I work on video games...

I'm a designer.  My job is about a lot of things but at it's core it's mainly about figuring out what should be happening to the player as he plays the game and then communicating that to others.  I've been doing this for a while now and I believe some of the lessons of game development are applicable to building a layout.  Either that or I have a hammer and so everything looks like a nail.  In any case, here's my theory:

- Novice designers are naturally inclined to overdevelop an idea.   If left in a vacuum a designer a will  come up with too many rules, too many systems and too much work to make the schedule.  Being emotionally invested in this grand design, the designer will defend it to the hilt, despite it's flaws.  We like what we invest in.

- The games designers tend to come up with when indulging their whims and not thinking of the consumer are objectively speaking not very good.  Despite being very deep, intricate, and clearly labors of love they tend to be too complicated, un-intuitive and require much to much work for the end user to make sense of.

- Experienced designers usually know this.  They know that the product usually gets better when elements are removed, not added.  The maxim is that it's not done till there is nothing left to be cut.  This ensures that the remainder, the final product, is all vital to the experience and all the extraneous bits and fluff have been discarded, ensuring the consumer is left with a cohesive experience.

Is this applicable to building an N scale Swiss alpine layout? Well I've apparently decided to think so.  Here's why:

Many people build their layouts with the goal of getting as much track on the table as possible.  Many layouts have more space taken up by track then everything else put together.  Many layouts seem to be dictated by their dimensions, rather then the other way around. Tracks seem to be arraigned to fit the last free corners of the bench work, rather than the intended contours of the track defining the shape of the bench.  This happens in games too.  We inherit technology and tools and an IP and wind up looking for something we can make from the parts- and the answer usually is a bad game.  I think the same holds true on a layout.

I recognize that we all do this hobby for our own reasons and those reasons need only make sense to us, yet I'm inclined to think that most of us do want to approximate some level of realism in our little worlds. How far we go is a personal choice and I've seen many that take it so much farther then me that it literally makes me uncomfortable, but outside of a switching yard you just don't see a gazillion tracks running side by side eating up all the landscape.  Nothing says toy train faster then a layout so obviously visually at odds with what it attempts to portray.

Tonight I recognized that I'm guilty of the above in my layout design as well.  In the past few days I've finished laying track on the south end of my room, and am now ready to build out my last section of bench.   This next section is rather tricky, it features a lot of elevation changes and a helical section of track.  Before building the table I wanted to take another pass at the math involved and be sure all my clearances were okay.  After about six hours messing about with AnyRail (A great piece of software that I recommend unreservedly) I've revised my track plan, for the better I think- I simplified.

The new plan achieves the same things as the old one, it's manages the elevation changes, it allows a siding along the way and best of all it is way less fussy.  I don't have to worry about a 2" clearance anymore. I still get my train emerging from a dramatic tunnel mouth.  I don't get the wrap around visual wrongness commonly associated with an exposed helix.  It took me hours to get there, yet the product looks so simple, almost like a doodle.  It allows me to add a new element, a little station and an alpine village, which will now be the focal point of that space which was impossible before as it was dominated by a 4 wide jumble of tracks looping on themselves.  So I looked at what I had and the penny dropped- I just simplified it, and so made it better.

Your mileage may vary,  perhaps you like the old design better but here's where I got to.  Your comments would be appreciated.

Original

After 2 hours

After 5 hours

End product

Thumbnail: The big picture