an unused parking lot?” A $500 spending limit – and only the
most rudimentary set of tools – means you want an answer
before sinking your nest egg into this hobby, not after.
But that’s not all. Another possible question might be, “OK,
so I like railroading, but what do I want to model? A mountain
shortline? An urban setting? A point-to-point or switching lay-
out, or would I rather just watch trains go around and around a
continuous loop? Do I like scenery? Track laying? Kit building?
Operations? I thought I liked X before, but I’m wondering about
Y now.” All these are things we hope to have answered before
we even think about The Big One – the grand layout we always
dream about building – and before we have that unpleasant
conversation with the kids about having spent the inheritance.
Clearly, with a $500 limit, we’re not planning to create that be-
all and end-all layout (as if there ever was such a layout, except
in our dreams!). Instead, we’re expecting to learn stuff, and
quite likely, throw away chunks of what we’ve made. (Though if
we have something worth keeping, so much the better.)
So, it’s settled: we can’t build that dream layout for $500, and
we won’t pretend to here.
Let’s add to our “reality” list a present-day fact: most of us are
extremely busy with everything else happening in our lives.
We’re pressed for time, and pressed for space, in addition to
being pressed for money to spend on the hobby. We have to
fit our creative activity into whatever slivers of time we can
find during evenings or weekends. And when we can’t spend
time on our hobby, we have to put it aside... sometimes liter-
ally. Apartment life may deny us a garage. City life may deny us
a basement. Family life may deny us a spare bedroom. Military
life may even deny us more than a bunk and cramped locker.
But that shouldn’t deny us the opportunity to explore the
hobby, and, well, experiment.
$500 layout 3rd place - 2
To answer these needs, we’re looking for a project that...
is inexpensive and simple to build, wile still being something
we can be proud of;
allows us to try new things without getting too invested –
emotionally or financially – in the outcome;
allows us space-deprived and time-deprived folks the oppor-
tunity to focus our energies on small, manageable projects
that can be put away during times when other things de-
mand our attention;
maybe even gives us something we can show off on the man-
telpiece without demanding the rest of the room as well.
Sure, like a diorama, but a usable one, as it were.
That’s a pretty tall order. How?
With T-Trak modules, that’s how.
If you’re unfamiliar with T-Trak, it’s a system of modules, each
roughly the size of a sheet of paper, snapped together to allow
you to form your own table-top or shelf-top layouts, or brought
together to meets to form much larger layouts. While the latter
social aspect of T-Trak is certainly great, I’m presenting T-Trak
here for how it allows you to do the former.
What can you do with modules that small? Quite a lot, really.
We Americans are fond of “bigger is better” but in terms of
our goal here, smaller really has advantages. Let me strongly
encourage you – at least to begin with – to embrace that petite
aspect. You really can do quite a lot of modeling here, despite
the size. And I cannot over-emphasize the importance (and
pleasures) of resisting the urge to “go big”... at least right away.
Construction
There are many ways to build T-Trak modules. The tradi-
tional one is to use 1/4” plywood to build the basic module
MRH-Oct 2014
