grew
increasingly uncomfortable with my creation.
My wife could tell something was wrong since suddenly I
wasn’t spending every waking hour in the basement. I wrote
off this lack of activity to some sort of modeling funk brought
on by a big push to get the layout ready for that first test run.
But it became apparent to everyone, including me, that this
was no mere case of model railroading blahs. With input from
good friends and lots of soul searching I put everything – scale,
gauge, and prototype, on the table.
In retrospect, I’d say the layout had gotten away from me. I’d
succeeded in getting a plenty long mainline into the space,
but it otherwise it was too big, too complicated, and, perhaps
most importantly, too wrong, for me. I suppose I could have
continued with the current layout just to be bull-headed (one
friend joked my headstone could feature the epitaph “Here lies
a model railroader who stuck with it”) but what would be the
point of spending time, effort, and money to build a layout that
I didn’t find truly satisfying?
Prototype CV or Freelanced SNE?
There’s no better fuel for the model railroad Internet to erupt
into an all-out flame war than the “prototype vs. freelance
debate.” Suffice to say the prototype freelancing concept
works, and I certainly enjoyed it. It made it possible for me to
model a steam-era railroad on a fairly limited budget. I simply
wanted to do something a little more prototype specific this
time around.
I will add one cautionary note for any of those freelancers who
are still reading. A prototype-based layout, especially on a
relatively seldom-modeled road like the CV, will be a one-of-a-
kind unique creation. However, with the quantity, and quality
of product available today you run a real risk with any type of
“freelancing.”
When faced with a large layout to populate with everything
from rolling stock to structures, I fell into the trap of purchasing
commercial products that look “close,” or were “good enough
for now” – even if they really look nothing like their full-sized
New England counterparts. The risk is the resulting layout soon
looks like another version of everyone else’s.
Not this time. Focus is my new watchword. If it isn’t appropri-
ate for the time and place I’m modeling on the chopping block
“A prototype-based layout, especially on a
relatively seldom-modeled road like the CV,
will be a one-of-a-kind unique creation.”
MRH-Mar 2013
