9 Design considerations 2 - skill and energy & willpower

In this post I want to talk about design considerations that are influenced by skill as well as energy and willpower.

Design considerations as influenced by - skills

Do you have the necessary skills to build a home layout? And maintain it too? I was well on my way to become an avid module builder when my health crashed. I haven't been able to even repair the problem areas of the modules that had made it to Fremo meetings in a bare state or reconstruct them. Let alone scenic them. But meanwhile I still have what's commonly referred to here in the Netherlands as two left hands. Or to put it bluntly, DIY skills need some serious improvement. The only thing I'm good at is painting walls and windows. I don't like woodwork and after building a couple of modules from scratch myself and now like to buy kits for my modules made from custom lasered lightweight plywood. I'm not very good with a soldering iron either. Which I found out after a particular bumpy ride over sidewalks for my modules when I transported them to a Fremo meeting. The trains don't run when there is no electricity flowing to the rails...

This is not insurmountable as it mostly consists of doing it and doing it again but better. It's the getting of my behind that is a big problem right now. Luckily motivation has increased considerably so that helps.

Design considerations as influenced by - energy and willpower

If one thing has been made clear to me in the past few of years it is the fact that I no longer have the raw amount of energy to smash through anything that stands in my way. Nor do I have the willpower to do so (and other things) anymore. Can I sustain enough interest in building a home layout and see it through to a stage that I can run trains? Will my still relatively scarce energy be completely eaten by going back to work and survive a work environment as the person I am? Will my lack of DIY skills mean it takes me longer to get to the point where I can run trains in a bare landscape?

Not biting off more than I can chew is therefore paramount. Designing the modelrailroad I want in phases seems the way to go. First phase has to have a continuous run option for those days when (almost) nothing goes and I just want to watch trains go in circles as a form of therapy.

4 Design considerations as influenced by

The design of any model railroad is influenced by a number of things. The most commonly named in the model railroad press are time, space and money. For me skills as well as energy and willpower are equally important as the first three named. There are also others to take into account.

Design consideration may be constrained by:

- time
- money
- skills
- energy and wilpower
- space
- benchwork
- chosen prototype and period
- yard location
- type of operation
- chosen scale

Some design considerations may be more important than others and during the design process it can change as well.

Case in point: my woodworking skills are not great so I opted to go with an Ikea Ivar storage system as my basic benchwork on which modules and segments will rest. However, I'm having problems locating Oskaloosa's South Yard and in particularly the wye at the south end. It's a very big element and doesn't fit into the Ivar directly so I might have to scale back on the way I want to operate the layout. I'm confident I'll find a solution so I can include a functioning wye and with it the operational benefits of including the beginning of the 11 district and the through freights I can then operate. This in contrast to not making the wye functional and then having all freight cars come from North Yard / staging in the shape of transfers. There is drama missing there and what attracted me to the M&StL in the first place where picture of through freights passing the passenger station. I might have to become good enough at woodworking or find another way to include this important part (to me) of the railroad.