Keeping Up the Momentum

Mosquito Creek Lumber Company Blog

Photos and Text ©2019 by Joseph Kreiss Photography

Keeping Up the Momentum

If you’re like me, you love to follow your favorite model railroading idols on social media and in the national magazines. Lance Mindheim, Les Parker, Gary Beatty, Larry Burk, Stephen Priest, Cliff Powers, Al Judy, Trolls Kirk, etc., etc. These modeler’s railroads are, or were, spectacular.

What’s more impressive is that these modelers accomplished so much on their layouts in a short amount of time, and with such perfection and grace! Take Cliff Powers for example. His HO scale Mississippi Alabama & Gulf was an exquisite double level layout. Before being dismantled, the layout was pretty much complete, highly detailed and operational railroad. He accomplished so much progress in just a few years and the pike was featured in many magazine articles and on his website. He has since torn out the old bench work, enlarged his train shed and is well underway in building his new Cumberland & Ohio Valley railroad.

Al Judy and Larry Burk are On30 modelers who get in the basement and get stuff done! I’ve watched, via Facebook, sections of layout go from bare bench work to beautiful track work and scenery with trains operating through the scene in just a weekend or two! These fellows are building large layouts and are getting a lot accomplished. How do they do it?

I have not asked any of these modelers personally what their secrets are, but I would wager the key to their steady progress is that they keep motivated.

Examine your own modeling habits.

I can see a pattern in my own layout progress. And maybe you’re like this as well. I love doing scenery, scratch building, weathering rolling stock, and running trains. I don’t mind track work either. What I don’t like to do is anything related to electricity – wiring, soldering, DCC decoder installs and the like. When any of these things rear their ugly heads during layout work, progress and motivation comes to a screeching halt! And many times, it’s weeks before I do anything on the railroad. When challenged by a task I’m not good at, I tend to walk away and hope the work goes away.

        

I can also use the excuse that I’m too busy with my jobs, family, house projects, whatever, to spend time in the train room. “When I join the racks of retirement, then I’ll start kicking butt on the layout,” I’ve told myself. Winter is approaching. I know then I’ll have more “indoor time” to devote to my layout. But will I? Will I stay motivated during those times, or will I continue to come up with more excuses?

I must remind myself that building a scale model railroad is NOT a race. It’s a hobby to take our minds off the day-to-day and bring us relaxation and enjoyment. I put pressure on myself and my modeling. I write articles occasionally and post pictures and comments about what I’m doing to share ideas and techniques of layout work I’m doing. This can put pressure on my modeling. So, the only pressure I have is the pressure I put on myself. Many times, I’ve discovered that this self-pressure is a motivation killer.

Progress is a motivator.

I can see a pattern in my layout building. Maybe you’re like me in this regard as well. I love doing a handful of, let’s call them “skills” on the layout. You are good at them, they come easy and doing them. For me, as I mentioned above, these skills include background painting, scenery, scratch building structures or rolling stock or doing track work. It’s easy to get things done on the railroad when you are enjoying the tasks at hand. Then there are the tasks that a lot of us dread. For me it’s anything to do with wiring, polarity, soldering or electronics! When I face something on the layout which involves one of these skills, well you guessed it. Bam! Layout building progress stops dead in its tracks, and sometimes nothing gets done for weeks! I’m always hopeful that at the very least, the work will somehow get completed during the night by the model railroad building fairies!

Maybe it’s time, or lack of free time that is a deterrent to progress. Until I join the ranks of the happily retired model railroaders, I’ll always have conflicts of free time -vs- having to work or do home projects. As winter approaches, the outdoor chores will mostly go away, increasing time spent indoors to work on the layout.

The thing I need to remind myself of is layout building is NOT a race. There really shouldn’t be any pressure, A hobby is supposed to be enjoyed as a leisure time activity. Unless I’m on a deadline to get a project wrapped up, photographed and sent off to a magazine, I should be content puttering around the train room, getting things accomplished at an enjoyable pace.

After seeing progress stop on my basement-sized Mosquito Creek Lumber Company layout for weeks at a time, I really had to evaluate what was stopping me from making progress on a steady pace. I came up with the conclusion I was overwhelmed by the shear amount of work yet to do to get the layout to a semi-completed form. I’d walk into the train room, switch the lights on and just stand and stare. After a couple minutes of looking, I’d hit the lights and head back upstairs, dejected and depressed.

After dismantling and moving into a MUCH smaller home, I thought those days were finally behind me! I had just a portion of a small extra bedroom for a layout. (Well, two stacked layouts, if I include the yet to be started lower level HO scale Big Island Rail.) I would be able to build this shelf-style railroad in a short amount of time and never see the motivation wane. 

I’m here to tell you keeping motivated even on a small layout can be difficult at times. But rekindling the mojo with my pikes is not insurmountable!

I’ll continue with this train of thought in my next blog!

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