I'm beginning to like this place.

[BR60103]

Once a month I go to a friend's house and a group of us (11 this month) operate his railway.
He has 2 rooms in his basement. One has a pit and a double-track loop with an intricate junction that feeds 3 balloons in the other room. In the other room is a scale model of Windermere station in England. He's been building this for near 40 years.
We operate Windermere to a 1950s timetable. At the appropriate time, a train is dispatched onto the rest of the layout or a train is received from the rest of the layout, turned around or has a new engine assigned. We don't operate to a clock (yet) but try to keep the train movements in sequence.
The guys in the pit try to keep the trains running without crashing at the junction but with the expectation that every so often several trains will pass the junction at the same time.
Over the 40 years, the layout has had one major redesign/rebuild. Windermere advanced from just tracks to a station with platforms and buildings a few years ago. One current project is adding signals.

Another member of our club decided to specialize his modelling - he selected one class of locomotive and made models of it in all possible scales. Last I saw, he was working at a scale of either 1" to the foot or 1.5" to the foot.

[Scifi fan]

Maybe I could learn to enjoy building railroads. But I'm not sure I would want to run the trains again and again. That said, I may enjoy building it, but, once it's done, what do I do? Build another one? And when that's finished?

I'm also not very good with my hands, so I'd probably gather a club or team together.

[steinjr]

Maybe I could learn to enjoy building railroads. But I'm not sure I would want to run the trains again and again. That said, I may enjoy building it, but, once it's done, what do I do? Build another one? And when that's finished?

I'm also not very good with my hands, so I'd probably gather a club or team together.

Just curious - how old are you?

The reason that I ask is that you seem to overestimate how difficult it is to do something for yourself, but you seem to think that it would be easy to gather a team of others to do work for you. Presumably without any form of compensation.

If you want to learn about some new subject (model railroading, film making or whatever), you need to be willing to invest quite a bit of your own time and effort in it.

If you want to understand more about model railroading, I would suggest following the link I offered in this thread and reading those pages.

Smile,
Stein

[Sumpter250]

hah, I've never met a model railroader who was 'finished' with their layout

Old adage about a great hobby ------- " a model railroad layout is never finished "

" steinjr wrote: Just curious - how old are you?
The reason that I ask is that you seem to overestimate how difficult it is to do something for yourself, but you seem to think that it would be easy to gather a team of others to do work for you. Presumably without any form of compensation.
If you want to learn about some new subject (model railroading, film making or whatever), you need to be willing to invest quite a bit of your own time and effort in it. "
Your age may not be critical, but, it might help us to know, so we could be of greater assistance.

[BR60103]

There are different approaches. Some modellers build a small layout, exquisitely detailed, take it to shows for a few years and then dispose of it to start another one.

[Scifi fan]

I'll be 49 this year, and I'm a lawyer. Quite honestly, my work is my life, and I have no real hobbies, so maybe I should get one.

[jwb]

There are different approaches to the hobby besides layout size and such as well. Part of it is how much people expect of themselves, as far as how much research and thinking they're willing to do, how hard they're willing to work on a particular project, how much they're willing to budget for the hobby, how much care they take with the photos they post, and so forth. There are many different model railroading forums on the web, and they tend to have different levels of expectation -- on some of them, nobody cares if the guys can't spell, if the photos are just out-of-the-blue-box Athearns they picked up at a swap (and poorly lit at that), and so forth. The standard on this forum is a lot higher than that, which is probably why people are giving you a hard time over some things! For that matter, there are many different hobby choices -- I would think that a lawyer of 49 might more likely be thinking of motorcycles and sports cars, for instance.

But if you do get interested in model railroads, it's probably a better idea to start with something other than scratch-built large-scale science fiction subway cars on an asteroid.

[Sumpter250]

I'll be 49 this year, and I'm a lawyer. Quite honestly, my work is my life, and I have no real hobbies, so maybe I should get one.......................
I'm trying to build an underground train system, like that seen in New York, complete with trams. I need, at minimum, trams that are about 44'' long each, to run on tracks that are all underground. Needless to say, I will also need to build the underground enclosures. This is for an indie film project, and I'm trying to get a team together to help me. If anyone on this forum can point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Well, indie films may not be the "usual" idea of a hobby, but........

We can certainly help you with the "hows and whys, and wherefores" of model building.
The "set designing, and visualization" ?, that may be a more difficult matter. My guess is, that you need to first wake up your imagination. Find a photo of something close to what you want, and post it here. we can then offer ideas on how to make it happen as a scale model.

[shortliner]

There is a six part series currently running on BBC2 TV in UK called "The Tube". The episode I viewed last night #4/6 was about the rebuilding of Tottenham Court Road Station on the Victoria Line, and they had little narrowgauge tracks running into the tunnels to remove spoil and take materials in - much as would happen in a space station - Just a guess but I suspect it will be available on video shortly from the BBC -m you would want "The tube 2012". Note there was also a series of "The Tube" which was a rock show!!

[Mr Fixit]

Hi Scifi fan;

Welcome to Big Blue.
Here are some of my thoughts following reading this thread to date. You are never to old to start a new hobby like Model Railroading even if you are considering creating a space based railroad. I remember reading an issue of Model Railroader at school in the early '80's and they had a fantasy article about what a railroad on the Moon would look like. The possibilities are amazing because it is all future based so you can set the scene on the Moon, or on Mars, or on an asteroid and the time scale can be 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 150, 250, 500, or 1000 years into the future, so who can pull you up on an incorrect rivet count? Nobody. That link to the late Carl Ardent's website is well worth the time to explore.
Dont worry that "you dont have the skills", they can all be learnt, just like you learnt to walk, talk, read, write, drive a car and to become a lawyer.
Start small, make mistakes and learn as you go. Learn from others as we all do.
Example; one member was building a detailed model of a vehicle underpass and as I was enjoying following his thread it struck me that something wasnt right with his detailing of the structural steel supporting the bridge beams. My knowledge of building told me something wasnt right so we checked the photos and it turned out that due to the poor lighting under the bridge he didnt note the full size of the support beam. Because I spoke up [politely] it saved him from ruining his model and making a perfect target for a rivet counter.
Not that I am perfect by any means. I look at some of the modelling here and on Carl's site and it leaves me amazed.
I and several others no doubt are looking forward to seeing what a railroad in space could look like.
The possibilities are endless. Like space.
Mark