It May Take a Village

If you do any reading in the modeling press, you’re probably aware that many, if not most, larger layouts are not built by a single person. Let’s face it, building even a medium-sized layout is not something the a working individual is likely to complete on their own. At least in a reasonable amount of time. There are just too many skills required. And few people I know are good at all of them.

As for me, some of those skills I am pretty good at and enjoy (layout design, track planning, structure building, rolling stock, and weathering to name a handful). Others I’m less accomplished at, have limited experience with, or have fallen behind the curve during my armchair modeler period (soldering, DCC, signaling, electronics, scenery). And some I really dislike (wiring, wiring, and wiring)*. Others depend on my mood (trackwork, benchwork building). And I’m sure I’m leaving a number of things out.

I would consider the MCTD to be in the medium-to-large range, and combined with the range of fluency I have on the required skills, the odds are against me makine a reasonable dent in this layout on my own,

So, I’ve got a crew of friends who come to the house once a month for work sessions. Ostensibly it’s a round-robin group, but at the moment I’m the only one who’s actively working on a home layout. These sessions are a good opportunity to be social (we usually have a lot of laughs, some pizza and copious amounts of goodies of some sort), leverage lots of extra hands, and take advantage of the fact that some of them enjoy doing the things I like less or aren’t as good at as they (the aforementioned track-laying and wiring come to mind).

They also give me a chance to get out of my head and bounce ideas off other people, which has already resulted in some solutions I hadn’t even though of, much less considered. We’ll cover some of these in later posts.

For scheduling, I use a free site called Signup Genius to track the dates and allow people to indicate if they plan to attend. I’ve blocked out the names in the accompanying image to protect the innocent, but as you can see there’s a space for people to “sign up” next to each date. No commitments, no pressure; come if you can. (Did I mention there’s pizza?)

As the date approaches, I usually send a reminder email along with the (ever-growing) list of the tasks that are outstanding.

On the day, people choose the tasks they want to work on (more on that in a later post, as well), usually based on their skills or what they like to do, and we go from there. The sessions are typically low-key events. The only rule is that I have final veto power if I don’t like how something turns out. What we get done depends on the complexities of the tasks and the number of people. I’ve been doing this since June 2018 and so far we’ve had crews ranging from three to seven (including me).

I usually do some additional work between sessions (some of which has been discussed in this blog). I also spend some time just before the session making sure the task list is updated. But I can tell you this: we’ve gotten a lot more done this way than if it was just me alone. It is here that I must thank them. I won’t name names since I don’t know who will want their name plastered all over the Blogosphere, but you know who you are.

This might not work for everyone. I know there are plenty of lone-wolf modelers out there who just want to go to the layout room and do their thing. But for the level of completion and detail I’m looking for, my “crew” is probably the only way I’ll get there.

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